V.imp Alaa Assaqili The Linguistics of UN and Peace Discours

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables …………………………………………….……… ix

List of Figures……………………………………………………… x
Acknowledgements …………………….................................... xi
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION........................................... 1
Background................................................................................. 1
1.2 Discourse, World and this Study…...................................... 13
1.3 CDA, the Palestine Question and this Study....................... 20
1.4 Aim of Study…………………………………………..……..... 26
1.5 Statement of the Problem.................................................... 27
1.6 Objectives of Study............................................................. 31
1.7 Research Questions............................................................ 33
1.8 Significance of Study........................................................... 33
1.9 Definition of Key and Newly Minted Terms……………....... 34
1.10 Organisation of Study........................................................ 38
CHAPTER 2: BACKGROUND:
THE PALESTINE QUESTION…………………………...…….... 40
2.1 Overview……………………………………………………….. 40
2.2 The Palestine Question: Origins and Evolution................... 45
2.3 The Palestine Question: Formative Events………………... 48
2.3.1 French Revolution (1789)………………….……….. 50
2.3.2 Publication of “The Jewish State” (1896)................ 50
2.3.3 Zionist Claims to Palestine...................................... 51
2.3.4 McMahon’s Deception:
The Roots of Arab Bitterness..…………….……….. 57
2.3.5 Balfour Declaration (1917)...................................... 59
2.3.6 British Occupation (1917-1948)……………………. 61
2.3.7 White Paper of June 1922...................................... 61
2.3.8 Stance of British Government................................. 62
2.3.9 Zionism and Modern Jewish Ethnic Supremacy…. 63
2.3.10 Zionist Mythology and the Propagation of
Israelese……………………...…………………….. 66
2.3.11 Historical Anti-Semitism vs New Anti-Semitism… 67
2.3.12 Rise of Nazism (1930s)......................................... 68
2.3.13 Proposal of Partition (1937).................................. 69
2.3.14 Plan of Partition (UN GA Resolution 181) (1947). 70
2.3.15 Seismic Global Changes in the Balance of Power 71
2.4 The Palestine Question: A Hundred Years of Struggle....... 72
2.5 The Palestine Question: Causes of Exacerbation............... 74
v
2.5.1 Israeli Occupation of the Remnant of
Palestine (1967)……………………………………… 75
2.5.2 Apartheid Politics.................................................... 76
2.5.3 Israelispeak and Israeli Media................................ 82
2.5.4 Israeli Violations of International Norms of
Conduct................................................................... 83
2.5.5 Politics of Expansion and Dispossession................ 83
2.5.6 Dictatorships of the Arab World and
Anglo-American Stance…………………………….. 86
2.5.7 Weak Official Palestinian Stance............................ 88
2.5.8 PLO and the Change of Strategy………………… 90
2.5.9 Arab Inexperience of the Power of Logos and
Pitfalls of Discourse……………………………......... 91
2.5.10 Injustice vs Intifadas.............................................. 94
2.6 The Palestine Question: Is There a Way Out?.......... 95
CHAPTER 3: REVIEW OF LITERATURE…………………. 97

3.1 Overview…………………………………….…………………. 97
3.2 Language beyond Communication: An Overview…………. 100
3.2.1 Language: Multifunctionality and Centrality………. 104
3.2.2 Language: Metafunctions…….…………..…………. 109
3.2.3 Language: Thought and Perception……………...... 113
3.2.4 Language: Construction of Reality and our
Conceptualisation of it………………………………. 116
3.2.5 Language: Construction of Diversion and
Deadening……………………………………………. 119
3.2.6 Language: Positioning and Representation………. 123
3.2.7 Language: Imperialism and “Othering”………..…... 124
3.2.8 Language: Ideology and Power……………………. 127
3.2.9 Language and society: Dialectical Relationship...... 133
3.2.10 Names of Wars and Political Implications………. 134
3.3 Discourse and Discourse Analysis...................................... 138
3.4 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)....................................... 148
3.4.1Significance, Scope and Application of CDA........... 153
3.4.2 Differences and Similarities, Aim and Objectives… 158
3.5 Eirenic Proposals to end Israeli Occupation: An Overview. 166
3.5.1 One-State Solution.................................................. 167
3.5.2 Two-State Solution.................................................. 168
3.5.3 Palestinian Stance.................................................. 168
3.5.4 PLO and the One-State Solution............................ 169
3.5.5 PLO and the Two-State Solution............................ 169
3.5.6 Camp David Peace Proposal (July 2000)............... 170
3.5.7 Saudi/Arab Peace Initiative (March 2002)………… 174
3.5.8 Decay of the Two-State Solution............................ 175
vi
3.5.9 The Improbable Solution: State of Jerusalem......... 176
3.6 Review of Related Research Works.......................... 178
CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY………………….…………. 184

4.1 Overview……………………………………………………….. 184
4.2 Theoretical/Analytical Framework………………………… 185
4.3 ResearchDesign................................................................. 195
4.4 Data Collection……..………………………………………… 198
4.5 Data Analysis…………………………………….................... 199
4.6 Historical Construction of the Palestine Question............... 208
CHAPTER 5: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS………… 210

5.1 Overview……………………….………................................. 210
5.1.1 Discourse and Political Entities............................... 212
5.1.2 Research Questions and Assumptions……………. 214
5.2 RQ I: UN Resolutions & ‘Peace’ Discourse, and Right of
the Palestinian People to Self-Determination (Q. of
Occupation/Territory/Sovereignty)………….……... 216
5.2.1UN Resolution 242 and Right of the Palestinian
People to Self-Determination……………………..… 217
5.2.2 UN Resolution 338 and Right of the Palestinian
People to Self-Determination………………............ 229
5.2.3 UN Resolution 3236 and Right of the Palestinian
People to Self-Determination……………............... 230
5.2.4 UN Resolutions 1397and1515, & Right of the
Palestinian People to Self-Determination………… 232
5.2.5 UN Resolution on Israeli Wall, and Right of the
Palestinian People to Self-Determination………… 236
5.2.6 Oslo Accords (I) (1993) & the Q. of Palestinian
Self-Determination................................................... 238
5.2.7 Oslo Accords (II) (1995) & the Q. of Palestinian
Self-Determination………..…………………………. 251
5.2.8 George W. Bush, Speech at the Aqaba (Jordan)
Summit, and the ‘Palestinian State’........................ 253
5.2.9 Summary of Research Question I:
Findings Related to the Right of the Palestinian
People to Self-Determination.................................. 260
5.3 RQ II: UN Resolutions & ‘Peace’ Discourse, and the
Palestinian Refugees Right of Return (Question of the
Right of Return)……………………………………………….. 264
5.3.1 UN Resolutions 212, 194, 302, and the Q. of the
Right of Return........................................................ 265
5.3.2 UN Res. 242 & the Q. of the Right of Return &
Self-Determination…………………………………. 268
vii
5.3.3 UN Resolution 338 and the Question of the Right of
Return............................................................................... 269
5.3.4 Oslo Accords (I) and the Question of the
Right of Return………………………………......…... 270
5.3.5 Summary of Research Question II:
Findings Related to the Right of Return................. 273
5.4 Change of PLO Discourse and Onset of the Slippery
Slope: Decline of the PLO in the Mid-1980s....................... 277
5.4.1The Khartoum Conference & Onset of the Arab
Slippery Slope……………………………………..….. 279
5.4.2 PLO’s Ten Point Programme 1974 & Onset of the
Slippery Slope………………………………………... 280
5.4.3 Peace Process: War against the Palestinians by
Other Means………………………………………….. 282
CHAPTER 6: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION…………… 284

6.1Overview…………….……...…………………………….......... 284
6.2 Summary and Findings……………………….……………… 286
6.3 The Palestine Question: Past, Present, Future……………. 298
6.4 Recommendations and Suggestions for Further
Research……………………………….................................. 307
BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………….…………………............ 308
APPENDICES………………………..………….………………… 322
viii
LIST OF TABLES
Table No. Page

No.
2.1 Jail sentencing in Israel 79

4.1 Argumentation/discourse strategies 191
4.2 Specific linguistic means 193
4.3 Corpus of Study (Documents Analysied in Chapter 5) 179
4.4 Argumentative structure of Tekoah’s Address 201
4.5 Main nominations and predications in Tekoah’s Address 202
4.6 Corpus of Study (Documents Analysed in Chapter 2) 209
5.1 CDA of UN Resolution 242 220
5.7 CDA of UN Resolutions 1397 and 1515 233
5.10 CDA of Oslo Accords (I) (Q. of Self-Determination) 240
5.11 CDA of Oslo Accords (I) (Q. of Self Determination) 241
5.18 CDA of the Interim Agreement (Oslo II) 252
5.19 Argumentative structure of Bush’s Speech 256
5.20 Main nominations & predications in Bush’s Speech 257
5.21 Summary of Research Question I 262
5.25 CDA of Oslo Accords (I) (Q. of the Right of Return) 271
5.26 CDA of Oslo Accords (I) (Q. of the Right of Return) 273
5.27 Summary of Research Question II 274
6.1 Discourse Strategies and Linguistic Means 288
characterising UN Discourse on the Palestine Question
6.2 Discourse Strategies and Linguistic Means 289
characterising Peace Discourse on the Palestine
Question
ix
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure No. Page No.
3.1 Textual analyses 143

4.1 Methodology and Theoretical Framework 186
x
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My interest in this work has not developed out of vacuum. I wanted

to pursue a project of this kind, not out of a desire for personal
promotion and self-aggrandisement or just as a sort of intellectual
luxury or a form of escapism from a bitter reality, but rather out of a
searing pain to contribute to transform such a bitter reality - the
reality caused by occupation and discursive injustice; the reality that
results from the discursive polarisation between image and reality
and hence the perpetuation of domination or such injustice; the
reality that makes the apparent advocacy of ‘peace’ to be nothing
more than a means to sustain war (the status quo); the reality that
has provoked even maidens in quest for freedom in occupied
Palestine to become self-immolators. More specifically, I have been
driven by a sense of responsibility before God first and then fellow
compatriots to help empower - through a critical analysis of the
discourse declared to end this reality - the powerless in this
dystopia. Now, along with this intrinsic drive, much of the inspiration
I received - directly and indirectly - has come from a number of
noble quarters, to whom hereI register my gratitude:
This heartfelt gratitude, first and foremost, go to the One Who says:
“Announce, (O Muhammad) unto My servants that verily I am the
Forgiving, the Merciful”. Indeed to Allah, the Absolute Reality, the
Creator, the Supreme Power, and the Most Compassionate, Lord of
the Universe that I wish to immortalise my words of reverence and
acknowledgment for His countless bounties and heart-touching
Mercy, for without such Soothing Mercy, this book that finds its roots
in my PhD project would have been one of loss and despair.
Enshrined in my heart is also my gratitude to the one whose
presence in my firmament, has - along with the glorious Quran and
noble prophetic precepts - inspired me to pursue knowledge
wherever it is, and in light of such knowledge, combat - in an
objective and balanced manner - injustice and oppression, my
dissertation mentor Dr Subramaniam Govindasamy, along with Prof
Theo van Leeuwen, the External Examiner, whose insights and
counsel together have expanded my mind and made the journey
less thorny.
Aladdin Assaiqeli
Occupied Palestine
xi
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND
A vital ingredient in the rise of almost any éminence grise or many of

those in actual or official positions of power, and the resounding
success or failure of many of those seeking power, language is
“something one cannot afford to neglect” (Amer, 2009: 26). Away
from its being a medium of communication, the centrality of
language to power relations, and indeed to the very essence of
human life and existence – right from the moment of birth to the
throes of death - is again “something one cannot afford to neglect”.
Indeed, beyond its role as a tool for communication and social
interaction, language is used to effect a myriad of other crucial or
more crucial roles.
The way we think, the way we perceive or conceptualise the world,
the way we conceive of reality, the way we rationalise things, form
opinions, and ideologise them, the way we represent and picture
events and realities around us, the way we construct our experience
of the world, the way we enact social relations, the way we build our
meaning potential since childhood, the way we picture social
wrongs, the way we stabilise or even intensify social wrongs, the
way we become members of a certain culture or group or a
discourse type, or construct an identity, the way we take a stroll
down memory lane, the way we conceal, mitigate, legitimate, or
reproduce a certain political event, the way we perpetuate an
ideology, the way we brainwash and get brainwashed for war, the
way we programme and become programmed to kill, the way we
problematise a figure or a people, etc., are all languaged.
In other words, all those ways and many others are all constructed,
carried out, shaped and reshaped by and through the apparatus of
language. They are all constructed through the power of logos (see
Section 1.9), the uniqueness of beyan (see Section 1.9), or the
working of discursive processes (Jaworski and Coupland,
1999).Similarly, the way “consent,” as a form of hegemony is
manufactured, the way we are socialised, produced as “social
subjects” and made to occupy certain “subject positions,” the way
certain implicit or background assumptions or presuppositions (e.g.
“The Soviet threat cost the West dear”) are subtly imposed upon us
as readers and interpreters, the way a certain ideology becomes
“common sense” and thus the accepted norm or practice of a certain
institution, the way a discourse type becomes normal or
1
“naturalized” (i.e. appearing to be devoid of a particular ideology)
and thus commonsensical and thus dominant, the way victim-agent
reversal (e.g. Palestinians and Israelis) takes place, etc. (Fairclough,
2001a) are also all constructed through certain “twisted and sinister”
selections of language.
Thus, beyond communication language is an instrument of wealth,
authority and action; power, dominance and hegemony;
manipulation, mystification and discrimination; inequality, injustice
and domination. In the words of Blakemore (1992: 48), “we need to
view language as a vehicle for social action rather than as a vehicle
for thought”. Hence, it seems that the notion that language is a
means of communication is an incidental function of language given
its many other hegemonic functions. Language, for example,
according to Montgomery, Durant, Fabb, Furniss and Mills (1992), is
an instrument of conceptualising and constructing reality in particular
expedient ways. Austin (1962) sees it as a “form of action;” Titscher,
Meyer, Wodak and Vetter (2000) as a “form of social behavior;”
Fairclough (2001b) as a “mode of action;” and a powerful tool for
leverage according to Misaddi (2007).
Therefore, language-conscious Machiavellians “seeking to control
and influence our ideas in the service of some vested political or
commercial interest” (Cook, 2003: 63) will use or abuse; indeed
butcher language in “subtle ways” to influence and in many cases
mislead the masses.
While this concise account might be a revelation to the unpractised
eye, to the perceptive observer of language and politics or those
cognizant or conscious of the power of logos, and of critical
language awareness, it is not. For them, it is something established
as the authority of language or the role of discourse or discourses in
shaping and reshaping perception and reality is central. For them,
discourses are central in constructing the political event; in
constructing or manufacturing social categories or “relatively
powerless people,” such as “factory workers, criminals and juvenile
delinquents;” in constructing “particular people (‘criminals’,
‘deviants’, teenage mothers’) as targets for social control and […]
the form the control itself will take” (Cameron, Frazer, Harvey,
Rampton and Richardson, 1999: 141-142). For them, the role of
discourses in power relations and the perpetuation of power
asymmetry; in “maintaining and legitimating unequal social
arrangements” (1999: 142) is uncontested. It is uncontested as they
can see the relationship between language and power or meaning
and power or the “interplay of power and knowledge,” to draw on
Michel Foucault (1926-1984), a central figure in this field.
2
A double-edged weapon, language is central to the construction of
political and geopolitical entities, and individual, national and political
or ethnic identities, and the dismantlement of existing ones; it is
central to the hegemonic construction of experience and reality
“along certain lines” or “angles of telling” rather than others
(Montgomery et al., 1992: 76); it is central to power and control, to
social, political, and cultural transformation, or formation, to lies and
vilifications, to the misrepresentation of reality and the distortion of
facts, to protraction and filibuster, to trickery and treachery, to
camouflage and window-dressing, to temporisation and the creation
of “facts on the ground,” to enslavement and subjugation, to the
politicide or dismemberment of existing nations and the formation of
new ones, to cession or secession, to inner emancipation and
political liberation, etc. Hence, according to Jaworski and Coupland
(1999), the global or macro-structures that take place in and shape
the real world are carried through the local or microstructures of
language or discourse.
Such emphasis on the role and significance of language in the
construction or distortion (i.e. hegemonic construction) of a certain
reality and our conceptualisation or perception of it, and of the role it
plays in social struggle and the change or maintenance of power
relations, along with the need to increase consciousness of such
significance as a way to reluct or resist manipulation, constitute one
of the two main objectives of this study.
Hence, for the purposes of this study, I am going to focus - in
relation to the Palestine Question (see Section 1.9) - on language in
its relation to power and the manufacture of ideology and master
narratives and hence control and domination. Accordingly, one of
my prime targets is to increase our consciousness of the role of
language in the exercise of dominance and hegemony and its
centrality to colonialism and the exercise of domination and their
perpetuation on the one hand, and the transformation of the status
quo or emancipation on the other (Fairclough, 2001a).
So more than “naked violence,” language particularly in modern
times plays a role central in enacting and sustaining social control
and power and domination. An act of murder or a protracted conflict
or any other “social wrong” can transpire or be prevented, for
example, through words. Though - as told in the Biblical and Quranic
story - Cain, for instance, is charged with the act of murdering his
brother Abel; it is words that ignited this tragic end, this first incident
of murder in the history of mankind.
Through his provocative words, Abel - in a way - pushed his spurned
brother, Cain, to murder him. This can be better grasped if we are to
imagine Abel using rather sympathetic or emollient words to mitigate
3
the severity of the ordeal wroth Cain was undergoing, following the
rejection of his offering, rather than enraging him further by
representing himself as “righteous” and “God-fearing,” and qualifying
his brother with words such as “evildoer” and as a “habitant of the
Fire” (Quran, 5: 27-30).
Thus, whether on an individual, familial, national or transnational
level, vendetta or rapprochement, warmongering or peace-offering,
acts of construction or acts of distortion, social inclusion or social
exclusion of specific groups, etc. can all be (re)produced - besides
coercion or physical force - by discourse. In this sense, both peace
and violence are discursive (Buttny and Ellis, 2007).
Thus, conceptions of war and visions of peace are discursively
produced. Buttny and Ellis (2007: 141) state - with reference to the
“intractable ethnonational” “Arab-Israeli conflict” as it is called - that
“In the interactional realm, language use is not a mere
epiphenomenon of one’s position in the intractable conflict, but
becomes the central feature in the production and reproduction of
social relations and social structure” and thus the conflict or
occupation in this case. Indeed, as Amer (2009: 26) puts it, “conflicts
and wars begin and end with words. Before guns are fired and
bombs start falling, words commit the first act of war”. Emphasising
the same point, Nelson (2003) observes:
Human conflict begins and ends via talk and text. We

generate, shape, implement, remember and forget violent
behavior between individuals, communities or states
through a specific discourse. It is discourse that prepares
for sacrifice, justifies inhumanity, absolves from guilt, and
demonizes the enemy (449).
Thus - the means to establish every paradigm, discipline and

movement, democracy, autocracy and any other system, etc. -
words underlie almost every rightful or wrongful act and social
practice. They initiate and then either perpetuate or defuse any
culpable act, conflict or foreign occupation. They enact and sustain
power relations. They naturalise and normalise us into accepting
what we thought of - at one time - as bizarre and unacceptable, and
what we thought of as acceptable, as bizarre and unacceptable.
They “make notions which are in fact debatable seem like ‘givens’”
or “questionable ideas or issues more palatable and ‘normal’”
(Thomas, Wareing, Singh, Peccei, Thornborrow and Jones, 2004:
52), or in the words of George Orwell: “make lies sound truthful and
murder respectable (quoted in Sant, 2008: 35), and hence the victim
the aggressor, and the aggressor the victim.
4
In absence of morality or presence of immoralism or
Machiavellianism, words make the vulture appears to be the prey,
and the prey the vulture. In other words, words cause the victimiser
to appear as the victim, and the victim as the heartless victimiser.
They delegitimise the powerless as “violent, confused and
irresponsible” and legitimise the powerful as “peaceable, rational
and flexible” (Amer, 2009: 26). They enslave and subjugate. They
cause personal or political paralysis.
In this context, Bennabi (1998) - though indirectly - limns in a book
that was originally written in French and translated into English and
Arabic, a metaphorical picture of the power of words - in relation to
colonialism - in effecting a general paralysis in a certain system or
network of social relations:
Thus, the activities of colonialism are regularly promoted

in more subtle and complicated ways to such an extent
that it becomes almost totally beyond our ability to
perceive their far-reaching implications. This is because
our mental status and attitudes prevent us from following
the intrigues and discerning the grain-of-sand like means
used by colonialism. In such a situation, it would suffice
that a single grain of sand enters the engine to put it out
of order. In other words, just as a ‘nothing’ would suffice
to paralyze the nervous system of a living being, so too
would a ‘pin sting’ in a sensitive area be sufficient to bring
paralysis into the social relations network of a colonized
country (100).
Apart from the concrete manifestations of colonialism or occupation

and in an indirect attempt to increase our consciousness of the
power of the word - represented here in the slight but fatal grain of
sand or pin sting - Bennabi attempts to draw our attention to the
subtle ways imperial powers use in their domination of the less
powerful. Hence, Bennabi’s (1998):
We are unfortunately unable, due to our mental attitudes

and traditions, to perceive the activities of colonialism
unless they are performed with much noise like that of
guns, tanks or bombers. In contrast, when these activities
are performed by expert artists or rodent-like agents, they
reach beyond our awareness for the only reason that
they make no noise (103).
5
As language is a “key to understanding both colonialism and the
process of becoming emancipated from the strictures of foreign
domination” (Divine, 2008: 3), it thus has the power to create ‘facts’
and inequalities, and the power to address and redress them.
Seeing how colonialism/imperialism/occupation/foreign domination,
social control or global dominance, etc. can be discursively forged or
imperilled, justified and perpetuated or how it begins and ends
through discourse is central to this study. In other words, central to
this treatise is how language can be used or abused to enact,
normalise and sustain domination or “facts on the ground” or “social
wrongs,” and how it can be sought to address and redress them
through the exposition of the discourses or “abusive discursive
practices” that have given rise to them.
Hence, one of the objectives of this treatise is to stress - through
reference to the Palestine Question – “the [Hallidayan] notion of the
multifunctionality of language in texts” (Titscher et al., 2000: 149),
and its centrality to power creation and power perpetuation on the
one hand, and equally its centrality to social change and
emancipation.
Accordingly, the study seeks to increase our consciousness of the
central role discourse plays in altering people’s perceptions; in
manufacturing ideology and consent and domination; (Fairclough,
2001a). It seeks to make us conscious of the “reciprocal influences
of language and social structure;” of the assumption that there is a
dialectical relationship between discourse and reality; that language
leads to power and that power is, inter alia, constructed and
maintained (or abolished) through language (Titscher et al., 2000;
Fairclough, 2001a). It seeks to clarify how influential language or the
linguistic sign is. It aims to let us recognise that language can control
cognition and draw its responses (al Ghathami, 2004), shape and
manage the mind (Van Dijk, 2008), divert or deflect attention,
narcotise or deaden the senses (Misaddi, 2007), “naturalise us into
accepting certain ideas…” (Thomas et al., 2004: 33), “induce the
readers into occupying reading positions,” nudge or inveigle the
target audience into adopting certain views and rejecting certain
others, instil into our subconsciousness certain notions, suggestions,
(background) assumptions and conceptions, and “project positions
and perspectives”. It endeavours to show language, when used by
the powerful, as a “means of domination” and distortion of reality, a
tool employed to sustain and reproduce or perpetuate “hegemonic
relations or unequal relations of power” (Simpson, 1993; Fairclough,
2001a); to enact, conceal, legitimate, or reproduce power and
dominance, hegemony and inequality (Van Dijk, 1993; quoted in
Titscher et al., 2000), and to “represent social realities in
6
determinate ways” (Montgomery et al., 1992: 74), etc. It seeks,
especially in this “age of political spin and soundbites” (O’Halloran,
2003: 1-2) to make us read newspapers, listen to politicians and
defense intellectuals/analysts, watch television and interact with any
semiotic form or media differently - with a pinch of salt - to make us
aware of such assumptions about language usage and language
capabilities or the mind-taming, perception-shaping potentials to
which language can - through such awareness - be put to.
The study endeavours to make us aware of and be “sensitized to the
linguistic practices” that are deployed to maintain “unequal relations
of power”. It seeks to make us conscious of the assumption that the
“angles of telling” (from Simpson, 1993) we adopt through the lexical
and structural selections we make are not the same and that they
are meticulously calculated to serve particular cognitive purposes;
and to induce, through the drug of a certain discourse, the illusion of
optimism, and hence the maintenance of the status quo. It seeks to
sensitise our awareness of the presence of difference in media
coverage of events on the one hand, and the significance of such
difference or differences in reportage or discourse, as each
discourse producer - “depending on their political perspective”
(Montgomery et al., 1992: 76) - is motivated by different agenda, on
the other hand. In other words, the study aims to sensitise our
awareness of the media text or discursive event orchestrated by a
certain discourse producer to frame or represent a certain political
event as not being the same as another news text or discursive
event representing the same political event. Each linguistic
representation, depending on the motive and ideological viewpoint
or affiliation of its producer, has its own ensemble of lexical and
structural items and thus implications, which can, not only be quite
different, but quite significant as well.
Representing, for example, what took place in 1948 in Mandate
Palestine, as “voluntary exodus” or “voluntary transfer” as
maintained by the official Israeli version (Pappe, 2006), or as forced
hijra/“Forced Exile”/“forced relocation”/“forced expulsion”/“forcible
removal”/“forcible displacement” or “mass expulsion” as maintained
by Arab academics (Khalidi, 1992; Masalha, 1992; Saleh, 2003), or
as a crime of “ethnic cleansing,” as revealed by Israeli New
Historians (Morris, 1988; Pappe, 2006), or as (population) transfer
as it was originally conceived or represented by Theodore Herzl
(1895), or “compulsory transfer” as was framed by David Ben-
Gurion (1886-1973), is not the same, though the event being
represented here is the same: the expulsion of “around a million
people” (Pappe, 2006) from their homeland or the homelessness of
7
“85%” (Badil Resource Centre: Facts and Figures) “of the
Palestinians living in the areas that became the state of Israel”.
Thus, here we can see “how the same event can generate two
different stories” and hence reactions with significant political and
ideological implications, or at least “a difference in perspective”
(Thomas et al., 2004: 63). Each discourse producer wants the
masses to react and interpret the event in a particular way; to
experience it and conceptualise reality from their own perspective or
ideological stance. So while the event or people represented is the
same, the way they are being represented is not the same. This is a
fact that brings language at the heart of the political event, not as “a
mere epiphenomenon” or tool of mere reflection or neutral narration
but construction of the event (Montgomery et al., 1992), of the
version deemed expedient of the event.
In the media coverage of events representing the December 17,
2010 popular revolt against the political establishment in Tunisia,
different media outlets/discourse producers framed the event in
quite different terms; each in accordance with their political stance
and ideological affiliations.
Al Arabiya, (14/1/2011), a generally pro-government news channel,
for example, chose to frame Tunisia’s president Ben Ali’s action,
following the Tunisian Intifada against his “23 years iron-fisted rule,”
with discursive qualifications such as ‘quitting’ and ‘leaving,’ as in
the headline: “Ben Ali quits after 23 yrs in power & leaves Tunisia”.
Al Jazeera (15/01/2001), supporter of the mass protesters, on the
other hand, chose to represent the event as ‘ousting,’ as in the
headline: “Tunisian Ben Ali Officially Ousted [...]”.
So, while, Al Jazeera chose predications or representations such as
“swept aside,” “ousted,” “fled the country,” “Ben Ali’s apparent
downfall,” etc., Al Arabiya chose rather euphemistic representations
such as “quit,” “leaves,” and “flying out of Tunis,” which, unlike Al
Jazeera’s unmitigated discursive characterisations, downplays or
mitigates the event, as though Ben Ali has chosen of his own accord
to leave his office, and not been forced (for more examples, see
Chapter 3).
Therefore, how a political event is being discursively constructed
differs from a discourse to another; or it can be stated the other way
round, that the way a certain discursive event is orchestrated makes
the political event, though one and the same, different and
susceptible to various interpretations. That is why the coverage of
one political event - the role of language in making such coverage -
by different news agencies or interested parties cannot be identical
as each reports the event from their own angle and in accordance
with their own political perspective and ideological stance or at least
8
bent; an assumption that makes what is called ‘neutrality’ a rare coin
and what is called ‘fact’ in politics multifactorial and multifaceted and
thus relative.
In short, language plays a significant or determinant role in how we
(tend to) perceive a certain incident or political event and
accordingly or eventually react. Our reactions - whether violent or
peaceful for example - might not result from the political event as
such but rather from the way the event has been discursively
represented. Thus, away from communication in the narrow
traditional sense, language is far more functional (see Chapter 3). It
does not merely or neutrally communicate events but in the process
of communication, it makes (constructs or distorts) the events and
hence our reactions; it creates the version of events expedient to
one’s political or commercial interests and ideological affiliations.
Furthermore, our selection of a certain lexical and structural item, as
a choice among a set of other choices, does not only encode a
certain view of the world and “promote and maintain unequal
relations of power” but also result in or entail a certain positioning
and hence a certain responsibility and accountability; it can also
result in empowerment if this assumption or potential about
language and positioning is unknown to others (Misaddi, 2007). In
other words, what we say reveals our position towards what is being
said, and if a certain discourse participant is being unaware of this
language dimension, then what is said will be a source of
empowerment to the one aware of such potential. The
lexicogrammatical formulae or the “angles of telling” we adopt
towards a particular political event or issue reflect the kind of stance
or ideology and responsibility we have towards that event or issue.
Choosing, for example, to represent a Palestinian girl or young
woman who - as a backlash to the atrocities of Israeli occupation
(often misrepresented as the Arab-Israeli conflict, with the parity this
(mis) representation connotes) - blows herself up among certain
Israelis as a “martyr” or a “suicide bomber,” and her act as a
“terrorist attack” or a “martyrdom operation” in defense of the
defenceless, entails different positioning, (Misaddi, 2007),
“responsibility and blame attribution” (Amer, 2009: 11), and hence
liability. Such nominations or “discursive construction of social
actors,” along with others such as “fedayee” or “freedom fighter” or
“resistance fighter” reveal whether a discourse producer legitimates
or delegitimates (Amer, 2009), incriminates or glorifies such acts,
validates or invalidates them, criticises or deflects criticism,
attributes blame or exonerates. They reveal whether he or she is
being pre-emptive and proactive or defensive and reactive,
apologetic or stigmatising, sympathetic or accusing, condemnatory
9
or celebratory. They reveal whether he or she thinks of such acts as
“war crimes” or heroism, terrorism or self-defence, “weapons of the
weak” and “tools for resisting oppression” (Gavron, 2004) or crimes
against humanity, noble hara kiri and kamikaze acts or criminal and
terrorist acts. They reveal whether he or she considers them as
martyrdom or suicide or “self-immolation” operations. Thus, with or
without being conscious, what one states is bound to position him or
her in a certain position inside the straightjacket of discourse
(Misaddi, 2007).
This makes reality and the adoption of a certain position towards
contentious issues a consequence of discourse, or in the words of
Misaddi (2007: 35), “the construction of reality passes through the
construction of discourse”. This is an assumption that makes
language to be a mighty weapon, a tool constitutive of and at the
helm of domination, as it manufactures or shapes, or twists the
political or discursive event in accordance with the political interests
of the discourse producer.
In Israelispeak (see Section 1.9), it is common to hear the lexical
item “disproportionate” in relation to the use of force, which
manipulates us subtly into considering the use of “hard” power or
force as ‘legitimate’ as long as it is not being ‘disproportionate’. Can
we see the extent to which discourse can eventually normalise and
naturalise us into accepting concepts we once conceived of as
repugnant and dreadful? Can we see how language can be
manipulated to make us view certain events in certain calculated
determinate ways? When - at any point in time during the Israeli
occupation - has Palestinian tyre-burning, “demonstrations and
stone-throwing in support of an independent Palestine” and recently
out of despair, self-immolation operations - as the primary means of
defence - been proportionate anyhow to the Israeli Merkava or the
up-to-date, cutting edge arsenal of the IOF (Israeli Occupation
Forces) – “the heavily-mechanised Israeli army,” “the strongest
military power in the region, with its Apache helicopters, tanks and
bulldozers” (Pappe, 2006: 243)? When has it ever been
proportionate to the Israeli “Military repression,” “armed troops,”
“snipers in civilian clothes” (Smith, 2007: 422), “depleted uranium,
white phosphorous, D.I.M.E. and other nuclear-based illegal
weapons” (Ismail, n.d.)?
To what extent can such sadist employment or abuse of words and
cunning cynicism, diversion and deadening of the senses,
justification of wars and inhumanity, discursive maquillage (see
Section 1.9) and deception – all exercised through the construction
of discourse in ad hoc workshops - go? Can we see/sense the
brutalisation of language, language as a means of brutalisation and
10
language as an object of brutalisation; language as brutalising and
language as being brutalised?
In an age that makes use of the power of soundbites, power in many
cases becomes a product of language. This is an assumption that
makes language, not only a mighty weapon, as noted, but rather the
mightiest weapon, a supreme authority. Thus, not only do we need
to recognise that language is “an authority in itself,” but also accord
to language the authority it deserves – a goal of this study.
This interdisciplinary Critical Discourse Study seeks on the one hand
to sensitise readers towards such assumptions, such concomitance
between discourse and society (Fairclough, 2001a), discourse and
mystification of social events, discourse and manipulation, discourse
and positioning (Misaddi, 2007), discourse and the making (through
construction or distortion) of reality, discourse and (de)legitimation of
a certain event and political actors (Amer, 2009), discourse and the
stabilisation or even intensification of social inequalities and
injustices in society (Wodak and Meyer, 2009), and CDA and
emancipation on the other. Indeed, it is through the apparatus of
language and the critical analysis of language, or the construction
and deconstruction of discourse that power relations can be
maintained or changed (Fairclough, 2001a).
Consequently, this study is driven by the motive to first instil into our
consciousness that discourse is instrumental in enacting and
shaping power relations, that in the arena of international relations,
as concluded by Misaddi (2007: 358), the mightiest of weapons is
that of language “as it belongs to the abstract world and because of
what it does to the psychological being where it tames the mind until
it becomes possible to penetrate its barriers”. Second, the study is
driven by the motive that “the emancipation of man from the
oppression of politics starts with the critical analysis and exposition
of the linguistic manipulations or manoeuvres of politicians” (2007:
358); that what is reported or appears on the surface is only a
modicum of what is unreported, or hidden; that we begin to notice or
‘taste’ such a fact only upon the submission to such a fact: ‘atrophy’
of what is being reported versus ‘hypertrophy’ of what is being
hidden (2007); that if a nation hankers after disclosing the hidden
and thus disengaging herself from the abuse of the powerful, then it
is a prerequisite for such a nation to become conscious of language
power or the discursive event in the hegemonic construction of the
political event, since in Fairclough’s (2001a: 1) words:
“consciousness is the first step towards emancipation”.
Such “sensitized awareness,” such “critical language awareness” - if
optimised among citizens and those we entrust with power - can
make us, rulers and ruled, “more able to resist manipulation” and
11
“domination” (Fairclough, 2001a; Cook, 2003: 122; O’Halloran,
2003: 1). It can help the dominated and manipulated, the oppressed
and less-advantaged, what Fairclough (2001b: 125) calls “the
‘losers’ within particular forms of social life - the poor, the socially
excluded, those subject to oppressive gender or race relations” and
so forth, to resist and fight against the domination or abuse of the
dominant bloc, and the oppression of the political cabal, those
Machiavellians and self-seeking opportunists, those rodent-like
agents.
Against this overview as a background, I foreground this Critical
Discourse Study with its tripartite structure (or three main conceptual
features), which concerns itself, (I) with the reproductive function of
discourse in power relations and the reproduction of domination, (II)
the enlightening and emancipatory role or transforming function of
the critical study of discourse in social change and in empowering
the “victims of discursive injustice” to reluct or resist the status quo,
and (III) the past, present and future of the Palestine Question as
shaped by discourse.
Hence it is in light of this reproductive function of discourse, and that
of the transforming function of CDA - the role CDA plays in policing
and unearthing the textual properties that sustain domination; and
thus sounding the clarion call for change to help eliminate social
inequalities – that the present study on the Palestine Question - a
protracted, century-long and tragic “social wrong” - has been
conducted.
Accordingly, I set out to work recursively on the Palestine Question;
discourse - the means through which domination gets enacted and
then reproduced - and on what Fairclough (1995) called critical
language awareness and the critical study of language - formerly
known as Critical Linguistics (Wodak and Meyer, 2009) and now as
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) - “a resource for people who are
struggling against domination and oppression in its linguistic forms”
(Fairclough, 1995: 1).
It should be noted, however, that though the study is motivated in
particular by the problem created in Palestine out of Zionist
terrorism, its objectives are not restricted to that wrong only but to
any other similar injustice that might have originated from a certain
dominant discourse or is being legitimated and reproduced through
a certain discourse. It is within this context that this study - on the
role of discourse in the history, present, and future of the Palestine
Question - has been undertaken.
12
1.2 DISCOURSE, WORLD AND THIS STUDY
Discourse -the mere fact of speaking, of employing

words…is in itself a force. Discourse is, with respect to
the relation of forces, not merely a surface of inscription,
but something that brings about effects.
(Michel Foucault, 1976; quoted in Clarke, 2005:174)
A “way of behaving and making others behave” (Firth, quoted in

Brown, 2000, 250), language (discourse) as stressed in the previous
section is “something one cannot afford to neglect” (Amer, 2009: 26)
as it permeates (shapes, manipulates, creates, makes, breaks,
regulates, represents, affects) reality, our lives, conceptualisation,
and relationships in respects subtle and serious, far-reaching and
innumerable.
This realisation, this modern awareness of the Hallidayan Firth-
based notion of the “multifunctionality of language in texts” (Titscher
et al., 2000: 149) and its centrality to the essence of “the species
‘social man;’” and his power relations – the awareness of the
centrality of discourse to power relations; of the construction or
distortion of reality and the inception of social structures through
language and vice versa, or of the notion that language is “both
socially constitutive and socially determined” (Fairclough, 1995;
quoted in Titscher et al., 2000: 148); that language is a form of
action (Austin, 1962); that “practices are discursively shaped and
enacted;” that “power is exercised and enacted in discourse”
(Fairclough, 2001a: 61); that discourse plays a central role in the
ever going battle of social struggle; that “social control and power
are exercised with increasing frequency by means of texts […]”
(Titscher et al., 2000: 152-153); that “inequality and injustice are
repeatedly reproduced and legitimized by language” (2000: 164);
and that “domination and oppression” take place in “linguistic forms”
(Fairclough, 1995) – have all given birth to what has come to be
known as the ‘linguistic turn’.
This is the realisation that language is/can be used for purposes
other than those of mere communication. This in turn has given rise
to significant fields of language research such as Critical Discourse
Analysis (CDA) or the more comprehensive designation, Critical
Discourse Studies (CDS) as preferred to be called by Van Dijk
(2009: 62).
Such interrelation of discourse and domination or the nexus
between discourse and society has also provided the theoretical
origin of this critical discourse study. Language as viewed by
Halliday (1978) - and those that take an external or functional
13
perspective of language - is a social or socio-semiotic system. It
does not take place in isolation of a social cultural context.
Language and language structures and use occur, as perceived by
Malinowski, within the context of a culture and that of a situation
(1978). Indeed, language (made up of a lexicon and a grammar) is
itself originally or historically the written or textual product of a
culture.
So, theoretically, what has given impetus to this CDA study is the
realisation of the interrelations of language and society; of language
and power and ideology” (Fairclough 2001a); of the assumption that
“the use of language could lead to a mystification of social events
which systematic analysis could elucidate” (Wodak and Meyer,
2009: 7); of the views, notions and assumptions that language
makes or constitutes things rather than being a mere or neutral
means of labelling things; that the structure of language determines,
as maintained by linguistic relativists, the structure of thought; that
language constructs or distorts reality or realities and vice versa;
“that in modern and contemporary (‘late modern’) society discourse
has taken on a major role in sociocultural reproduction and change”
(Fairclough, 1995: 2); that “Meanings are produced and reproduced
in a dialectic process of negotiation” (Titscher et al., 2000: 145); that
“discourse cannot exist without social meanings, and that there must
be a strong relation between linguistic and social structure” (Kress
and Hodge 1979; cited in Titscher et al., 2000: 145).
So, the study has been prompted from the realisation of the “strong”
or “dialectical relationship” between discourse and society, and the
consciousness that language is and can be employed for purposes
other than those of the telementation of ideas from the mind of one
individual to another, to that of action, power and social control. It
has emerged from a heightened sense of the role of language in
structuring power relations in society (Wodak and Meyer, 2009);
from “Habermas's claim that language is also a medium of
domination and social force […]” (2009: 10); from a post-war
recognition of “the roles and importance of language and
communication in totalitarian regimes and their propaganda” (2009:
17); from a Foucauldian emphasis that discourses “construct
particular people (‘criminals’, ‘deviants’, teenage mothers’) as
targets for social control” (Cameron et al., 1999: 141); from the
consciousness of the role of language in naked, structural and
symbolic violence…
It has developed from the recognition that “language is centrally
involved in power, and struggles for power, and that it is so involved
through its ideological properties” (Fairclough, 2001a: 14); that
“language determines our perception of the world” (Thomas et al.,
14
2004: 39 ); and that thus “language can be used to influence
people’s political and ideological views” (2004: 41); that “different
points of view, or ideologies, are constructed linguistically” (2004:
59); that “new pieces of knowledge (constructed in the form of
certain discourses) function as forms of social control” (Cameron et
al., 1999: 141); that “human existence is by definition, a linguistically
articulated existence” (Saussure 1916; cited in Harris and Taylor,
1989); that “the construction [or distortion] and reflection of social
realities through actions that invoke identity, ideology, belief, and
power” (Young, 2009: 1) occur through discourse; that “social
realities are linguistically/discursively constructed” (2009: 2); that
discourse is “not merely a surface of inscription, but something that
brings about effects” (Foucault 1976; quoted in Clarke, 2005:174). It
has developed from the awakening zeitgeist that language is
responsible for positioning and hence responsibility; that language is
an authority and that “nothing can be perceived outside this
authority” (Misaddi, 2007); that empty signification or the elasticity of
language renders precise interpretation difficult (2007); that
language is far from being that innocent; that “meaning is negotiated
in interaction, rather than being present once-and-for all in our
utterances” (Young, 2009: 2); that insidious discourse can be used
as a “tranquillising drug of gradualism,” indefinite temporisation and
deceptive optimism; and that language is a key to understanding
both colonialism and the process of decolonisation, and such
indefinite temporisation...
It has consequently developed out of a personal conviction that the
way the Palestine Question - a significant question for world peace -
has been discursively constructed “along certain lines” or “angles of
telling” rather than others is what has kept Palestine and the Middle
East in the way it is now; and that the emancipation from “the
strictures of foreign domination” (Divine, 2008: 2) or the “oppression
of politics” (Misaddi, 2007) starts with the critical analysis and
exposition of the linguistic manipulations or manoeuvres of
politicians and the powerful forces.
Hence, as a means, not only for reflecting the world and our
perception of it, but also constructing or distorting it and shaping and
controlling how we are to perceive it, it is not an overstatement to
state that language or more accurately logos or the faculty of beyan
engulfs or creates or permeates or at least mediates - apart from
certain limited number of biological or instinctive acts - every aspect
or act of human existence - from uttering, to thinking, to
understanding, to officiating, to conceiving, to perceiving, to
deceiving, to indoctrinating, to inspiring, to writing, to interpreting, to
analysing, to creating, to enacting, to establishing, to acculturating,
15
to taming, to ordering, to subjecting, to offering, to concealing, to
praising, to condemning, to worshipping, to denying, to promoting, to
making advances, to ‘making love,’ to divorcing, to legitimating, to
incriminating, to exasperating, to exacerbating, to hurting, to bating,
to healing, to supporting, to refuting, to defending, to obscuring, to
mitigating, to foregrounding, to backgrounding, to occupying “subject
positions,” to covering up, to fabricating, to equivocating, to
misleading, to perpetuating the status quo, to persuading, to
dissuading, to qualifying, to disqualifying, to formulating pretexts, to
desensitising, to diverting, to deadening the senses...
This sensitised awareness, realisation or zeitgeist - brought about by
“rapid and radical changes” in methods and media of communication
(Cook, 2003: 5) - though belated, has revolutionised the way we are
to look at discourse and the world, discourse and the actual role we
are consequently to accord to it in the enactment and exercise of
power, and in the delineation and shaping of power relations among
individuals, sovereign states, political entities, and social structures.
The exercise of power and the delineation of power relations
through the manufacture of ideology through discourse or ISAs
(Ideological State Apparatuses) as instruments of hegemony or the
hegemonic construction of reality - though not new - had until
recently been undemonstrated. Critical Theory and recent critical
language studies have revealed that discourse, in modern times,
produces and reproduces control and domination and that social
and political structures are shaped, structured and very much
influenced by the subtleties of language - as opposed to that of the
war machine or coercion. In this connection, Fairclough (1995)
observes:
The role of discourse within the society and culture is

seen as historically variable, and I argue that in modern
and contemporary (‘late modern’) society discourse has
taken on a major role in sociocultural reproduction and
change (2).
In modern times, social change takes place largely as a result of

discourse and what Fairclough (1995: 3) calls the technologization
of discourse, a “calculated intervention to shift discursive practices
as part of the engineering of social change”. In this sense, discourse
is being technologised, i.e. developed to effect certain institutional
and societal change. So discourse “has effects upon social
structures and contributes to the achievement of social continuity or
social change” (Fairclough, 2001a: 30). It “contributes to the
reproduction of social structures” (2001a: 61).
16
Therefore, and as noted, our existence and the way we view it, our
social relations and structures and the way we enact them, and our
inception, maintenance or change of such relations and structures
are all the product of certain “discourse types” or generic structures,
which make up the “order of discourse” - “a particular relatively
stabilized configuration of discourse practices” (Fairclough, 1995: 2)
of an institution.
It should be noted here that order of discourse is a concept adapted
by Fairclough from Foucault “to refer to the ordered set of discursive
practices [discourse types] associated with a particular social
domain or institution (e.g. the lecture, the seminar, counselling, and
informal conversation, in an academic institution), and boundaries
and relationships between them” (Fairclough, 1995: 12). So, “the
‘order of discourse’ of a social domain refers to the totality of
discourse types and the relationships between them in this domain”
(Titscher et al., 2000: 149). For example, “For the social domain
‘school’ this would include the discourse types of the classroom, the
school playground and the staffroom” (2000: 149). So, besides the
“societal order of discourse,” each social domain or institution has its
own “‘local’” order of discourse (“totality of discourse types and the
relationships between them in this domain”); their own conventions;
their own (ordered set of) discursive practices, which “may be
relatively strongly or relatively weakly demarcated” and their own
boundaries, which “may be rigid or permeable” (Fairclough, 1995:
12). In this context, Fairclough (1995; quoted in Titscher et al., 2000:
149) observes:
The investigation of whether the different discourse types

found within one order of discourse, or different orders of
discourse, are strictly separate from one another, or
whether they frequently overlap, may provide the key to
conflicts and power struggle or social and cultural
changes.
Discourses are multifarious and heterogeneous. There are

discourses or discourse types such as tabloidese, legalese,
medicalese, journalese, bureaucratese, computerese, israelese;
“medico-legal discourses,” Zionist (biblically invoked) discourses of
the ‘historical right’ or ‘ancient historic connection’ and the ‘spiritual
connection’ (concerning Palestine), “opinion discourse,”
“argumentative discourse,” “Friedman’s discourse”...
These are “conventional ways of talking that both create and are
created by conventional ways of thinking” (Johnstone, 2002: 3).
These socially constructed ways (Foucault, e.g. 1977) or “linked
17
ways of talking and thinking,” according to Johnstone (2002: 3),
“constitute ideologies (sets of interrelated ideas) and serve to
circulate power in society” (see Chapter 3). “In other words,”
Johnstone further states, ““discourses”” in this sense involve
patterns of belief and habitual action as well as patterns of
language” (2002: 3); leading to what Foucault describes as “regimes
of truth” – “sets of understandings [such as the programmes of
social scientific research of “criminality,” “sexual deviance,” and
“teenage motherhood,” etc.] which legitimate particular social
attitudes and practices” (Cameron et al., 1999: 142) towards newly
constructed types of people “as targets for social control,” hence
acting as means of influence, regulation and social control.
Other discourses include intellectual discourse, “Islamic reformist
and renewalist discourse” (Hassan, 2010: 186), “‘development’
discourse” (Gilbert Rist, 1997; quoted in Hassan, 2010: 191), Israeli
discourse, Orientalist discourse, therapeutic discourse, “television
and radio discourse” (Thomas et al., 2004: 56) or “media discourse”
(Wodak and Meyer, 2009: 3), “expulsion discourse,” academic
discourse, gay discourse, “discourse of justification” (Titscher et al.,
2000: 162), “discourse of violence” (Buttny and Ellis, 2007), Islamist
and secularist discourses…
In the domain of politics, the following are examples of political
discourse types: Zionism, fascism, Nasserism, Thatcherism, Pan-
Arabism, ummatism or supra-nationalism, Marxism, Islamism, Pan-
Islamism, etc. - conventional ways of talking that both create and are
created by conventional ways of thinking”. All these discourse types
affect us in a way or another.
We – peoples and nations, languages and identities, nationalisms
and colonial enclaves for example - are constructed, for instance, by
identity discourses, nationalist identity discourses, national security
discourses, Islamist discourses, secularist discourses, territorialist
discourse, historical discourse, commercial discourse, propagandist
discourse (e.g. in elections), and those of diplomacy and promotion
(Misaddi, 2007). We are affected, manipulated and moulded,
shaped and reshaped by discourses of Anti-Semitism, of English as
a global language, of dominant and non-dominant dialects, of the
notion of a restricted code and elaborated code, of the dominant
bloc and minorities here and there, of sex and sexuality, of male
femaling or sex-changing, of gay pride and gay liberation, of
abortion and the normalisation of homosexuality, of change and
reformation, of ethnicity and identity, of climate change and global
warming, of gendered and racial discourses.
In a similar vein, people are influenced by discourses on
globalisation, on political platforms such as vision 20/20 or Islam
18
Hadari or 1 Malaysia as articulated by successive Malaysian prime
ministers Mahathir, Badawi and Najib, respectively, on the global
credit crisis, on Islam and secularism, on the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ or
the popular revolts in the Arab world, on the intellectual war against
Islam, on the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and the American
occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, on educational polices, on the
effects of secularisation, on the clash of civilisations; on social status
and power, on discourse and domination, on ethnic cleansing and
“the homogeneous territorial nation,” on citizen’s rights, on
“discoursal rights,” on the rights or access to “cultural capital,” on
“access to prestigious sorts of discourse and powerful subject
positions” (Fairclough, 2001a: 53), on “social struggle,” on the Right
of Return of Palestinian refugees, on the rhetoric of peace and the
“discourse of violence,” on religious discourse, on nationalist
discourse, on Zionist discourse, etc.
This wide “range and heterogeneity of discourses” (Clarke,
2005:154) are thus a fact of life dealing with almost every aspect of
our existence. Discourses are diversely constructed (depending on
the ideology behind a certain discourse) and variedly distributed
(through various media or semiotic modes) (Govindasamy and
Khan, 2006). It is obvious that every aspect of life seems to be
governed by a certain discourse or “regime of truth;” an assumption
that shows the role of discourse and discourses “in the course of the
struggle for power,” (Fairclough, 2001a: 78) in the pursuit of
continuity or change of a certain state of affairs, in “enlightenment
and emancipation” or domination and enslavement, in freedom and
democracy or thraldom and autocracy, in equality and justice or
inequality and injustice, in the betterment or otherwise of human
conditions.
It is clear that some discourses are meant to construct a certain
reality, and some to distort, while there are also others that are
meant to construct through distortion. Further, the same discourse
could be viewed by different people differently. Thus, to say that
Palestinians are terrorists, from the Palestinian perspective, this
would be a distortion of reality, while from the Zionist view, this
would be a construction or an imposition of reality. Herzl’s influential
discourse (see Chapter 2) in 1896 – Der Judenstaat (The Jewish
State) - was a milestone in the national construction of Zionist Jews
and simultaneously the national destruction of the Palestinians. So
whether discourse is being used as a means of construction or
distortion is relative to one’s position in a given situation or conflict.
However, the point I want to emphasise here is that in either case,
that of the construction of reality and that of the distortion of reality,
discourse is the means to do that. So discourse can construct a
19
reality, which could be just (construction) or unjust (distortion - what I
called earlier hegemonic construction).
However, regardless of the ideological or hidden drive behind a
discourse or a regime of truth, they are modes of belief and action,
modes of regulation and social control, modes of representation,
and modes of behaviour actuated by language, by “the
pronouncements of expert discourse” to draw on Foucault. They are
tools that contribute to “social continuity or social change”. Hence,
they are used by the powerful, and according to Foucault, those
involved in social scientific research for the constitution of ideologies
or “regimes of truth” and thus the circulation and exercise of power
and the enactment and maintenance of social control.
1.3 CDA, THE PALESTINE QUESTION AND THIS STUDY
A “young science;” an “emerging strand of research in linguistics;” a

“field of language research;” a “critical social science;” a “democratic
resource;” a form of resistance; a “sort of forensic activity;” a “set of
principles;” a “school or paradigm;” “a research enterprise;” a
“research programme;” an “established paradigm in linguistics;” a
“critical perspective, position or attitude;” an “established academic
discipline;” a “movement of critical scholars in the field of discourse
studies” (T.A. van Dijk, personal communication, February 22,
2012); a “constitutive, problem-oriented [and] interdisciplinary”
framework with a “bulk of approaches;” an “analytical framework - a
theory and method - for studying language in its relation to power
and ideology” (Fairclough, 1995: 1); an umbrella term to a number of
“methodological and theoretical approaches” to the analysis of
discourse; a significant field of research that is proliferating and in
the ascendant since the early 1990s, CDA - in all its variants - (see
Chapter 3) plays a transforming role in detecting and exposing
linguistic manipulation, in demystifying social events, in policing and
deconstructing discursive practices, thus revealing “the ways social
and political domination are reproduced by text and talk,” and other
semiotic modes or resources.
So a great resource, CDA is used by researchers and scholars
committed to social equality and justice to uncover ideological work
and political agenda; to show up hidden connections (Fairclough,
2001a), and to make “opaque structures of power relations and
ideologies manifest” (Kendall, 2007: 17); to expose “opaque and
explicit discourse structures and strategies in dominant discourses
responsible for enacting and perpetuating domination and control of
less powerful social groups” (Amer, 2009: 7), and to thus, free the
20
dominated from domination “in its linguistic forms” (Fairclough, 1995:
1). So besides other forms of resistance to either physical or
structural or “symbolic violence,” it is CDA that can sound the clarion
calls for change.
Mastery of constructing and deconstructing discourse is thus the
second step – after consciousness – not only to the domination of a
certain grouping of another, but also to the liberation of a certain
people from the domination of another.
Hence, as CDA is central to “enlightenment and emancipation” or
social change through the policing of “abusive discursive practices,”
we need to recognise its role in elucidating the mystification (Wodak
and Meyer, 2009) that results from the “sinister and twisted” uses of
discursive processes as a result of their “overt denial of the
underlying ideology” (Jaworski and Coupland, 1999: 496) – a goal of
this critical social research.
With its critical orientation, CDA can, as I shall elaborate later, be
used to shed light on the dark side of discourse use or those
“sinister and twisted” workings of discursive processes where
language can be brutalised or manipulated in certain ways to
achieve hidden motives and unspoken agenda. CDA , with its critical
insight into the fine workings of language or the way discourses are
orchestrated, can be used to uncover such manipulation, and thus
prompt changes in discourse; and as such empower those
manipulated to resist being manipulated (Cook, 2003).
It is against this backdrop - this awareness that discourse is central
to exercising power and domination, and CDA to expositing the
“non-trivial” or less evident discourse structures and linguistic means
underlying such domination, along with a personal conviction that
the way the Palestine Question has been discursively constructed
“along certain lines” is what has kept Palestine in the way it is now -
that this study has been undertaken.
Accordingly, the study draws much of its justification from its attempt
to conduct a CDA of the discourse and discursive practices on the
Palestine Question and find the kind of role they play in the status
quo.
So this is a study on the Dome of the Rock: the Holy Land, or the
apparent holy grail of a Palestinian state. It is a study on the
politicide of a nation - a peaceful rustic one - and the birth of another
- a high-tech one; a study on the loss of a nation and the role of
discourse in either effecting (some sort of) irredentism or
perpetuating occupation; in setting things to rights and reinstating
the expellees in their homeland or continuing the sufferings of the
dominated, and obfuscating further their cause.
21
It is thus a Critical Discourse Study on the Palestinian state-to-be in
political discourse; a study on discourses on the proposed
‘establishment’ of Palestinian statehood; a study on the discursive
construction of a Palestinian state or more accurately the re-
construction of historic Palestine, the whole of Palestine “with the
boundaries it had during the British Mandate [... as] an indivisible
territorial unit” (Article 2 of the Palestinian National Charter) and thus
the re-constitution of Palestinians (back) into such Palestine. I say
‘re-’ because Palestine was there before; it was there as a
geography and as a nation, and it was there from time immemorial
(see Chapter 2). Palestine has always been there. So what has
been happening following the 1948 Zionist attempt at the sociocide
and politicide of Palestine as a nation and as a state and then the
systematic “memoricide” of such genocide is a reconstruction of a
state or reconstitution of a nation or a people that have existed for
millennia. Hence is my emphasis on the ‘re’ in ‘re-construction’ or
‘re-constitution’.
It is a study on the origins and evolution of this Question, on the
intellectual or rather mythological roots of the Israeli occupation, on
the formative events leading to the planned “compulsory transfer” or
forced exile of the natives of Palestine (Morris, 1988; Masalha,
1992; Pappe, 2006) and the consequent formation of ‘Israel,’ on the
ongoing causes of exacerbation of this miserable reality in Palestine
(see Chapter 2).
It is a study on the “in-built” and systematic “notion of Zionist
design:” the premeditated 1948 transfer/mass expulsion of the
Palestinians (Morris, 1988; Masalha, 1992; Pappe, 2006), beginning
from its nineteenth-century Herzlian intellectual roots (Schulze,
2008), and the actual operations of cleansing in the 1940s, with the
culmination of this design - “of over a half century of effort, plans and
brute force,” (Masalha, 1992) - in 1948 (see Chapter 2).
It is a study on the (Herzlian) discourse leading ultimately to the
hebraisation and the “green-washing” of Palestine’s original
landscape; and a study on those ensuing Zionist Anglo-American
discourses aimed at not only intensifying the systematic
whitewashing of the original landscape but also at attempting to
obliterate the memoryscape of the uprooted indigenes of such
“scape” or soil.
It is a CDA study on image and reality or aspirations and realities:
aspirations of a people who have been ousted by Zionist terrorism
from their territories, their ancestral villages and rustic homes to
languish in diaspora, and realities of a nation-state that identifies
itself as Jewish and solely for the Jewish (see Chapter 2).
22
It is a study on the aspirations of a people, whose understanding of
peace and offering of concessions mean living together, and on the
realities of a political cabal, whose intransigence, constant creation
of stumbling blocks or “facts on the ground,” and understanding of
‘peace’ means the annihilation of the other (see Chapter 5).
It is a study on the doves’ call for the Palestinians’ Right of Return
and their ingemination of peace, and the hawks’ call for the Israelis’
Law of Return and their perpetuation of “cleansing”. It is a study on
the past diaspora of the Jews or the Jewish Question, present
diaspora of the Palestinians or the Palestine Question, and future
hopes of Arabs, Muslims, and millions of other free citizens of the
world everywhere.
It is a study on uprooted, dispossessed and occupied Palestinians
whose need to find a solution to their dispossession and suffering
makes them ready to make unprecedented concessions and accept
unjust solutions; and a study on the occupying Zionists whose
penchant to temporise and create more obstacles makes them
ready to constantly slight such concessions and reject any solution.
It is a study on the unpaved road to Palestinian statehood; on the
long struggle for Palestinian liberation of territory, and national
independence; on world peace in the face of Zionism; on the
sufferings of the Palestinians, both homeless and occupied under
the heel of Israeli Machtpolitik (see Chapter 2). It is a study on
Palestine; the nation that exists both in law and in fact, but who is
not yet a state (George, 2004). It is a study on the rather awkward
and uncertain future of a State of Palestine and a people who are
almost stateless.
It is a study on calls and prospects for Palestinian self-determination
and Israeli security; on “a secure state of Israel and a viable
Palestinian state” (from Tony Blair- Prime Minister’s Address to the
Nation, March 20, 2003); on survival and self-preservation; on the
old Negro spiritual, “Free at last!”.
It is a study on the centrality of the Palestine Question to peace,
discourse to power relations and CDA to social change and thus the
contribution to peace.
It is a CDA of UN resolutions and ‘peace talks’ on the present and
future of a people whose homeland has long been carved out and
who as a result been eviscerated from such homeland, forced to
lead a peripatetic existence in diaspora under grim conditions
(Morris, 1988; Masalha, 1992; Saleh, 2003; Pappe, 2006; Smith,
2007).
It is a CDA of discourses declared to end such peripateticism or
homelessness; it is a study on perils and possibilities: possibilities of
the reconstruction of Palestine, and thus bringing to an end such
23
homelessness and occupation, and perils of discourses that could
have ulterior political ends, and thus further prolong such
homelessness and protract the status quo (see Chapter 5).
More specifically, this is a CDA attempt at the role, intent and
practicality of those UN resolutions and peace discourses in the
dynamics of the unequal Israel-Palestine conflict, in perpetuating or
putting to an end the morass of Palestine: the continuity of the
Palestinian sufferings, and the continuation of the “Zionist ideology
and praxis” that have caused the past and present encroachments
on the geography and demography of Palestine.
Therefore, and as is the case with CDA, the study examines the
“non-trivial” discourse strategies of such UN and peace discourse,
and the linguistic means through which such strategies are subtly
carried out where it is assumed that linguistic structures and
discourse strategies are constructed in such subtle ways as to
influence perception in determinate ways, induce certain or even
conflicting interpretations, mystify social events and maintain
“unequal relations of power”. Quite often, these subtle structures
and strategies “are not self-evident to the casual reader” and even
discourse participants.
In such attempt to increase consciousness, the study, in particular,
investigates the transitivity selections or the grammatical features of
the clause that make up discourse. It is not just lexical categorisation
through various nominations and predications or choice of
vocabulary that promotes a certain ideology or conceptualisation,
but also syntax or transitivity - the way a text is structured.
Denying a certain people from occupying any subject position or
certain subject positions, for example, while casting or representing
them consistently in powerless object positions can create
consciously or subconsciously in the minds of the target audience a
certain image or view of such people where a certain view of reality
is encoded, conceptualised and constructed or distorted, and certain
truths diluted or camouflaged, and atrocities whitewashed.
Elucidating this requires more than the investigation of lexicalisation.
It requires besides vocabulary a CDA of what is called in Systemic
Functional Grammar (SFG) “transitivity structures”.
The following are examples of the linguistics of (mis) representation
or the kind of whitewash of words or “angles of telling” the study
aims to investigate: when certain Occupied Territories being referred
to simply as “territories that are disputed,” and certain others as
“liberated” or “independent,” and occupation or the Arab struggle
against Israeli occupation – this unequal conflict - as “the Arab-
Israeli conflict,” and Palestine as “Palestinian Territories,” and brutal
use of force as “disproportionate use of force,” state terror as “self-
24
defence,” extremist Israeli terrorists as “extremist elements,” ethnic
cleansing or forced exile or forcible removal as “voluntary exodus,”
“transfer” or “War of Independence,” apartheid walls or segregation
barriers as “security barriers” or “fences” or “acoustic walls,” human
corpses and the incineration of cities as “collateral damage” or
“civilian casualties,” acts of murder as “loss of human life,” Israeli
occupation forces (IOF) as “Israeli security forces” or “IDF” (Israel
Defence Forces), destroyed as “taken out,” the Zionist entity or
occupying force as “Israel” or the “State of Israel,” Zionist colonies
built on confiscated Palestinian land as “settlements” or (the little
Sharonian term) “outposts,” or “existing major Israeli population
centers,” the 1967 Israeli Aggression of 5 June and then occupation
of the remnant of former Palestine as the “Six Day War” with its
biblical intimations, freedom-fighters as “terrorists” or “suicide
bombers” or “Islamic bombers and fanatic Moslems,” “legitimate acts
of revolution and revolt,” as “terrorism” (Victor, 2005: 113),
resistance as “violence” or “terror” and blatant Israeli attacks as
“escalation,” etc.
In addition, while certain lexical and structural selections can
invalidate or promote certain perspectives, others work the other
way round. When the Israeli political cabal decides to build a wall
that rips Palestinian lands and families further apart, they are quite
aware of why they want to call it a “security fence” or a “terror
prevention fence” or an “acoustic wall” rather than a “segregation
barrier” or an “expansionist wall” or “apartheid wall” or a “wall of
disgrace”.
Similarly, choosing, as noted above, to represent a Palestinian who
blows him or herself up among certain Israelis as a “martyr” or
“suicide bomber” or “freedom fighter” or “self-immolator” entails
different types and levels of mitigation, condemnation, legitimation,
positioning and responsibility, and hence a different construction (or
here distortion) of reality.
As can be seen from the above instances or euphemisms or
mitigations or distortions of reality or indeed the brutalisation of
language - taken from the “Zionist mythology” (see Chapter 2) and
the discursive arsenal of the Israeli “angles of telling,” that are aimed
at defending the indefensible - “the selection of one term rather than
another often entails choosing particular modes of conceptualizing
the reality in question” (Montgomery et al., 1992: 73). It entails a
certain positioning and hence the discourse producer’s view of the
event and whether he or she is being liable for it. It entails encoding
certain views of the world or making us ideate the world or a
particular issue or event or philosophy or even a whole people or
society in a particular way.
25
Therefore, this CDA study - and in an attempt to nudge the unaware
of the role discourse plays in making us conceptualise and
experience reality in determinate ways - seeks to examine further
examples of such manipulations or slanted representations that
collectively make up what the American Jewish political scientist
Norman Finkelstein describes as the “Zionist mythology” (2005).
1.4 AIM OF STUDY
As discourse is an instrument of the social construction or distortion

of reality and as Zionist discourse is seldom innocent of political spin
and linguistic manipulation, the study thus seeks to investigate the
discursive practices on the question of Palestine. This would mean a
scrutiny of the discourse strategies and linguistic means used to
represent this reality. It would mean subjecting such representations
– often taken for granted – to patient and critical scrutiny.
More specifically, the study - first out of recognition of the role of
discourse in “enacting and perpetuating domination” and second out
of a personal conviction that the way the Palestine Question has
been discursively constructed “along certain lines” or “angles of
telling” rather than others is what has kept Palestine and the Middle
East in the way it is now, and third out of a heightened sense that
CDA can help in changing the status quo and in emancipating
“victims of discursive injustice” - aims to conduct a CDA of the
discourse (that of UN and that of ‘peace process’) declared to
realise a Palestinian state and bring to a halt “decades of
confrontation and conflict” in the Middle East and see what role this
discourse plays in the status quo.
This effort should result in a sensitised awareness of the gravity or
elasticity of many of the signifiers or terms used to represent or
rather misrepresent this reality, and their crucial roles in the
perpetuation of “power, dominance and inequality”. This increased
consciousness should consequently or eventually result in a change
of the language or linguistics of representation; it should result in a
change of the terms we often repeat without often realising their
insidious role in sustaining the status quo. It should result, for
example, in discarding the abovementioned set of terms or
deceptive misrepresenting angles of telling; it should result in getting
rid of misnomers such as “Nakba” (see Subsection 2.5.9), “the Arab-
Israeli conflict,” “the peace process” (see Subsection 5.4.3), etc., all
are misrepresentations that by virtue of such misrepresentation work
subtly to protract the status quo or the Arab struggle against Israeli
occupation or Zionist hegemony in the region.
26
1.5 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The Palestine Question is a time bomb and has come of

age, whether it will be ignited or defused...only time will
tell.
(Forji Amin George, 2004: 13)
The Palestine problem or rather the problem created in Palestine - a

protracted wrong, “born of design” rather than ‘the circumstances’
(Masalha, 1992; Saleh, 2003; Pappe, 2006) or any other (mis)
representation - has created much sufferings and caused much
death in Palestine, public disaffection and growing exasperation in
the Muslim world, and much perplexity and agitation among certain
Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and indeed many of the free
citizens of the world. It has created, among many, a sense of
disgruntlement towards imperial forces and superpowers - past and
present - as abettors before and after the (1948) Zionist
encroachments that have transformed the heart of Palestine into a
Jewish state; leading to the mass expulsion and politicide of an
existing people, and the formation of a new one on the debris of the
former.
It has engendered - as a backlash to this historical injustice, and
ongoing apartheid practices of the new entity, systematically
denying the uprooted and occupied their right of return and self-
determination - a constant state of strife and insecurity between this
1948-formed “country of immigrants” (the Israelis) and the besieged
and occupied remnants or descendants of what was Palestine (the
Palestinians).
Engulfing also neighbouring countries, this festering condition,
augmented by foreign interventionism in the area and the
succession of oligarchies and dictatorships, has also resulted in
regional violence and instability; making the Palestine Question
throughout the second half of the twentieth century, a question in the
eyes of the international community, the United Nations and the
public. According to Troen (2008):
Provoked by the Arab/Jewish conflict over Palestine,

international commissions, private groups, and an
interested public turned for guidance to scholars and
thinkers from a wide variety of disciplines-from biblical
scholarship, archaeology, theology, and history to various
social sciences (195).
27
The Palestine Question - a century-long multifaceted social problem
born out of Anglo-Zionist interests and still being unresolved - has
also been a major player in the politics of the twenty first century
since its very inception.
Besides a host of other present and past causes, outlined in Chapter
2, , Israeli occupation or the grand Zionist scheme, hatched more
than 100 years ago to create a national homeland for the Jews in
Palestine - this premeditated Herzlian scheme, or well-defined policy
for the immigration and settlement of Zionists in Palestine, beginning
from 1882, and the forced “resettlement” or expulsion of the
indigenous Arabs away from it through the forcible seizure of their
villages and land - constitutes, in a nutshell, the genesis and
impetus for the so-called Arab-Israeli conflict - the Arab struggle
against staggering Zionist domination/Israeli occupation.
Thus, the settler Zionist occupation of Palestine, the “still alive”
“Zionist ideology and praxis,” and the ongoing refugee tragedy
following the Zionist encroachments on their homes and villages in
the 1940s, this homelessness - indelibly seared not only onto the
memories of Palestinians alone, but also onto those who can
hearken to the woes of uprootedness and occupation - is the driving
force behind this torn reality in Palestine, and indeed much of the
instability in the Middle East and the world at large.
Indeed, the 1948 Zionist radical procedures against the “human
geography of Palestine” (Pappe, 2006), resulting in the Palestinian
Holocaust or First Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing (i.e. refugees
of 1948) and exacerbated by the 1967 Zionist/Israeli occupation of
the rest of historic Palestine (and adjacent sovereign territories) and
the resultant Second Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing (i.e.
refugees of 1967) is what - in essence - the problem or the Palestine
Question about. It is what constitutes the genesis, crux and impetus
of the Arab struggle against Israeli occupation or this unequal
Israel/Palestine conflict; it is the pith and core of much of the
turbulence in the Middle East.
So, in essence, the Palestine Question is the question of a people
whom the Zionists have driven out of their homeland and made to
languish in diaspora; the question of a people whom the Zionists
have uprooted and expelled by force of arms and then denied
return; the problem of a “body alien to the region [...] which came
from outside and imposed itself on a land and a people, drove
people away from their land, and replaced them with an immigrant
diaspora from all over the world”; it is the question of a nation that
existed in Palestine from time immemorial before it has been -
through Zionist dominance: discursive and military - subjected to
gradual erosion.
28
Therefore, any attempt at resolution that does not address or
redress sufficiently those issues is believed to be doomed to failure
and to just act to perpetuate this “social wrong” or at best result in a
certain modus vivendi (see Chapter 6) - a temporary arrangement or
a hudnah (truce) for some time, to use a Hamas term.
These issues - heart of the Palestine Question, or indeed “the
essentials of the conflict” to use Pappe’s (2006: 242) terminology -
pose in the face of occupation or Israeli intransigence and arrogance
of power and “American tolerance” of such intransigence major
impediments to reconstructing Mandatory Palestine and thus any
attempt at peaceful coexistence between the two peoples.
And hence, it is not surprising that the apparent attempts of the UN,
the international community, the recent Quartet (the US, the UN, the
EU, and Russia), and others who have seemed to debate proposals
and visions or scenarios for an end to Israeli occupation, have all
been to no avail; leading eventually to the eruption of the first and
later second Palestinian intifadas; those popular Palestinian
uprisings in December 1987 and September 2000, respectively as a
reaction to occupation; the exponential increase in the number of
Jewish Zionist colonies in the 1967 Occupied Territories and the
discrimination enforced there, and most prominently as a reaction
against this lack of genuine international concern, and this Israeli
intransigence.
This in turn has led to a wave of discourses upon this festering
condition the apparent goal of which has been the achievement of
“just, lasting and comprehensive peace”. This has further in turn led
to drastic discursive shifts (in thinking) and crucial changes in the
linguistics of discourse, especially among the weaker side of the
equation.
Accordingly, many new or old-new proposals (see Chapter 3) have
seemed to work towards ending this bitter and long-continued
occupation through establishing a Palestinian state and hence put
an end to the sufferings and homelessness of the Palestinians, but
all have invariably ended with the same dead-end. This is along with
visions and eirenic proposals of prominent intellectuals, which have
also failed, also as a direct result of the ongoing Israeli occupation,
“American tolerance of Israeli intransigence,” and the “still alive”
Zionist ideology and praxis (see chapters 5 and 6).
Now, the Palestine Question - an epoch of Zionist infiltration, and
Palestinian resistance and martyrdom, a history of struggle for
national independence and self-determination, freedom and
salvation... - is not only a cog in a big machine, a question in a world
fraught with unanswered questions, it is the machine; it is the world;
indeed the axis or pivot around which much of world peace and
29
stability revolves. It is the fulcrum of this study, and the cynosure of
Muslims, the international community, the Quartet and other global
forces. It is a main source of the turbulence in the Middle East in
particular, and the world in general.
Therefore, the Palestine Question is a major contributor to Middle-
Eastern instability, and to some degree global ‘terrorism;’ and a
resolution of this Question, therefore, can significantly reduce such
instability and terrorism. Indeed, as one of six specific steps, outlined
as part of a Grand Strategy to reduce terrorism or the ongoing
confrontation between the Muslim world and the United States,
former CIA official and current professor of history at Simon Fraser
University, Graham Fuller (2010), in a highly intriguing book, states:
An early solution to the Palestinian problem must be

found. It is perceived across the Muslim world as the
single most egregious case of foreign imperialism, which
has displaced local people and cast them into desperate
living conditions in refugee camps, imposed second-class
citizenship upon them in Israel, or pushed them into exile
– for more than sixty years. Palestinian suffering has
grown, accompanied by a radicalization that has spread
beyond Palestine. The crisis demands a quick solution,
the general outlines of which are well known to all
parties. The Israeli colonization efforts in Palestinian
territories must end and be reversed (302).
The Palestine Question – a century-long multifaceted social problem

– has, in brief, thus been throughout the second half of the twentieth
century a cause for much violence and bloodshed in the Levant –
and still being unresolved – a major source of grievances and unrest
in the Middle East and the Muslim world, and a main shaper of the
politics of the twenty first century, and perpetuator of the animosities
present between the East and the West or Muslims and the United
States. In the blurb to her 2009 monograph, Anidah Robani, a
Malaysian, states:
In the contemporary world, the Palestinian Issue remains

explosive and unresolved. Its resolution is an urgent
necessity as well as a major international concern. This is
particularly so to all Muslims who view it not merely as a
regional or an Arab problem, but more importantly a
paramount religious issue (blurb, The Palestinian Issue:
A Malaysian perspective: 1957-2003).
30
Indeed, the religious, strategic, and historical position of the land at
stake, coupled with the contemporary reality in this torn land,
appears to function as a safety valve for world peace and stability.
This is captured succinctly by Salloomi (2008):
The Palestinian issue is a global issue where different

interests and principles intersect and some others clash.
It is not just a Middle Eastern or even an Arab issue. Not
only is it the issue of more than a billion Muslims, but of
some of the Christians and the Jews as well. Global
forces such as the U.S., EU, and others compete for a
resolution of the problem that may or may not be just
(215).
Thus, the Palestinian issue is an issue with which – not only

Machiavellians identify for certain interests or strategic agenda, but
also – Muslims worldwide and free citizens everywhere. One does
not have to be a Palestinian to identify with the plight of Palestinians.
Indeed, whether Malaysian or Indonesian, Indian or American,
Japanese or Chinese, aboriginal or Maori, Arab or non-Arab;
believer or atheist, indeed regardless of the nationality or ethnicity,
religion or ideological affiliation, Muslims, and non-Muslims among
the free citizens of the world do identify with the plight of the
Palestinian people and do pray for an end to this domination and
injustice, for an exposé of the distortion of facts and mystification of
social events – a goal to which this work aims to contribute.
1.6 OBJECTIVES OF STUDY
I have maintained that this study has evolved out of the realisation of
the inseparable dialectical relationship between language or rather
discourse and society; out of the recognition of the role of discourse
in social continuity or change, or the reproduction or transformation
of the status quo where discourse use is used to either reproduce or
transform reality. Against such assumption, and in light of what the
study aims to achieve, and the statement of the problem, this
interdisciplinary problem-oriented CDA study has been undertaken
and its two objectives formulated, with the first being theoretical and
the second having or aiming to having practical relevance or
applications as stated below.
Firstly, the study in its theoretical objective seeks – through a CDA
of some Palestine discourse – to demonstrate to readers (leaders,
publics and institutions) the constitutive role discourse yields in
31
forging and sustaining a certain discourse and hence domination
(the reproductive function of language use where the status quo is
being reproduced) on the one hand; and the role CDA plays in
unearthing the means underlying such domination (the transforming
function of language use where social change is induced), thus
empowering the dominated, on the other. So here the objective is to
help increase readers’ consciousness of these functions of
discourse and CDA in reproducing and transforming reality,
respectively.
Secondly, as the study involves an issue central to regional stability,
it is then timely to investigate discourses on the Palestine Question
for they are assumed to be catalysts in perpetuating the status quo.
Hence, the practical objective centres on conducting a CDA of the
Palestinian issue to reveal the nature of the discursive practices on
this Question to detect the intent underlying such discourse and
hence reveal whether such discourse is geared towards achieving
what it articulates. In other words, the objective here is to find,
through a CDA analysis of the linguistics of UN and peace discourse
on the Palestine Question, whether such discourse is bona fide and
practical and accordingly whether it has contributed and if so in what
ways and to what extent to the protracted status quo, and the
abortive attempts of years of negotiations.
To this end, the study examines first UN resolutions, past and
present, on the Palestine problem, and second some discourses of
the ‘peace process’ - started off at Oslo (1993) as “an outgrowth of
the Madrid Conference of 1991” - concerning promises made to the
Palestinians regarding establishing a “viable” Palestinian state.
My interest in this corpus of discourse or set of texts stems from the
assumption that this set of texts is produced by an influential body
and taken as the basis for a process declared to bring peace to a
torn Middle East, and that it is about a people with whom I identify;
an identification that is not only based on nationalist affiliation but
also human. It is this ‘produced by’ or ‘about,’ according to Clarke
(2005), that usually stimulates a discourse analyst, in their quest for
contributing to “the understanding and the solution of serious social
problems, especially those that are caused or exacerbated by public
text and talk, such as various forms of social power abuse
(domination) and their resulting social inequality” (Van Dijk, 2009:
63-64) to conduct a textual analysis of a certain discourse.
The study here seeks through textual analysis to deconstruct those
texts and clarify “the political positioning of discourse participants:”
how impartial and dispositive they are in ending oppression and
occupation; thus, verifying the intent and seriousness of the
signatories involved and the practicality of such resolutions and
32
discourses in achieving what is articulated: a “viable,” “sovereign”
and “independent” Palestinian state or a mere bantustan, a state
planned to take place in the offing or a state planned to take place
mañana, a real bona fide and practical project for peace and
coexistence or only a means to perpetuate the status quo.
1.7 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
In view of and in line with the aim and objectives of study, the
following two overarching major Research Questions (RQs) that
govern my investigation have been correspondingly formulated:
1. How practical and bona fide are UN resolutions and ‘peace

talks’ in ending the status quo - “Israel’s oppression and
occupation” - in realising the Palestinian People Right to Self-
Determination, and thus paving the road to “peace” in the
Middle East?
2. To what extent has such UN and ‘peace’ discourse gone in

implementing the Palestinian Refugees Right of Return or the
reconstitution of the Palestinians - rendered since1948
homeless - as a nation in their historic homeland?
Each of the two Questions is concerned with a Palestinian right; the

first is the Right to Self-Determination and the second the Right of
Return. Both of these rights are essential to the pursuit of some sort
of peace. Palestinian survival, and Israeli security, and hence a
peaceful Middle East are contingent upon the acknowledgement and
realisation of such rights. Any discourse on the Palestine question
that does not tackle comprehensively these issues or essentials of
the conflict is bound to fail. In other words, the issues of occupation
and uprootedness are the questions on whose answers the viability
and foundation stones of such peace depend. Hence, what is the
position of these questions or essential inalienable rights - pivotal to
Palestinian salvation and Israeli security and hence any attempt at
reconstitution and rehabilitation - on the agenda of such UN and
peace discourse?
1.8 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY
The intrinsic interrelation of language and the mind, of language and

society, of man and beyan or human speech and human reason, of
33
language and ideology, of discourse and domination, of language
and thought, of the inseparability of thought and sound or sound and
thought (Saussure, 1916; cited in Harris and Taylor, 1989) (see
Chapter 3), of the “strong relation between linguistic and social
structures” (Kress and Hodge 1979; cited in Titscher et al., 2000:
145) all make language or discourse to be central in relations of
power and thus in either reproducing or changing the status quo.
So, social change or continuity results from changes in discursive
practices. In other words, change or continuity of the status quo
results from changes in discourse, in meaning-making practices.
Changes in discourse in turn lead to change in society.
As CDA, a resource for the oppressed against oppression, is driven
by the impetus to change the status quo, then part of its forensic
task, which, according to Kress (cited in Dellinger, 1995: 5) has an
"overtly political agenda,” is to focus on the negative or hegemonic
aspects of discourse and be “critical” of them. This is in an attempt
to enact positive social change through new and improved changes
in discourse. Hence is the significance of this study, which is CDA-
based.
More specifically, significance of the study lies (1) in its attempt to
make us, rulers and ruled, conscious of domination in its linguistic
forms; and (2) endeavour - through conducting a CDA of UN
resolutions and discourses on the Palestine Question - to bring to
light the intent underlying such discourse and hence revealing
whether such discourse is practical in achieving what it articulates,
and thus contribute to openness, social change and peace.
1.9 DEFINITION OF KEY AND NEWLY MINTED TERMS
Beyan – an Arabic word, translated as ‘speech and articulate

thought’ (Mohd Asad) or ‘speech and Intelligence,’ according to
Abdullah Yusuf Ali (2007), with the Greek word logos, translated as
‘speech,’ ‘word’ or ‘reason’ being the closest English equivalent –
designates “not merely the capacity for articulate discourse but the
[inseparable] rational faculty underlying and informing the spoken
word in all its forms” (Harris and Taylor, 1989: xi).
Critical, as for Fairclough (2001a: 4), is used here “in the special
sense of aiming to show up connections which may be hidden from
people - such as the connections between language, power and
ideology”. Wodak, in an interview (2007) observes that critical
“means not taking things for granted, opening up complexity,
challenging reductionism, dogmatism and dichotomies, being self-
34
reflective in my research, and through these processes, making
opaque structures of power relations and ideologies manifest”.
“Critical,” thus, does not imply the common sense meaning of “being
negative”- rather “skeptical” (17). Reisigl and Wodak (2009: 87-88)
state that critical “should be understood as gaining distance from the
data […], embedding the data in the social context, clarifying the
political positioning of discourse participants, and having a focus on
continuous self-reflection while undertaking research. Moreover, the
application of results is aspired to”.
Discursive maquillage refers to the deception or linguistic makeup

intended to spin or improve one’s image discursively to help
perpetuate the status quo.
Deceptive purveyance of optimism (DPO) is a discourse strategy

used by language-conscious users or discourse technologists. DPO
refers to instances of discourse or manipulative language use where
a (false) sense of optimism is being induced or made to be felt,
despite complex existential crises (see Chapter 5).
Ethnic Cleansing as defined by Petrovic (1994, quoted in Pappe,

2006: 1) is:
[...] a well-defined policy of a particular group of persons

to systematically eliminate another group from a given
territory on the basis of religious, ethnic or national origin.
Such a policy involves violence and is very often
connected with military operations. It is to be achieved by
all possible means, from discrimination to extermination,
and entails violations of human rights and international
humanitarian law... Most ethnic cleansing methods are
grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and
1977 Additional Protocols.
According to the electronic encyclopaedia Wikipedia, as quoted in

Pappe (2006), ethnic cleansing, “at the most general level”:
can be understood as the forced expulsion of an

‘undesirable’ population from a given territory as a result
of religious or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic or
ideological considerations, or a combination of these (4).
It is against such “well-defined policy” “to systematically eliminate

another group from a given territory” - “a crime against humanity” -
35
that I contextualise Palestinian Diaspora and the Palestine Question:
the deliberate collective dispossession”/“mass expulsion”/“forcible
removal”/“forced exile”/“uprootedness” or what happened in
Palestine in the 1940s and particularly1948, and then 1967 and has
always been happening, though more subtly, ever since. Hence, I
call what the Palestinians call the Nakba of 1948, as the Palestinian
Holocaust or the First Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing, and what
they call the Naksa of 1967 as the Second Massive Wave of Ethnic
Cleansing (see chapters 2 and 5). The First Massive Wave of Ethnic
Cleansing refers to the planned ethnocide of 1948, committed by the
then predecessor of the Israel “Defence” Forces (IDF): the Zionist
terrorist gangs against the native people of Palestine. It thus refers
to the expellees of 1948 who constitute more than half of the torn
Palestinian fabric, and who were made by Zionist terrorism to flee
their homes and live ever since in diasporic communities in
neighbouring countries under grim conditions. Accordingly, the term
signifies the refugees of 1948 as distinguished from those the
Zionists/Israelis have made refugees since 1967 (see Chapter 5). So
contrasted with the First Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing, the
Second Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing refers specifically to the
Palestinians rendered refugees as a result of the Israeli Aggression
of 5 June (1967), and called by ‘Israel’ as “Displaced Persons” .
Gazacaust or the latest Palestinian holocaust (as part of this well-

defined Zionist policy) refers to the latest act of ethnic cleansing
committed by ‘Israel’ against the “‘undesirable’ population”. It is the
December 2008- January 2009 Operation Cast Lead, where the use
of white phosphorous and other internationally proscribed weapons
against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip were cast on their
heads.
Historic Palestine - when talking about Palestine nowadays, many

people, tend to mentally conceptualise Palestine as being the
territories incorporating the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the
Gaza Strip (i.e. 22% of the total area of historic Palestine). The term
historic Palestine, used interchangeably with Mandate Palestine, is
used to denote the whole territory of Mandatory Palestine; Palestine
as it was in history. It thus denotes Palestine prior to the (de facto)
creation of the Jewish state or any partition such as that of
Resolution 181 of November 29 1947, or that proposed earlier by
the Palestine Royal (Peel) Commission (July 1937). Therefore,
unlike what the term “Palestine” nowadays may signify given the
colonialist Zionist entity’s politicide of Palestine and its de facto
existence in its place, historic Palestine is Palestine “with the
36
boundaries it had during the British Mandate [... as] an indivisible
territorial unit” (Article 2 of the Palestinian National Charter), not the
22% the Zionists “regretfully” (see Chapter 2) did not manage to
annex at the time of the First Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing (but
which they have been ever since trying to do).
Israelispeak or israelese or Israeli discourse or Zionist discourse -

using the combining form speak and the adjective “Israeli,” - has
been coined to denote (and simultaneously denounce) the “Zionist
whitewash of words” and “Zionist disinformation machinery” - the
sort of deceptive or ambiguous language ‘Israel’ consistently
employs in her (mis) representation and defamation of the
Palestinians, in a manner that positions her "in the semantic patient
role of the ‘victim’” while blaming and demonising the real victim.
The writer opines that such diplo-israelispeak (hasbara) plays, in
fact, a central role in perpetuating inequalities, discrimination, and
hence the status quo.
Linguistic brutalisation or the brutalisation of language refers to

language as a means of brutalisation when employed by language-
conscious Machiavellians, and language as an object of brutalisation
when it is being subjected to achieve nefarious hidden agenda;
language as brutalising and language as being brutalised.
The Palestine Question is in essence the question of a homeland

stolen, and a people downtrodden; the question of a people whom
the Zionists have uprooted from their homeland and made to
languish in diaspora; the question of a people whom the Zionists
have expelled by force of arms and then denied return; the problem
of a “body alien to the region [...] which came from outside and
imposed itself on a land and a people, drove people away from their
land, and replaced them with an immigrant diaspora from all over
the world;” it is the question of a nation that existed in Palestine from
time immemorial before the Zionists have subjected it to systematic
and gradual erosion. Thus, the 1948 Zionist radical procedures
against the “human geography of Palestine,” resulting in the First
Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing (i.e. refugees of 1948); and
exacerbated by the 1967 Zionist/Israeli occupation of the rest of
Palestine and the resultant Second Massive Wave of Ethnic
Cleansing (i.e. refugees of 1967); along with ‘Israel’’s continued
denial of the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees and their
self-determination, constitute the genesis, crux and impetus of the
Palestine Question, and consequently much of the turbulence in the
Middle East and the world at large.
37
1.10 ORGANISATION OF STUDY
The dissertation is organised into six chapters. Chapter 1:

Introduction, presents the conceptual trio or tripartite structure of the
study or its three conceptual features: Discourse, CDA, and the
Palestine Question, thus serving as an orientation and background,
as shown, to the whole study, limning a concise account of the
problem, methodology, aim and objectives, research questions,
significance and implications of the study, and a glossary of
coinages and key and technical terms.
Chapter 2: Background: The Palestine Question, presents
background information about the historical course of the Palestine
Question. It sculpts an account of its complex background, origins
and evolution with an accent on the major formative events leading
to the Zionist settler occupation of Palestine, and the events leading
to such creation. Under succinct headings, the chapter ends with an
exploration of the causes exacerbating the Palestine Question.
Chapter 3: Review of Literature, reviews major works dealing with
the relationship between language and power or the material and
dialectical relationship between discourse and society. Exploring the
ideological use of lexical items, the chapter thus discusses the
multifaceted functions of language beyond traditional
communication, stressing the notion of the “multifunctionality of
language in texts,” language in its relation to power relations and the
construction or distortion of reality and our perception of it, etc. The
chapter also, in emphasising the critical and emancipatory role of
CDA in liberating the powerless from “oppression in its linguistic
forms” reviews the concepts of language, discourse, Discourse
Analysis and CDA. Next, the chapter gives an overview of the
proposals presented to bring to an end the Israeli occupation, and
closes with a review of some related research works.
Chapter 4: Methodology, describes the methodology of the study,
the research methods and CDA approach/variant adopted in the
analysis and conduct of this qualitative textual analysis. It discusses
the theoretical framework, research design, data collection and data
analysis. It lists “the population of relevant texts” to be analysed, and
of the sources of data collection and a sample of analysis. The final
section mentions - as part of the document analysis undertaken in
this study - some of the documents analysed in Chapter 2 as part of
the content of that chapter.
Chapter 5: Data Analysis and Findings, attempts to conduct a CDA
of UN resolutions and discourses of the ‘peace process’ concerning
ending decades of occupation and oppression through the
discursive construction of Palestine. The chapter thus presents a
38
critical analysis of the discourse of UN and that of ‘peace’ on the
Palestine Question. Finally, the chapter looks into the change of
discursive practices in the official Arab and Palestinian discourse,
and the resultant change of stance regarding the Israeli occupation.
Finally, Chapter 6: Summary and Conclusion, presents, following an
overview, a summary of the study and its findings, stressing the
tripartite structure of study: the role of discourse in power relations,
role of CDA in social change, and the Palestine Question,
underscoring some of the main challenges facing the Palestine
Question, and concluding with recommendations and suggestions
for further research.
39
CHAPTER TWO
BACKGROUND:
THE PALESTINE QUESTION
[...] such a painful journey into the past is the only way
forward if we want to create a better future for us all,
Palestinians and Israelis alike.
(Pappe, 2006: preface)
1 OVERVIEW
AS a background to the study and in light of the “still alive” Zionist

ideology that has driven the settler Zionist enterprise since its early
years beginning from the second half of the nineteenth century until
the present day, this chapter, in 6 consecutive sections, historicises
current research and presents background information about the
historical course of the Palestine Question: its origins and evolution
until the forcible creation of the Jewish state in the heart of Palestine
in 1948. The chapter traces the premeditated steps, major
contributing causes, and formative events leading to such creation.
The chapter closes with an exploration of the causes that
exacerbate the century-long unequal conflict, following the realities
created in 1948.
Nineteen forty eight – an annus horribilis, not only to the Middle East
but the civilised world as well; a date etched on the collective
memory of the natives of Palestine, those “reluctant warriors,”
“veterans of creative suffering” - was the year Zionist terrorist gangs:
the Hagana, Stern Gangs, and Irgun had intensified measures
against the people of Palestine; a campaign that resulted in the
sociocide of the Arab indigenous society and the consequent
creation of ‘Israel’ on the débris of their occupied homes and
villages.
This inexorable fact of history - the “forcible removal” (Pappe, 2006),
“uprootedness” (Barakat and Dodd, 1968), “forced exile” (Omran,
1966) of the natives of Palestine - while described by Palestinians
as the ‘Nakba’ or catastrophe, founders of the new state have
framed it as the ‘War of Independence’. However, what was
perpetrated against the demography and geography of Palestine in
1948 was neither a ‘War of Independence’ as propagated by the
agents or founders of ‘Israel’ nor a ‘Nakba’ as inappropriately called
by the affected, but rather a predetermined scheme, a well-defined
40
policy of forced population “transfer” or mass expulsion, a method
known in modern parlance as ethnic cleansing, as the present
homelessness of about “80%” (Finkelstein, 2003) of the Palestinians
attests, and as revealed by researchers such as the Palestinian
academic Nur Masalha (1992), the American political scientist
Norman Finkelstein (2005), and revisionist Israeli New Historians
such as Benny Morris (1988) and Ilan Pappe (2006).
Such a paradigm also suggests as spelled out by Morris (1988), a
“great documenter of the sins of Zionism” that what stops the new
state from eliminating the remaining 20% of Arabs it “regretfully”
failed to “cleanse” in 1948 are “purely temporary and tactical”
reasons (New Left Review 26, March-April 2004).
In light of such a paradigm, and the fact that such ideology is “still
alive” (Morris, 1988; Shash, 1999; Pappe, 2006), the chapter traces
the socio-political factors that facilitated the settler Zionist takeover
of Palestine and thus the set destruction of the indigenous society,
and hence the Palestine problem.
In an attempt to trace the foundation stones for the emergence and
development of this problem or occupation, of the “Zionist nation-
building project” (from Divine, 2008: 5) in Palestine, and the
homelessness and sufferings of the Palestinians; and in order to
provide a historical review of the factors orchestrated to “cleanse”
Palestine for “Jewish habitation” (Pappe, 2006), to make room for
the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish
people,” the chapter posits a number of tools and factors as the
causes behind the genesis and evolution of the Zionist enterprise in
Palestine; measures and macro socio-political factors that had
given since 1948 birth to the Jewish State and made the bulk of the
Palestinians homeless and stateless.
With particular emphasis, the chapter highlights the premeditated
long-standing and centralised well-defined Zionist policy of transfer
(Morris, 1988; Masalha, 1992; Simons, 2004) or ethnic cleansing
(Pappe, 2006) of the native Palestinians carried out systematically
since the 1940s as steps of racial extermination which have virtually
wiped historic Palestine off the map.
So here the chapter examines the premise that those Zionist
encroachments - specifically those of the 1948, which have resulted
in the First Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians, and
the 19-year later occupation of the rest of historic Palestine that
resulted in the Second Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing, along
with the latest 2008/2009 Gazacaust of the besieged Strip or
present-day Auschwitz - have all been, as maintained by the
majority of the myth-debunking Israeli New Historians, “born of
design, not by war” (see also Chapter 6).
41
The chapter does that through highlighting a number of stages and
schemes that Zionist leaders have consciously employed, before,
during and after the creation of the Jewish nation and the politicide
of that of the native Arabs.
Ever since the 1896 visionary Herzlian conception and scheme for
the establishment of a Jewish state (see Subsection 2.3.2) in
Palestine or the Argentine, all throughout the ensuing 52 years of
gestation, which have culminated in 1948 in the birth of the Jewish
or Zionist colonial enclave and onset of the Palestinian Diaspora,
until the present day, those tools, measures and factors were the
shaping forces behind the immigration of Zionists to Palestine and
the expulsion of the Palestinians from it.
Now, I shall provide as orientation a compressed overview of such
diverse factors and shaping forces, underlying the Palestine
Question or creation of the Jewish state and politicide of that of the
Palestinian Arabs (some of those factors are explained in details in
Section 2.3): divine or historical inevitability; advent of Protestantism
in the sixteenth century and the spread of Christian or “non-Jewish
Zionism;” French Revolution in 1789 (see Subsection 2.3.1), and the
ensuing political changes in the systems of governance in Europe;
Zionism and the Darwinian notion of ‘survival of the fittest’ (Saleh,
2003), publication in 1896 of Herzl’s The Jewish State (see
Subsection 2.3.2); founding of the (World) Zionist Organization in
August 1897, with its First Zionist Congress held in the same year;
establishment in 1899 of the Jewish Colonial Trust (JCT) and the
Jewish National Fund (JNF) in 1901as important financial tools for
carrying out the settler Zionist enterprise in Palestine (Pappe, 2006).
Further, the following were also among the factors: decline and
dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1918; disintegration of the
Muslim world as a result of imperialism and later nationalism which
has thenceforth perpetuated the state of disintegration (Saleh,
2003); coalition of the Jew-infiltrated Young Turks and their
deposition of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1842-1918) in
1909 following the Young Turk Revolution in 1908;Young Turks and
Turkishisation or the pulling away, according to Fraser (1995: 3) of
the empire “from what had become a partnership with Arab élites;”
failure of Turkish authorities to stand firmer against “Jewish
immigration and land purchases” as can be inferred from a poem by
the Palestinian poet, Sulayman al-Taji al-Faruqi in 1913 (Sulaiman,
1984: 10-13) (see Section 2.4).
Besides the abovementioned, the following socio-political factors
were also instrumental in bringing about the settler Zionist enterprise
in Palestine: London Imperial Conference (1905-1907) and the
notion of establishing a “buffer state” in the Palestine (Saleh, 2003:
42
521); McMahon’s Deception (Smith, 2007: 67) or the ambiguity of
wording in the 1915-1916 Husayn-McMahon Correspondence over
the inclusion of Palestine as part of Arab independence; (Shash;
1999; Saleh, 2003; Smith, 2007) (see Subsection 2.3.4); Balfour’s
Declaration in 1917 (Saleh, 2003) (see Subsection 2.3.5); direct
British occupation of Palestine (1917-1948) (see Subsection 2.3.6),
with the motive to implement the Zionist project.
The following were also among the factors: “structural weaknesses”
of Palestinian society (Morris, 1988; 1999); “the conscious creation”
of Jewish ‘folklore’ and Hebraisation where “thousands of names
were given to streets, public squares and landscape, with signs in
Hebrew everywhere” (Troen: 2008: 197; Pappe, 2006); foundation
of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1925 which has been “of
immense significance for the revival of Jewish life in Palestine”
(Fraser, 1995: 10); “revival of Hebrew into a living language” (Troen,
2008: 196); “militant Zionism;” Jewish education and the “conscious
instilling of feelings of hatred” against Arabs (Jensen, 1948: 6-8);
acumen and commitment of Zionist leadership versus naivety and
selfishness of Arab leadership (Sulaiman, 1984); foundation of the
Jewish Agency for Palestine in 19291 which acted as a state within a
state (Saleh, 2003); outbreak of World War II in 1939 (see
Subsection 2.3.13), and the ensuing rise of Nazism; “American
Jewish support for Zionism” (Fraser, 1995: 18); and “the penchant
among Yishuv leaders to regard transfer as a legitimate solution to
the “Arab problem”” (New Left Review 26, March-April 2004, in an
interview with Benny Morris) (see Subsection 2.3.12 and passim).
It should also be noted in this overview that of particular relevance to
the events of 1948 was Plan D or Dalet (Shash, 1999; Pappe, 2006)
as it is called in Hebrew. This was the March 10 1948 “fourth and
final version” of a blueprint for "compulsory transfer": the harboured
Zionist “ideological vision of an ethnically cleansed Palestine”
(Pappe, 2006), which according to Pappe would spell out the war
crimes that would have to be committed for such envisioned creation
of a Jewish state in the heart of Palestine to take place.
Many scholars - such as Shash (1999), Saleh (2003), and Pappe
(2006) - are unanimous in their view that the Massacre of Deir
Yasin,2 a manifestation of Plan Dalet, and perpetrated by Zionists in
1
See Appendix C: The Palestine Mandate (1922)
2
Considering this massacre (the execution of 254 unarmed Palestinian men women
and children) a landmark event and a great achievement, Menachem Begin (1913-
1992) - “a fanatical Arab-hater” (Pappe, 2006) who proved to be more so than his guru,
Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940) (Shash, 1999), and who would become a future
Prime Minister but who was at the time of the massacre leader of the Irgun, one of the
Zionist gangs – boasted: “had it not been for Deir Yasin, [had it not been for this
slaughter of innocent people] Israel would not have been created” (Shash, 1999: 110).
43
April 1948 - in which, “according to very Zionist sources, 254 men,
women, and children were slaughtered” - had caused enormous
consternation among the unarmed Palestinians; it instilled through
Zionist terrorism fear and trauma, and thus the impetus among
defenceless Arabs to flee for survival.
Finally, scholars on the Israeli occupation often include the belated,
incommensurate outside Arab and UN intervention to be among the
factors that contributed to the realities of 1948 and the consequent
problem of occupation in Palestine.
While backgrounding the Zionist occupation of Palestine, collectively
those foundation stones, tools and milestones had brought an end to
what was propagated as the ‘Jewish Question,’ and have
concurrently initiated the ‘Palestine Question;’ an indication that
sufferings of the Palestinians had actually begun about 50 years
prior to the “cleansing” in 1948; a historical fact that makes this
“condition of distress” to exceed now a hundred years (see Section
2.4); thus making this Question the longest-running premeditated
incident of large-scale population expulsion in modern history.
Such background is necessary as it traces and contextualises the
issue of interest and its development over decades. Understanding
the background causes and course of the protracted Israeli
occupation of Palestine is significant for understanding the present
logjam in the “peace process” between the two sides. More
importantly, such understanding, I would say, is the sine qua non for
any serious attempt at restitution. Indeed, as Galgano, Arndt and
Hyser (2008: 42) put it, “[...] it is absolutely essential that the
reconstruction and interpretation of past events take place within the
discipline of historical context,” an assumption taken by CDA –
which views discourses as historical – as one of its principles (see
Chapters 3 and 4). In this regard, Smith (2007: v), in his preface to
the Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History with
Documents, observes:
An understanding of the pre- 1948 history of Arab-Zionist

relations reveals the foundations of subsequent Arab and
Israeli attitudes and suggests how crises can be
evaluated by partisans on both sides with reference to
events that extend back to World War I and earlier.
Therefore, history in this document study is central to the grasp of

the most intractable contemporary form of colonisation. Or as Clarke
(2005: 264) puts it, “many qualitative research projects have
historical dimensions that should be taken into explicit account to
make better sense of a contemporary situation of interest”.
44
2.2 THE PALESTINE QUESTION: ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION
The settler Zionist enterprise in Palestine had taken years to

develop before the Zionist entity was created. In the words of Ben-
Gurion’s official biographer, “‘The Zionist vision could not be fulfilled
in one fell swoop,’ ‘especially the transformation of Palestine into a
Jewish state…’” (Finkelstein, 2003: xv).
Therefore, the origins and evolution of the Zionist/Israeli occupation
of Palestine, initiated, amongst others, by the calls for national
construction of the Jews, following the waves of “nationalism and
racialism” in Europe, and their aspirations for the establishment of
an “independent kingdom in the Holy Land as it was before Christ”
are as noted in the Overview deep-rooted and long-standing. The
origins and evolution were also prompted by the freedom the Jews
attained in many parts of Europe after the French Revolution (Amin,
1994), and their “loss of the power of assimilation” leading thus to
the waves of Anti-Semitism and the resultant Jewish problem (see
Subsection 2.3.9). Besides these coincidental propelling forces,
many of the factors that led to the Zionist enterprise in Palestine
which in turn led to increasing “Jewish infiltration into Palestine” and
consequently occupation, and much of the ensuing turbulence and
anarchy engulfing the entire Middle East and much of the world
were actually pre-planned and premeditated.
Premeditated and embedded in history, many of those factors began
to develop prior to the turn of the nineteenth century as adumbrated
in the Overview. While some of those factors, however, might be
dated back to the first half of the nineteenth century, the foundation
stones or actual genesis would be dated back to the beginning of
the second half of the nineteenth century, and thus prior to Herzl’s
1896 publication: “The Jewish State”.
Thus, “The beginnings of the Jewish renaissance,” as stated by
Louis Lipsky, “preceded the appearance of “The Jewish State” by
several decades (Herzl, 1896/1946/1988: 13). “With the advent of
Herzl, however,” Lipsky continues, “Zionism was no more a matter
of domestic concern only. It was no longer an internal Jewish
problem only [...]. The problem of Jewish exile now occupied a place
on the agenda of international affairs” (14); an assumption that
made Theodore Herzl (1860-1904) - writer of the 1896 political
pamphlet, “The Jewish State,” and Founding President of (World)
Zionist Organisation (1897-1904), and founder or father of the
Zionist National Movement and thus in effect the ‘State of Israel’ - to
write towards the end of the second half of the nineteenth century
(1897) in his diary, following the First Zionist Congress: “At Basle I
founded the Jewish State”.
45
Those fin de siècle origins or developments of the Zionist enterprise
in Palestine including Herzl’s apocalyptic vision and proposed
“scheme” or “well-defined policy” would not have been possible,
however, had Great Britain’s interests not been intersecting with
Zionism and its aspirations; for the actual momentum of aliyoth or
influxes of Zionist immigration to Palestine had - only under the
aegis of the British Government - actually begun to mushroom and
threaten the extermination of the native population (Sulaiman, 1984;
Saleh, 2001; 2003).
As noted, the Jewish thought to inhabit Palestine was entertained
long before Herzl’s Zionist National Movement in the l890s, which
began to gain increasing momentum under the British occupation of
Palestine (1917-1948). In this regard, Isseroff observes (2002-
2003):
Herzl did not invent either practical or 'political' Zionism.

Practical Zionism, the settling of the land for purposes of
rebuilding a Jewish community in Palestine, had been
practiced by the Bilu and other groups before Herzl.
Political Zionism, the attempt to secure a "charter" for a
Jewish state from Turkey, Egypt or another country, had
been around for hundreds of years. It was the program of
the false Messiah Shabetai Tzvi in the seventeenth
century. In 1839, Sir Moses Montefiore [a British Jew]
had petitioned the Khedive of Egypt for a Jewish
homeland in Palestine.
Thus, according to Sulaiman (1984), onset of the Zionist project in

Palestine goes as back as 1839:
Any claim that the Zionist threat to Palestine was

generated all of a sudden by the Balfour Declaration in
1917 would be evading a number of important facts and
events preceding the issuing of that declaration. As a
starting point one may mention that, from the year 1839
onwards, important changes in the situation of the Jews
in the Middle East were beginning to occur. On 3
November of that year, the Ottoman Sultan ‘Abd al-Majid
(1839-1861) issued an important decree [...], assuring
equal rights and security to the life and property of all
subjects of the Ottoman Empire [...]. From then on, the
Sultan made official the appointment of a Chief Rabi, who
was chosen by the Jewish community; some Jews were
appointed to government posts; a number of Jewish
46
schools were founded, and government schools, too,
were opened to Jewish students (1).
Sulaiman (1984: 1) continues that “Several years later, the Jewish

colonization of Palestine began to develop, when, in 1855, an estate
near Jaffa was bought by Sir Moss [sic] Montefiore (1784-1885),
scion of an old Italian-Jewish family”.
It should be stressed again, however, that though the colonial or
settler project began sometime in the nineteenth century, actual
realisation of the Zionist settler enterprise in Palestine began to take
actual shape and mushroom only under the involvement of Whitehall
when in 1917 Palestine came under direct military occupation by the
sceptred isle. Since then, implementation or the official initiation of
practical premeditated Herzlian steps towards the Zionist transfer or
expulsion “of the poor population across the border;” this act of
“ethnic cleansing” or “forcible removal of the indigenous” Arab
population of Palestine (see Section 2.3), and its replacement with
that of the then incipient growth of the adventitious Jewish
population had virtually begun. This process had presaged
Palestinian Diaspora and thus the Palestine Question and
homelessness for in 1948, a date that has been deeply etched on
the memory of the Palestinians; this process had ‘inevitably’ ended
up in the establishment of ‘Israel’ - “a country of immigrants” - and
the homelessness of the Palestinians, the problem commonly known
as the Refugee Problem.
Indeed, premeditation, which initiated the Zionist threat and later the
occupation of Palestine, did involve, besides Zionist attempts at
land-selling bargains and land purchases through bribery and other
nefarious means from Arab landowners and Ottoman officials, the
notion of population transfer (Masalha, 1992; Simons, 2004), a
crime identified in modern parlance as a method of ethnic cleansing.
Thus, defending the indefensible, this is a euphemism for mass
expulsion (Morris, 1988; Masalha, 1992; Simons, 2004) or the
settlement of Jews and resettlement of Arabs, as Leo Motzkin, an
early Zionist thinker put it in 1917, as quoted in Pappe (2006):
Our thought is that the colonization of Palestine has to go

in two directions: Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel and
the resettlement of the Arabs of Eretz Israel in areas
outside the country. The transfer of so many Arabs may
seem at first unacceptable economically, but is
nonetheless practical. It does not require too much
money to resettle a Palestinian village on another land (7-
8).
47
Clearly, since the resettlement (“forced relocation,” or just “ethnic
cleansing” as it would be called today) of “a Palestinian village on
another land” does not – in Zionist thinking – require much money,
Motzkin was thinking of ‘cleansing,’ as mass expulsion to
homogenise the population was not viewed to be costly. Thus,
“t(T)hrough settlement the Zionist movement aimed - in Ben-
Gurion’s words,” observes Finkelstein (2003: xiii) “‘to establish a
great Jewish fact in this country’ that was irreversible (emphasis in
original),” a fact that would obviously be at the expense of the
defenceless native ‘Red Indians:’ the Palestinians.
Zionist premeditation on schemes advocating “compulsory
transfer”/“ethnic cleansing,” however, dates, as suggested, many
years prior to Motzkin’s proposal. The genesis of the notion of
(population) transfer - a crime, as noted, called in modern parlance,
“ethnic cleansing” - finds its roots in the year 1895 (Shash, 1999),
two years prior to the First Zionist Congress.
The brainchild of Herzl, in that year, i.e. 1895, Theodor Herzl,
founder of the (World) Zionist Organization (1897), wrote in his
diary, as mentioned by Shash (1999: 110-111) in Arabic, and Pappe
(2006: 250) in English:
We shall endeavour to expel the poor population across

the border unnoticed, procuring employment for it in the
transit countries, but denying it any employment in our
country.
It is clear then that ‘cleansing’ rather than at least coexistence or any

other modus vivendi was the harboured and preferred Zionist way to
do it right from the start!
2.3 THE PALESTINE QUESTION: FORMATIVE EVENTS
[...] and a new state, of a one-off or bizarre kind, was

established. Its population at the time did not exceed
716,000 of Jews and 156,000 of Palestinians. However, it
has opened its gates to Jewish immigrants from all over
the world. It had no borders save those of the Partition
Resolution, which the embryo state had accepted, then in
its wars with Arabs, vastly exceeded them; a state or a
motley, which, due to the influx of different ethnic groups
[immigrant diaspora], has become a mosaic: eastern
Jews (Sephardim), Western Jews (Ashkenazim), coming
from eastern, western and central Europe, from the
48
United States, Yemen, Iraq, Morocco, etc.; all with
different historical, linguistic and social backgrounds; a
state whose survival, amongst Arab enmity is dependent
on foreign complicity and an army that is made up of
former terrorist gangs ; a state whose institutions are run
by figures who were centrally involved in the activities of
those Zionist gangs.
(Shash, 1999: 13)
As can be gathered from the abovementioned account,

contemporary homelessness of the Palestinians was not a bolt from
the blue or a non sequitur, but rather the foregone conclusion of
Zionist vision, British involvement, long-standing enterprise in
Palestine, and years of plotting and machination. Indeed, it was not
the result of a fluke or an accidental ‘big bang’. It was “calculated
and intentionally executed”.
However, this vision, enterprise and plotting would not have been
possible - as noted in the previous two sections and as I shall further
elaborate in this section -without the uncanny concomitance of a
number of portentous events on the one hand, and the conscious
British aid on the other; historical facts that have contributed to this
longest-running unequal conflict in modern history, ending up in the
homelessness of the Palestinians and the establishment of ‘Israel,’ a
state whose every “village was,” according to Moshe Dayan (1915-
1981) - one of its former army commanders and defence ministers -
“built on its Palestinian counterpart” (Saleh, 2001: 46).
Based on the factors noted in the compressed overview and based
on my readings, and de- and re-contextualisation, the following
fifteen subtitles/ subsections, presented largely in a chronological
order, constitute the macro formative events and factors, the
milestones behind the creation of ‘Israel,’ and the ensuing
Palestinian homelessness and Zionist occupation: French
Revolution (1789); Publication of “The Jewish State” (1896); Zionist
Claims to Palestine; “McMahon’s Deception: The Roots of Arab
Bitterness;” Balfour Declaration (1917); British occupation (1917-
1948)/the Palestine Mandate (1922); White Paper of June
1922/Churchill White Paper; Stance of British Government; Zionist
Mythology and the propagation of Israelese; Historical Anti-Semitism
vs New Anti-Semitism; Rise of Nazism (1930s); Zionism or Jewish
Ethnic Supremacy; Proposal of Partition (1937); Plan of Partition
(UN GA Resolution 181) (1947); and finally Seismic Global Changes
in the Balance of Power (1914-1945). A brief discussion of those
events and factors is provided below:
49
2.3.1 French Revolution (1789)
Of some prominence among such macro socio-political factors and

formative events was the eruption of the French Revolution in 1789.
Though indirect, this factor played a role in the emergence of Jewish
nationalism, Zionism and eventually the occupation of Palestine and
the creation of the Jewish state in 1948. With its emphasis or call for
the Enlightenment or Age of Reason, and its constructs or tripartite
motto: “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (Saleh, 2003: 168)- which
liberated Jews from life of the ghetto but which at the same time
threatened, according to many of the religious leaders of Judaism,
the self-imposed exclusion of the Jews to maintain their Jewishness-
the Revolution, beginning from the second half of the nineteenth
century, led to calls of Jewish nationalism (Amin, 1994).
These calls were also inspired by the waves of “nationalism and
racialism” (Fraser, 1995) or the nation-state, “the homogeneous
territorial nation” (Hobsbawm, quoted in Finkelstein, 2003) that has
been on the rampage since “the late 19th Century” (Saleh, 2003:
521). Such developments in Western Europe and the consequent
changes in the situation of the Jews of Western Europe led
eventually to the emergence of Zionism or the Zionist movement in
Western Europe, and the consequential Zionist enterprise in
Palestine. So the Zionist enterprise was paradoxically “a reaction to
this liberation of Jews and their equality and integration, and not
Anti-Semitism, as generally held” (Amin, 1994: 149) or misheld by
many as the cause behind the emergence of Zionism.
2.3.2 Publication of “The Jewish State” (1896)
A landmark event and a seminal work of discourse that provided the

intellectual basis and the well-defined policy for the foundation of the
‘State of Israel,’ Herzl’s startling publication of The Jewish State in
1896 was so instrumental in galvanising Zionists into political action.
“As one of a series of books, variations on the same theme,
composed by the same author,” and preceded by “The New Ghetto”
(1894), and “Address to the Rothschilds,” and proceeded by
“Altneuland” or “The Old New Land” (1902) and “Diaries,” Der
Judenstaat or The Jewish State (1896), was Theodore Herzl’s third
work in which he proposed a “modern solution for the Jewish
question” and explained his vision of and “scheme” for a Jewish
state (Herzl, 1896/1946/1988).
A political document, The Jewish State was a propelling force that
conceptualised the Jewish question and made it an international
50
problem, mobilised the Zionist movement and some contemporary
imperial powers, started the settler Zionist process of territorial
occupation, eventually culminating in the creation of this Jewish
state. Thus, not only did this publication liberate the spirits of Jews
from the ghettos, but also launch Zionism on its course, eventually
establishing a Jewish state.
So instrumental in carrying out the Zionist enterprise in Palestine
and the ultimate creation of the ‘State of Israel’ 44 years after the
death of Herzl, The Jewish State was, according to Lipsky (1988),
“one of the chapters in the story” of Herzl “to achieve in eight years
[i.e. 1896 until his death in 1904] what his people had not been able
to achieve in two thousand years” (Herzl, 1896/1946/1988: 20).
2.3.3 Zionist Claims to Palestine
In the words of Gavron (2004: 17), “The Israeli-Palestinian issue has

been correctly described as complicated, but the basic problem is
simple: Two peoples lay claim to the same piece of real estate”. This
is the problem now but this is not how it began where might
suppressed right, and where Palestine was just one of a number of
options that the Zionist movement debated.
Prior to the onset of the Zionist settler occupation of Palestine
towards the turn of the nineteenth century, Palestine was a country
almost fully inhabited by Palestinian Arabs. With the onset of the
Zionist enterprise in Palestine, however, the problem began as the
indigenous Arabs were gradually encroached upon and eventually
uprooted by the immigrant settler Zionists whose historical and
spiritual claims to Palestine were recognised by the imperial Powers
of the day.
In light of such transformations in the demography or “human
geography” of Palestine, occasioned, inter alia, by those Zionist
claims, it is necessary that such israelese or territorial “claims” be
examined as such claims were, whether valid or invalid, crucial to
“the creation of Jewish statehood” and the concurrent homelessness
of the Palestinians. According to Troen, a professor of Israel Studies
(2008):
In essence, the widely held assumption - found
throughout the literature of the social sciences and
humanities - that Jews had a deep and vital historical
connection to the land was essential to asserting the right
to resettle in it (195).
51
Part of a series of ongoing discursive events and an early factor in
Zionist territorial occupation of Palestine, those israelese or claims
about the historical and spiritual connection with Palestine, still being
employed today by Israelis to legitimate or discursively perpetuate
their settlement and occupation of Palestine, are according to
Newton (1946; quoted in Jensen, 1948: 1), “none other than an
ancient imposture”. Indeed, according to Article 20 of the Palestinian
National Charter (PNC) (1968):
The Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate [British

occupation (1917-1948)], and everything that has been
based on them, are deemed null and void. Claims of
historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are
incompatible with the facts of history and the conception
of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion,
is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute
a single nation with an identity of their own; they are
citizens of the states to which they belong.
Further, besides their national Zionist enterprise that resulted largely

from their lack of assimilation in other races following the liberty they
gained in Western Europe after the French Revolution (Amin, 1994),
Zionist Jews’ interest in Palestine was kindled by certain hidden,
investment-driven motives (similar to those that made the Argentine
– where there were many Zionist investments - also at the time an
option for Zionism and its national Zionist enterprise) (Rasheed,
(1998)). One such motive was the desire to “acquire complete
control and outright ownership of the proven Five Trillion Dollar [...]
chemical and mineral wealth of the Dead Sea” (Jensen, 1948: 5).
This was a motive despite Troen’s (2008: 204) contention that the
Zionist occupation of Palestine “was not a consequence of
industrialization and financial interests”. Another was the “hope of
resurrecting in Palestine their former eastern European Jewish
kingdom (Khazar [or Khazaria])” (Jensen, 1948: 5) (see below).
It is suggested that the majority of today’s Jews who are blue-eyed
and blonde-haired is made up of “non-Semitic Tartar-Asiatics” or
Khazar Jews (Sand, 2009; Hussein, 2002; Saleh, 2003; Koestler,
1976; Jensen, 1948: 2). A Caucasian race, they are “a non-Semitic
Turkish-Finnish race which came into Europe from Asia about the
first century A.D. by a land route north of the Caspian Sea,” “settled
in eastern Europe and there established the Khazar kingdom”.
Thus, according to a number of scholars such as Koestler (1976);
Saleh (2003); Hussein (2002), etc., modern day Jews were originally
pagan and historically known as Khazars living in Khazaria, now the
52
Caucasus, and as such, it is argued that their racial affinity cannot
be traced to Abraham (Hussein, 2002). They, following the
conversion of one of their kings (Bulan) to Judaism in “740” (Saleh,
2003: 67), converted and established over time a strong Jewish
kingdom. Defeated for the first time in their history by the Russians
towards “the end of the 10th Century A.D.,” “the Khazar population
and former Khazar territory were thus incorporated into the
expanded Russian state;” a fact that “accounts for the presence in
southern Russia of the large and concentrated population of the
Jewish faith” (Jensen, 1948: 2-3).
In his book, The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and its
Heritage, Koestler (1976), found out that today’s Jews have “not
descended from the historical Israelites of antiquity, but from
Khazars, a people originating and populating the Caucasus region
(historical Khazaria) who converted to Judaism in the 8th Century”.
So, according to Koestler (1976), genealogically, today’s Jews
claiming to be descendants of Jacob do not actually belong to any of
the Twelve Tribes or Children of Jacob/Israel. Consequently, this
should base, according to the Jewish writer Koestler (1976), “the
claim of Jews to Israel,” “not on Biblical covenants or genetic
inheritance” as Zionists claim but “on the United Nations mandate”.
This position – despite recent DNA analyses that try to prove
otherwise – is also maintained by a 2009 monograph by Shlomo
Sand, an Israeli professor of history at the University of Tel Aviv.
Corroborating this line of argument, Patricia Cohen (2009), in
commenting on Sand’s book: The Invention of the Jewish People,
moreover, states that “experts pretty much agree” that “modern
Jews owe their ancestry as much to converts from the first
millennium and early Middle Ages as to the Jews of antiquity”
(<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/books/24jews.html?pagewant
ed=all> (accessed 28 March, 2012)].
According to Sand (2009), the whole idea of the existence of an
independent ethnic Jewish nationality or “nation-race” is nothing but
a modern invention, a mythical conception developed, following the
waves of European nationalism and racialism in the nineteenth
century, so as to make room for the ideological and political
“spiritual” and “historical” connection invention, on which the notion
of the ‘Return to Zion’ rests.
In addition, Saleh (2001: 18) states that the historical and religious
claims of the Jews over Palestine are “groundless” as their “rule was
only on some parts of Palestine and for a short duration of four
centuries, while Muslim domination of the entire sacred land lasted
twelve centuries (638-1917), with a brief interval [of 88 years, 1099-
1187] during the crusades”. He further states that the “Jews had,
53
furthermore, left Palestine, and their actual relationship with it had
completely discontinued for eighteen centuries, from 135 A.D. to the
20th Century” (2001).
Furthermore, according to The Arab Awakening (1938) by George
Antonius, “a leading Lebanese/Palestinian Christian intellectual,
scholar and public servant who served under the British in Palestine
and spent much time in London” (Troen, 2008):
[...] the Arabs of Palestine have deep roots and an

unbroken connection with the land far beyond the Muslim
conquests of the seventh century and actually extends to
the Canaanite period preceding the invasion of Hebrews.
In sum, Palestine has been Arab since time immemorial,
absorbing one conqueror after another. Arabs are the
only authentic, long-resident, and indigenous population
[...]. Importantly, this [...] can be applied to Christians as
well as Muslims, and is so understood by both. Jews are
another matter. It was the Hebrews whose connection to
the land was interrupted or lapsed (198).
This has also been emphasised by George (2004) who states, in the
context of his discussion of Palestine, and population as the second
element of statehood:
In occupied Palestine, there lives the population of the

Palestinian people; they have lived there forever, since
time immemorial. They are the original inhabitants of this
territory. They are fixed and determinate, and so they
definitely constitute a distinguishable population [...]. they
have always been in possession of their land and
therefore are entitled to create a state therein (5).
Moreover, Troen (2008: 198) states that Arab writers have not been
the only writers rebutting the Zionist claim to Palestine, as the
English historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975), for example,
“another former British official and intellectual familiar with Antonius,”
had “described Jews as ‘fossils’, thereby vitiating the Zionist claim
for restoration [...]”.
Further, besides Arab (e.g. George Antonius, 1938; Edward Said,
1988; 1993; Naim Ateek, 1989; Nur Masalha, 1992; Walid Khalidi,
1992; Saleh, 2001; 2003, etc.) and non-Arab scholars (e.g. Jensen,
1946; Koestler, 1976; Morris, 1988; Shafir, 1989; Whitlam, 1996;
Finkelstein, 2003; Pappe, 2006, etc.), who have either refuted the
Zionist claim to Palestine or exposed the Zionist cleansing of
54
Palestine, along with Israeli New Historians who emerged in the
1980s to challenge traditional Israeli historiography and assumptions
about Israeli history, and “revisionist archaeology,” and “the
minimalist school of biblical criticism that originated in Copenhagen
[...] around 1970” (Troen, 2008: 201), Troen further states:
There is yet another part of the academy that contributes

to distancing Jews from the land. This is to be found in
the regnant, if not hegemonic, analysis found among
sociologists, historical geographers, and political
scientists who identify Zionism as built out of the
injustices of a ‘settler society’. Although Jewish
settlement of Palestine had once been supported, even
celebrated, by an earlier generation of social scientists, it
is now viewed as a negative and destructive
phenomenon whose consequences require correction.
This is, in large measure, a product of choosing a
radically different historical paradigm (202-203).
Earlier I have adumbrated that Palestine was not the only “portion of
the globe” the Zionists debated for a Jewish homeland. The
Argentine or rather part of the Argentine was debated for such a
goal. Similarly were Canada, Mozambique, the Congo, Uganda,
South Africa, etc… (Rasheed, 1998). In The Jewish State itself,
founder or father of the Zionist National Movement Herzl, under the
heading PALESTINE OR ARGENTINE?, wrote in 1896:
Shall we choose Palestine or Argentine? We shall take

what is given us, and what is selected by Jewish public
opinion. The Society will determine both these points.
Argentine is one of the most fertile countries in the world,
extends over a vast area, has a sparse population and a
mild climate. The Argentine Republic would derive
considerable profit from the cession of a portion of its
territory to us. The present infiltration of Jews has
certainly produced some discontent, and it would be
necessary to enlighten the Republic on the intrinsic
difference of our new movement. Palestine… (95-96).
So Palestine was not the only debated potential homeland for the
Zionist Jews. Now, this very fact that Palestine was not the only
option but rather one of a number of Herzlian Zionist proposals
proves the falsity and invalidity of those claims of the “historical” and
“spiritual” connection to Palestine. It proves that such statements are
55
“none other than… an imposture,” than a Zionist discourse; and that
those notions or claims of the “historical” connection came after
Palestine was made the Zionist movement’s strategic option
(Rasheed, 1998). It proves that those “spiritual” ties with Palestine
were none but Zionist concoctions and a calculation of possibility,
investment and profitability. Actually in the words of Herzl himself, he
wrote that he considered the Jewish question to be “neither a social
nor a religious one”.
But now regardless of all these anti-Israel discourses, of these
“counter proofs/counter theses” and of whether Jews are “fossils” or
not, whether they are true descendants of the historical Israelites of
antiquity or not, whether they constituted a nation and
denationalising them from that nation would emasculate their claim
to statehood and render them, “at their peril, to the will of the Gentile
majority” (Troen, 2008: 1999) or not, and even if their rule over
Palestine had lasted more than 4 centuries compared with the 12
centuries of Muslims,’ and even if their claims to Palestine are not
specious, and even if the Arabicity of Palestine cannot be traced
back to the Canaanites, and even if the historical assumption that
the Jews were subjected to “unremitting savagery: the bloodletting
of the Middle Ages, the expulsion of the Jews from England, Spain
and Portugal, the wholesale slaughter of the Jews of the Ukraine,
the pogroms in Russia, culminating in the greatest of all - the
Holocaust”3 is not being manipulated and exaggerated - does this
give them the right to drive another nation homeless and stateless
so that they can have their own nation and state, an exclusively
Jewish nation-state?
Does this justify why the Palestinians must be subjected to what the
Jews were subjected to at the hands of Europeans - to such
“unremitting savagery,” “expulsion,” “Holocaust” and Nakba? Does
this justify why the native Palestinian people must be subjected to
elimination through settler colonialism? Does this give them the right
to invade and slaughter systematically the natives of Palestine the
way the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors in the 18th century
invaded and slaughtered “56 million” (Yasin, 2004) natives of Latin
America? Does this give them the right to eliminate Palestinians the
way the white man liquidated “89 million native Indians as they call
them,” following what they called the “discovery of America” (2004)
(see 3.2.7)? Does this give them the right to perpetuate the status
quo the way the white man perpetuated the international slave trade
that resulted in 80 million people being traded like hogs and dogs for
400 years (Yasin, 2003)?
3
Text of the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s AIPAC Speech,
<http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic> (accessed April 21, 2010).
56
Or does this make the fact that the Palestinians being born and bred
- generation after another - in that land, a crime or an act of
terrorism? Is this a reason, whether valid or invalid, why the
oppressed must give up resistance and continue their sufferings
under an apartheid system? Does this make Jewish self-
preservation more important than Palestinian self-preservation? Are
Jewish children dearer to their mothers than Palestinians’ to Arab
mothers?
To some Israelis, the Palestinians ‘might’ indeed have historically
been wronged but that this has been “inevitable” (see Benny Morris)
to their survival and self-preservation, and that is - in their view -
justice that surpasses the historic wrong they caused the
Palestinians, they; being ‘the Chosen’.
In a talk in 1956 with Goldmann about “the Arab Problem,” Ben-
Gurion asks:
Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab

leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is
natural: we have taken their country… There has been
anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that
their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here
and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?
They may perhaps forget in one or two generations’ time,
but for the moment there is no chance. So it is simple: we
have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army
(Goldmann, 1978: 99).
2.3.4 McMahon’s Deception: The Roots of Arab

Bitterness
Central to the uprootedness of Palestine and “the Roots of Arab

Bitterness” was Britain’s or “McMahon’s Deception” (Smith, 2007:
67) or the deliberate ambiguity of certain expressions in the 1915-
1916 Husayn-McMahon Correspondence over the inclusion of
Palestine as part of Arab independence; (Shash; 1999; Saleh, 2003;
Smith, 2007). In the words of Smith (2007):
[...] feeling the need to encourage the Arabs to side with

the British, McMahon wrote to Husayn on October 24,
1915 [...] with promises that became the basis of Arab
claims that Great Britain betrayed them after the war.
McMahon acknowledged Husayn’s concern about the
definition of boundaries and outlined British recognition of
57
Arab areas of independence subject to reservations,
which he left in some cases deliberately vague. He
argued that northwest Syria (Mersin and Alexandretta)
and “portions of Syria [notice ‘Syria’ not ‘Palestine’] lying
to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama,
and Aleppo” were not “purely Arab” and would be
exempted from Arab areas of postwar self-rule [...] (67).
Husayn-McMahon Correspondence or the pledges made by Sir

Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner for Egypt to
Husayn ibn Ali (1854-1931), Sharif of Mecca between 1915
and1916, “concerning the future political status of the lands under
the Ottoman Empire” were a formative event.
Indeed, deception of Britain where might precedes right had led to
what Smith (2007: 67) calls “the roots of Arab bitterness” over the
loss of Palestine as a result of such duplicity and those false
promises that made the Sharif of Mecca “side with the British”
against the Ottoman Empire. Hence, Smith (2007) continues:
A bone of contention has been the use of the word

“district” to refer to Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo.
The Arabic word used was wilaya [in Turkish Vilayet],
which usually meant” province,” and was employed in
that sense with respect to Basra and Baghdad in the
same letter. But when referring to the four Syrian cities, it
signified to McMahon “cities and adjacent environs,” a
meaning clear in McMahon’s own references to the term
and the areas involved (68).
Now the “importance of this distinction,” continues Smith

(2007):
[...] rests in what was intended to lie west of these

“districts.” If “districts” meant cities, as McMahon felt at
the time, then the areas west of them would incorporate
an area from the Lebanon, including Beirut, in the south
extending north beyond Alexandretta, already omitted
from the region that Husayn had demanded. In this
interpretation, Palestine, unmentioned in the letter, was
not specifically excluded from the Arab territory to be
independent after the war. The British later claimed,
however that the term “wilaya” signified an administrative
district when applied to Damascus. According to this
interpretation, the wilaya of Damascus included eastern
58
Palestine, the land across the Jordan River, and omitted
western Palestine, which by this time had been promised
to the Zionists by the Balfour Declaration (68).
Smith (2007: 68) also adds that “As subsequent developments

demonstrate, the British never intended to cede Palestine to the
Arabs, even though some officials acknowledged privately that
McMahon’s letter seemed to include it”.
2.3.5 Balfour Declaration (1917)
Before the emergence of David Lloyd George as prime

minister and Arthur James Balfour as foreign secretary in
December 1916, the Liberal Herbert Asquith government
had viewed a Jewish entity in Palestine as detrimental to
British strategic aims in the Middle East. Lloyd George
and his Tory supporters, however, saw British control
over Palestine as much more attractive than the
proposed British-French condominium. [...] Lloyd George
was determined, as early as March 1917, that Palestine
should become British and that he would rely on its
conquest by British troops to obtain the abrogation of the
Sykes-Picot Agreement [1916]. [...] In the new British
strategic thinking, the Zionists appeared as a potential
ally capable of safeguarding British imperial interests in
the region. Furthermore, as British war prospects dimmed
throughout 1917, the War Cabinet calculated that
supporting a Jewish entity in Palestine would mobilize
America’s influential Jewish community to support United
States intervention in the war and sway the large number
of Jewish Bolsheviks [...] to keep Russia in the war. Fears
were also voiced in the Foreign Office that if Britain did
not come out in favor of a Jewish entity in Palestine the
Germans would preempt them.
(The Balfour Declaration,
<http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_ww1_balfour.php>
(accessed 5 July, 2011))
With the declared aim or pledge to establish in Palestine “a national

home for the Jewish people,” Balfour Declaration was instrumental
in bringing about the settler Zionist enterprise. An “instrument
created after the Husayn-McMahon Correspondence and the Sykes-
Picot Agreement [1916],” this declaration or British commitment to
59
the Zionist cause had resulted in exponential growth of Jewish
aliyoth to Palestine. It espoused an undertaking or fiat made by the
British Government to facilitate through its then recent occupation
(1917) of Palestine “the establishment in Palestine of a national
home for the Jewish people”.
In addition to what can be gathered from the epigraph at the
beginning of this subsection, outlining “the new British strategic
thinking” to benefit from Zionism by establishing a Jewish entity in
Palestine - a region being geographically the link between the
largest two continents and thus strategically significant - the
historical Anti-Semitic inclination of Arthur Balfour (1848-1930), the
then British Foreign Secretary, “to rid Europe of the Jews as the
solution to the “Jewish question,”” (Elmessiri, 2001) could be a
reason behind this prejudicial declaration.
Hence, on November 2nd 1917, this intersection of interests or the
motive of the British Government to avail itself from the Zionist
movement as a “possible ally in a war which seemed to be going
badly for the Allies on all fronts” (Fraser, 1995: 8), along with
Balfour’s inclination (whether out of intense contempt or genuine
support), had led to the issuance of this milestone declaration:
His Majesty's Government view with favour the

establishment in Palestine of a national home for the
Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to
facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly
understood that nothing shall be done which may
prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-
Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and
political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
A pithy 67-word unconvoluted but-of-fatal consequences statement

of policy, couched in simple English, based on the work of the first
(Jewish) British High Commissioner for Palestine (1920-25), Sir
Herbert Samuel (1870-1963), and sculpted by Balfour under the
aegis of Whitehall, and addressed to leader of the British Jewish
Community, Lord Rothschild (1868-1937) (vide APPENDIX B), this
declaration with its royal promise of a national home for the Jews in
Palestine, has authorised Jewish immigration to Palestine, leading
eventually to the homelessness and statelessness of the Arabs.
60
2.3.6 British Occupation (1917-1948)/ the Palestine Mandate
Concurring with Balfour Declaration, the British occupation of

Palestine, formalised in 1922 in “the guise of a mandate,” was a
formative event in the ensuing social wrong, or subjugation of the
Palestinians to the pre-planned ‘cleansing’.
Through her Declaration and consequently occupation/Mandate of
Palestine, which meant the placement of Palestine, as stated in
Article 2 of the Palestine Mandate, 1922, “under such political,
administrative and economic conditions as will secure the
establishment of the Jewish national home” (vide APPENDIX C),
Britain - given her imperial and strategic interests in the region - had
found it expedient to recognise the Zionist claims concerning the
ancient (1800 years ago) spiritual and “historical connection of the
Jewish people with Palestine”.
Thus, the British Government stressed, as stated in the preamble to
the Palestine Mandate, that as the Mandatory, it “should be
responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on
November 2nd 1917 by the Government of His Britannic Majesty [...]
in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the
Jewish people,” apparently based on those claims about spiritual
and historical connections (see Chapter 5, Subsection 5.1.1), which
are, as refuted in Subsection 2.3.3 “none other than an ancient
imposture”.
A formative factor, as such, the British occupation/Mandate of
Palestine had played a central role in bringing about the Zionist
enterprise in Palestine and the resultant problem.
2.3.7 White Paper of June 1922/Churchill White Paper
[…] So far as the Jewish population of Palestine are

concerned it appears that some among them are
apprehensive that His Majesty's Government may depart
from the policy embodied in the Declaration of 1917. It is
necessary, therefore, once more to affirm that these fears
are unfounded, and that that Declaration, reaffirmed by
the Conference of the Principle Allied Powers at San
Remo and again in the Treaty of Sevres [1920], is not
susceptible of change.
(White Paper of June 1922)
Another formative event/factor that facilitated the Zionist immigration

to and occupation of Palestine, the White Paper of June 1922 (also
61
called the "Churchill White Paper" or “British White Paper”) was
issued “on June 3, 1922, after investigation of the Arab riots of 1920-
1921”.
This 1922 White Paper “was the first official manifesto from the
British Government interpreting the Balfour Declaration and the
Palestine Mandate” (White Paper of 1922,
<http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_mandate_whitepaper_1922.php>
(accessed 5 July, 2011)).
Though through the issuance of this White Paper, the British
Government attempted to “mollify Arab feelings” (Smith, 2007: 116)
by declaring that it did “not contemplate that Palestine as a whole
should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a
Home should be founded in Palestine,” still the Paper had affirmed
Whitehall’s commitment to establish in Palestine, “a Jewish national
home,” and that this “should be internationally guaranteed, and [...]
formally recognized to rest upon ancient historic connection”.
Hence, the Paper had again reiterated British Government’s position
that it stood by the Balfour Declaration and that the increasing
immigrant Jewish community “should know that it is in Palestine as
of right and not on the [sic] sufferance” (vide APPENDIX D), making
this White Paper of June 1922 to be among the formative
events/factors in the ongoing occupation of Palestine.
2.3.8 Stance of British Government
Between 1882 and 1917 the Zionist Movement settled

approximately 50,000 European Jews in our
homeland…Its success in getting Britain to issue the
Balfour Declaration once again demonstrated the alliance
between Zionism and imperialism. Furthermore, by
promising to the Zionist movement what was not hers to
give, Britain showed how oppressive the rule of
imperialism was. As it was constituted then, the League
of Nations abandoned our Arab [largely Muslim] people,
and Wilson’s pledges and promises came to naught. In
the guise of a mandate, British imperialism was cruelly
and directly imposed upon us… [to] enable the Zionist
invaders to consolidate their gains in our homeland….
(from Arafat’s Address to the U.N. General Assembly,
November 13, 1974; cited in Smith, 2007: 349)
As can be educed or gathered from the foregoing, the role of British

Government through McMahon’s deception (Subsection 2.3.4),
62
issuance of biased Balfour Declaration (Subsection 2.3.5),
Mandate/occupation of Palestine (Subsection 2.3.6), White Paper of
June 1922 (Subsection 2.3.7), and later policies reveal the kind of
stance British Government had in the initiation and implementation
of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. Such stance has resulted in
the Jewish immigration and occupation of Palestine, ill-treatment
and agony of the people of Palestine, and present-day morass.
This stance between Zionism and British imperialism was so
expedient that neither Britain nor Zionism had any twinge of pain or
guilt pangs that such stance to facilitate “the achievement of this
object” would be at the expense of an entirely innocuous nation.
They did not debate the thought that their biased involvement would
constitute the onset of an odyssey of sufferings for the indigenous
people whose only ‘crime’ was the inexorable fact that they were
born and bred, generation after another, in that land where their
fathers and forefathers had lived and died. Britain did not take the
necessary precautions so as to protect their birthrights, in the same
manner it protected the Zionist settler population which it had
facilitated and empowered over the indigenes.
Indeed, the Great Arab Revolt (1936-1939) against British “colonial
rule and Jewish immigration,” and the massive encroachments that
Zionists perpetrated 31 years after the Balfour Declaration or British
occupation against the “human geography of Palestine,” along with
the ongoing inhuman living conditions of the Palestinians until this
day prove that Britain had not introduced measures to guard against
the prejudice of “the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish
communities in Palestine,” as stated in the Declaration. It was not
committed to put this second part of the declaration into effect as it
was in the first part concerning “the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people,” which reveals how pro-Zionist
the British stance was and how inhuman.
2.3.9 Zionism and Modern Jewish Ethnic Supremacy
The General Assembly,

[...] Taking note of the Declaration of Mexico on the
Equality of Women [...] held [in] July 1975, which
promulgated the principle that “international co-operation
and peace require the achievement of national liberation
and independence, the elimination of colonialism and
neo-colonialism, foreign occupation, Zionism, apartheid
and racial discrimination in all its forms, as well as the
63
recognition of the dignity of peoples and their right to self-
determination”,
Taking note also of resolution 77 (XII) [...], which
considered “that the racist regime in occupied Palestine
and the racist regimes in Zimbabwe and South Africa
have a common imperialist origin [...]”.
Determines that Zionism is a form of racism and racial
discrimination.
(UN Resolution 3379: Zionism is a form of Racism 1975)
Zionists are driven, inter alia, by the Talmudic shibboleth that all
people born from a mother other than a Jew are considered racially
inferior. Accordingly, “the Jews,” according to Werner Sombart - as
quoted in Jensen (1948: 37) - “wished to live separated from the rest
because they felt themselves superior to the common people around
them. They were the Chosen Race [...]”. Sombart further states:
The Rabbis did all that was required to fan the flames of
pride - from Ezra, who forbade inter-marriage as a
profanation of Jewish purity, down to this very day, when
the pious Jew says every morning: ‘Blessed are Thou, O
Lord, King of the Universe, who hast not made me a
Gentile [...]’.
This Zionist ideology or invention of Jewishness or Zionism (Sand,

2009), this invented Jewish ethnic supremacy (Pappe, 2006) or the
superiority of all that is Jew vis-à-vis the inferiority of all that is non-
Jew, i.e. the Gentiles or goyim as called in Hebrew, a racial
imprecation that relegates non-Jews to a rank lesser than that of
cattle, was a main cause, as noted, in the rise of Zionism or “Jewish
nationalism” in the second half of the nineteenth century in Western
Europe so as to prevent being ‘profaned’ by integrating or mixing
with the goyim or other (sub) races.
Thus, such ideology has historically guarded or prevented Jews
from assimilation, a major cause behind Anti-Semitism as indicated
also by the founder of Zionism when he observed that the Jews’
“loss of the power of assimilation” was the “remote cause” behind
Anti-Semitism. Following their emancipation, after the French
Revolution, the Jews resisted assimilation (Herzl, 1896/1946/1988).
Therefore, when Herzl referred to assimilation in his influential
pamphlet, The Jewish State, he wrote:
I do not for a moment wish to imply that I desire such an

end. Our national character is too historically famous,
64
and, in spite of every degradation, too fine to make its
annihilation desirable (91).
Herzl found the idea of assimilation discreditable. Hence is his

statement in the introduction to The Jewish State: “Wherever we
remain politically secure for any length of time, we assimilate. I think
this is not praiseworthy” (1896/1946/1988).
Hence, for fear of loss of “national character” and Jewish
“peculiarities,” the Jews have chosen to remain under pressure
rather than assimilate. Assimilation, according to Herzl
(1896/1946/1988), along with (the resultant) prosperity would
weaken Judaism and extinguish Jewish peculiarities. Therefore,
Herzl continues: “It is only pressure that forces us back to the parent
stem; it is only hatred encompassing us that makes us strangers
once more” (p. 92). He further states that thus, “whether we like it or
not, we are now, and shall henceforth remain, a historic group with
unmistakable characteristics common to us all” (1896/1946/1988:
92).
Obviously, such sense of ethnic supremacy and thus tendency
against assimilation into other peoples has also been the major
force behind the present discrimination that ‘Israel’ practises against
the Palestinians, whether those in the Occupied Territories of the
1967 or those forming part of its citizenry or those languishing in
diaspora since 1948 or 1967.
It is also, according to Amin (1994), the reason behind ‘Israel’’s
ongoing indecision about whether to seriously seek a settlement
with the Palestinians and her Arab neighbours or perpetuate the
status quo (i.e. belligerency and occupation), fearing that actual
peace might lead gradually to loss of the Jewish identity or
character, one of the main causes, as adumbrated in the Overview
and elucidated in this subsection, behind the emergence and
development of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine, and actually the
ongoing exacerbation of the sufferings of Palestinians. It is what
makes the problem intractable (see also Subsection 2.5.4 and
Section 6.3).
Indeed and as noted in the first chapter and stressed in the final,
such ethnic supremacy or the Zionist ideology, leading to Israeli
intransigence and the continuation of discrimination, are major
obstacles to any modus vivendi, let alone a disposition to the “tragic
morass” engulfing the region.
Therefore, this modern groomed “distinctive nationality of Jews”
(Herzl, 1896/1946/1988: 79), this cliquish penchant of Jewry, or the
“Zionist ideology of ethnic supremacy,” significant also for the rise
and prevalence of the sentiment of European Anti-Semitism
65
(facilitated whether consciously or unconsciously by Jews
themselves) and Hitler’s Nazism and the final solution; is one of two
main factors that, according to Pappe (2006) “deter conflict
resolution” today; the other being “the so-called “peace process”
that’s always been structured to avoid peace at all costs” (Lendman,
2007: 12) (see Chapter 5):
From the former stems ‘Israel’’s continuing denial of the

Nakba; in the latter we see the lack of international will to
bring justice to region - two obstacles that perpetuate the
refugee problem and stand in the way of a just and
comprehensive peace emerging in the land (Pappe,
2006: 234).
2.3.10 Zionist Mythology and the Propagation of Israelese
It pains our people greatly to witness the propagation of

the myth [or what I call israelese] that its homeland was a
desert until it was made to bloom by the toil of foreign
settlers, that it was a land without a people, and that the
colonialist entity caused no harm to any human being.
Central to the effacement and mnemocide of historic Palestine was

and still is the Zionist propagation of myths and israelese captured
collectively and succinctly by Finkelstein (2003) as the “Zionist
mythology”. These are pieces of fiction spun; a Zionist master
narrative emploted based on the ideological construct of “omission
and invention” (Elmessiri, 2001), constructed by Zionism in ad hoc
workshops of discourse and israelese, and employed as part of the
Zionist mythology to fictionally and discursively construct reality
where myths become facts and facts become myths. Troen (2008:
195), a professor of Israel Studies, for example states in connection
with the myth concerning the ‘historic connection’ (see Subsection
2.3.3) that “the widely held assumption - found throughout the
literature of the social sciences and humanities - that Jews had a
deep and vital historical connection to the land was essential to
asserting the right to resettle in it”.
These ‘rights’ are nothing more than fallacies or “none other than an
ancient imposture,” to use Newton’s words (1946; quoted in Jensen,
1948: 1). They are twisted ideological inventions analogous to the
66
ever-growing body of israelese or “foundational myths of the State of
Israel” with which the Zionist mythology abounds.
They are thus similar to biblically-invoked Zionist myths and
demagogic israelese such as ‘Next year in Jerusalem’ or ‘a land
without people for a people without land’ or ‘the promised land’ or
the ‘historical right’ or ‘ancient historic connection’ or ‘biblical land’ or
‘Return to Zion’ or ‘Eretz Yisrael’ or ‘Land of Israel’ or ‘settling an
empty land’ and ‘making the desert bloom’ or ‘voluntary exodus’ (of
about a million indigenous Arabs) or ‘God’s ‘chosen people’ or anti-
Semitism (see subsection below) or any other Zionist discourse or
Zionist metanarrative or “hegemonic identity narrative” of this sort
whose prime function is to distort facts, misrepresent reality and
enact, exercise and sustain hegemony and inequality; a typical
colonialist practice considered central to the creation and survival of
the Zionist colonialist entity implanted in Palestine.
2.3.11 Historical Anti-Semitism vs New Anti-Semitism
Just like the abovementioned israelese, ideologies and events which

had played a role in the settlement of Jews in Palestine and the
resettlement or ‘cleansing’ of the Palestinians away from it, was
Anti-Semitism or European Anti-Semitism, a formative factor in the
immigration of Zionist Jews and their settlement into Palestine.
Faced with the “Jewish problem” that resulted from Jewish
resistance to integrate into the peoples of Europe, thus leading to
European Anti-Semitism, “Jews began to leave Europe in large
numbers” (Fraser, 1995:12) and emigrate since 1882 from Russia to
the United States despite restrictions and other territories such as
Palestine and the Argentine. Zionist aliyoth or immigration was in
particular prompted by the assassination in 1881 of the Tsar of
Russia, Alexander II of whose murder Jews were convicted (Fraser,
1995; Saleh, 2003). This gave Jews the kairos or opportunity to
think their problem over and find a solution (1995; 2003). It is at this
time that they, for example, founded the movement known as Hibbat
Zion (Love of Zion) in 1882 in Russia “to channel small groups of
idealists in Palestine” (Fraser, 1995: 6).
Thus, there was the lack of assimilation, which prompted historical
or European Anti-Semitism, which in turn led to Zionism, which
advocated a national home for the Zionists in Palestine, taking the
myth of “historic connection” as a basis.
However, it has to be noted in this context that today’s anti-
Semitism, called by Finkelstein (2005) as “New Anti-Semitism,” is
different from this (historical) European anti-Semitism. It is different,
67
for example, from that felt by Hitler whose anti-Semitic sentiments
were engendered partly from the forgery known as Protocols of the
Learned Elders of Zion, “a forgery that claims to describe a secret
Jewish conspiracy for world domination,” and partly from the
groomed exclusive nature of much of the Jewry (see above), a
factor in the rise of the sentiment of European Anti-Semitism, and
thus a formative event.
Today’s New Anti-Semitism, according to Finkelstein (2005), is a
misuse of anti-Semitism, as shown by the title of his book: Beyond
Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.
It is based on the ideological construct of “omission and invention”
(Elmessiri, 2001) mentioned above, constructed by Israeli
historiography (Pappe, 2006) and employed as part of the Zionist
mythology to fictionally construct reality and brand any attempt at
criticising ‘Israel’ for human rights violations as anti-Semitism and
thus maintain “unequal power relations”.
Another reason behind the continuous construction and propagation
of the discourse and flames of anti-Semitism is to push as many
Jews as possible to migrate to ‘Israel’ (Rasheed, 1998: 180), as one
way of ‘Israel’’s methods of countering what Israeli leadership calls
the demographic problem (see Subsection 2.5.2).
Thus, while European Anti-Semitism, a rise in the hatred of Jews,
can be thought of as a formative factor/event in the development of
the “Zionist nation-building project” (from Divine, 2008: 5) or
territorial occupation of Palestine, its new phantom (New Anti-
Semitism) is being used to justify and perpetuate ‘Israel’’s further
violations in occupied Palestine against human rights.
2.3.12 Rise of Nazism (1930s)
A formative factor, the rise of Hitler’s Nazism and the Reich’s

Kristallnacht in November 1938, which resulted in massacres of
Jews during the Second World War, had made the size of Yishuv, or
settlement of the Jewish community in Palestine to increase
exponentially (Gavron, 2004). Hence, Jewish population which did
not exceed “5,000” at the onset of the nineteenth century (Saleh,
2003: 69), had by 1936, according to Fraser (1995: 12), “grown to
370, 483 in a total Palestinian population of 1, 336, 518”. “These
events,” Fraser continues, “are fundamental to any understanding of
the Arab-Israeli conflict. They led to what the American Department
of State described as a ‘cosmic’ urge on the part of survivors to
secure a Jewish state” (p. 17).
68
Now, though we understand some of the forces behind the Jewish
problem, the question that arises is that why should the solution of
the Jewish Question and the restitution for what they had suffered at
the hands of the ‘white man’ be at the expense of Arabs or Muslims
who had actually always provided protection for Jews? Such
protection began since the Islamic Conquest of Jerusalem in 638
(Gavron, 2004) during the patriarchal orthodox caliphate or reign of
Umar ibn al-Khattab (634-644), and continued throughout the 12-
century-long Muslim rule and Islamic civilisation - the longest and
most stable period of rule over Jerusalem (Shash, 1999). In other
words, Arabs believe what David Ben-Gurion said in a conversation
with Nahum Goldmann about “the Arab Problem” in 1956 that there
was “anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their
fault (Goldmann, 1978: 99)?” Why should they pay for the crimes of
others, whether Jews deserved such hatred or not?
To sum up, Hitler’s Nazism or the Nazi Holocaust - an event
exploited consistently by Zionists prior to the creation of the Zionist
entity as a cause to secure a Jewish state, and following the
formation of the entity in 1948 to further the interests of the entity
(Finkelstein, 2003) - was a formative event in Zionist immigration
and thence occupation of Palestine, and an ongoing cause, along
with New Anti-Semitism, which Israel consistently draw upon and
amplify to perpetuate the status quo.
2.3.13 Proposal of Partition (1937)
As a result of the collusion between the mandatory Power

and the Zionist movement and with the support of some
countries, this General Assembly early in its history
approved a recommendation to partition our Palestinian
homeland....
As explained in previous subsections, the intersection of interests

between Zionism and British imperialism played a central role in
bringing about the Zionist enterprise in Palestine and the resultant
fatal consequences. A direct consequence of such intersection was
the issuance of Balfour declaration in 1917 and then direct British
occupation of Palestine (1917-1948), events that were central to the
immigration of large numbers of European Zionist immigrants to
Palestine. As those growing numbers of Zionist immigrants began
69
clearly to pose a threat to the indigenes, this had inevitably led to
frequent clashes between the natives and immigrants.
One major clash was that that came to be known as the Great Arab
Revolt which lasted for three years, from 1936 to 1939. A reaction to
British occupation and Zionist immigration to Palestine, the revolt
was massive that the mandatory Power had to set up a commission,
the Palestine Royal (Peel) Commission to investigate the causes
behind the revolt. In its report of 1937, the Commission had
recommended, as a solution to the escalating problem in Palestine,
the partition of Palestine, “with 33% of the country to become a
Jewish state” and “Part of the Palestinian population is to be
transferred from this state” (Pappe, 2006: 284).
Now, though this 1937 proposal of partition, proposed by “The
Palestine Royal Commission under Lord Peel” (Fraser, 1995: 12-
13), was relinquished two years later by the British Government in
its White Paper of November 1939 “in favour of creating an
independent Palestine governed by Palestinian Arabs and Jews in
proportion to their numbers in the population by 1949 (section I),” it
was a formative event.
What was formative about this notion of partition at the time of the
proposal in 1937 was that it stated that “at least several hundred
thousand Palestinian Arabs--if not all of them” were to be transferred
from the Jewish state-to-be, which gave the Founding Fathers of
‘Israel’ the impression that the long-standing notion of transfer was
“a legitimate solution” to the problem (Morris, 1988). It made Ben-
Gurion write in his diary in that same year: “This could give us
something that we never had [...], an opportunity that we never
dared to dream in our wildest imaginings” (Gavron, 2004: 231).
Hence are Ben-Gurion’s words in 1938: “I favour compulsory
transfer. I see nothing immoral in it” (Simons, 2004: 3; Shash, 1999;
Saleh, 2003; Pappe, 2006).
2.3.14 Plan of Partition (UN GA Resolution 181) (1947)
The notion of partition proposed on November 29, 1947 by the UN,

and previously, as noted in the previous subsection, by the Palestine
Royal (Peel) Commission in 1937 was a formative event in the
history and tragedy of modern Palestine.
The UN’s plan of partition proposed, as stated by Pappe (2006), not
only 56% of the territory for a Jewish state but also “allotted the most
fertile land and almost all urban and rural territory in Palestine to the
new Jewish state” (Lendman, 2007: 5).
70
Hence, the Partition Plan or Resolution 181 has not only established
a basis for this unequal conflict in the sense that it was a formative
factor in the tragedy of Palestinians, but has also empowered the
European Zionist immigrants over them until our present day - and
this was not an accident; it was calculated to be the case.
2.3.15 Seismic Global Changes in the Balance of Power

(1914-1945)
Besides the abovementioned shaping macro factors, events and

israelese, the following were some other seismic formative events
that also played a role in the Zionist encroachments on Palestine:
eruption of the First World War (1914-1918), collapse of the
Ottoman Empire (1516-1914), formulation of the League of Nations
as a product of the 1919-1920 Paris Peace Conference among the
Triple Entente or Allied Powers to promote colonial mandates or
rather occupation of territories previously administered by the
Ottoman Empire, and finally Second World War (1939-1945), which
also came to be constitutive in the modern history of Palestine.
It should be stressed here that this seemingly ‘Peace Conference,’
taking place in the aftermath of the First World War was of far-
reaching warlike consequences to the whole region and the history
that was to come. Indeed, being the antithesis of peace as the
reality of the region would come to witness and as the title of David
Fromkin’s (1989) book: A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the
Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
reveals, this ‘Peace Conference’ was a formative event not only in
the geopolitics of Europe, and ongoing tragedy of Palestine but also
in that of the whole region of the Middle East. It was ‘peace’ that,
according to Shash (1999), was based on “deception,” where Britain
played a major role in serving her imperial and strategic interests
and where the downtrodden peoples of the Middle East have been,
as a result, and until now paying its exorbitant price.
Those Machiavellian imperial interests, strategic events and seismic
global transformations in the balance of power with their creation of
new realities had, along with the foregoing account and the tools
and socio-political factors outlined in Section 2.1, facilitated the
Zionist premeditated ‘cleansing' of the Palestinians, leading in 1948
to the transformation of Palestine into a Jewish state. Those events
and factors have simultaneously led to the “inevitable” deracination
of Palestinians or, according to Morris (1988), “the birth of the
Palestinian refugee problem;” the large uprooted and displaced bulk
(“more than 80 per cent”) (Masalha, 1992; Finkelstein, 2003; Saleh,
71
2003; Pappe, 2006) of the indigenous Arabs whom the Zionists have
forced to live in “diasporic communities in neighboring Arab
countries and elsewhere,” ever since.
2.4 THE PALESTINE QUESTION: A HUNDRED YEARS OF

STRUGGLE
I don’t know of a single example in history where a

country was colonised with the courteous consent of the
population.
(Vladimir Jabotinsky when “arguing for a Jewish military
force at the Zionist Congress in Prague in 1921,” quoted
in Smith, 2007:124)
The roots of the Palestinian question reach back into the

closing years of the nineteenth century... to that period
which we call the era of colonialism and settlement as we
know it today. This is precisely the period during which
Zionism... was born; its aim was the conquest of
Palestine by European immigrants, just as settlers
colonized, and indeed raided, most of Africa. This is the
period during which, pouring forth out of the west,
colonialism spread into the further reaches of Africa,
Asia, and Latin America, building colonies everywhere,
cruelly exploiting, oppressing, plundering the people of
those three continents. This period persists into the
present. Marked evidence of its [...] presence can be
readily perceived in the racism practised [...] in
Palestine....
This account of the longtime Zionist policy of the ‘cleansing’ of Arabs

and the “transformation of Palestine into a Jewish state,” this
overview of the ad hoc tools and formative events behind the Zionist
occupation makes it clear that the sufferings of the Palestinians have
not commenced all of a sudden or only since the 1948 massive
Zionist encroachments on Palestine, but rather tens of years prior to
that.
For example, in his affirmation of British Government’s commitment
to put the Balfour Declaration into effect by establishing in Palestine,
based on the ‘ancient historic connection,’ “a national home for the
72
Jewish people,” Sir Herbert Samuel wrote in the British White Paper
of June 1922:
The tension [...] in Palestine is mainly due to

apprehensions [...] which are as far as the Arabs are
concerned [...] partly based upon exaggerated
interpretations of the meaning of the [Balfour] Declaration
favouring the establishment of a Jewish National Home in
Palestine, made on behalf of His Majesty’s Government
on 2nd November, 1917.
However, those “apprehensions” of the native Arab inhabitants of

Palestine were not ‘exaggerated’ as mitigated by the High
Commissioner for Palestine. There are two events which prove
those fears of the indigenous population to be far from
‘exaggerated’. Those events were the Great Arab Revolt (1936-
1939) against British “colonial rule and Jewish immigration,” and the
“compulsory transfer” or ‘cleansing’ Zionists perpetrated 31 years
after the Balfour Declaration against the “human geography of
Palestine”. Those two events confirm retrospectively that those
“apprehensions” of Palestinians at the time were not ‘exaggerated’
as Sir Herbert Samuel tried through stratagem to mitigate or cover
up. They prove that the Palestinians were in pain as they were
conscious of the dangers of Zionism or the “Zionist threat to
Palestine” as an imperialist settler movement.
Those “apprehensions” are also indicators that ascertain that the
Palestine Question has actually begun tens of years before the
Jewish Question had ended where “Every Jewish village” of the new
state “was,” according to Moshe Dayan (1915-1981) - a former
Israeli army commander and Defence Minister - “built on its
Palestinian counterpart,” (Saleh, 2001: 46) causing the loss of
Palestine.
The “loss of Palestine,” and thus the struggle of Palestinians against
the aliyoth of olim or Zionist immigrants could be educed from
certain literary works to have existed even before the Balfour
Declaration in 1917. According to Sulaiman (1984), fear and thus
sufferings of the Palestinians have actually begun “even before the
turn of the 19th Century”. Indeed, according to Saleh (2003), the first
incident of clashes between Palestinian fellahin and Zionist olim or
immigrants to Palestine took place in 1886. Muhammad Is’af al-
Nashashibi (1885-1948) - a Palestinian poet - bespoke, as quoted in
Sulaiman (8-9), of the “Zionist threat to Palestine,” and lamented the
“loss of Palestine” in a poem: Filastin wal-Isti’mar al-Jadid (Palestine
73
and the New Colonization), as early as October 1910 - indeed a
hundred years ago:
˯ΎϛΑϟ΍˶Εϣ˸ έ˵ ΍Ϋ·ϊϣΩϟ΍ϝΩΑ˯ΎϣΩϟΎΑϱΩϭΟ˵ ˷ϲΣϟ΍ΓΎΗϓΎϳ

˴
˯ΎϣΩέϳϏϰϠόϟ΍ΕΧ΃Ύϳ ϕΑϳϡϟϭϥϳργϠϓΕ ˷ϟϭΩϘϠϓ
˯ΎϛΑϟ΍ ϲϧϐϳ˵ϻϭ ϱΩΟϳ˵ ϻϡϭϳ ˱ ΎϣΩϥϳϛΑΗϭϥϳϛηΗϑϭγ
˯΍Ωϋ έϳγϥϋϩϭΩόϳϥ΃ϥ
˳ ϭΩϯΩϣϟ΍ίΎΟΩϗέΎϣόΗγϻ΍ ˷ϥ·
˯΍ϭΩϟΎΑ ˱ ΎόϳέγϩϭϓϼΗϓ ˯˱ Ύϳϋϰγϣ΃Ωϗ˯΍Ωϟ΍΍Ϋϫ ˷ϥ·
˯ϼΧΩ ϡϭϘϟΎϫϭόϳΑΗϻ΍ϭυϘϳΗγΎϓϡϛϧΎρϭ΃ΎϬ
˳ ϧ˷ ·
O young woman of our homeland! Shed blood instead of tears if you want to cry.
Sister of exaltedness! Palestine is lost; nothing but blood is left now.
You will suffer and weep with blood, when weeping tears becomes of no avail.
The colonization [of Palestine] has gone too far with none to stand out against it.
This disease has become grave. You should overcome it with [real] remedies.
Awake! It is your homeland. Do not let it be sold to the strangers!
Beyond doubt, this visionary 1910 early poem of al-Nashashibi, a

significant piece of alarming poetic discourse proves that the
increasing alarm of the Palestinians and their attempts to reluct or
resist, at least at the (poetic) discourse level at this stage, the
“Zionist threat to Palestine,” and British Government’s stance to
“use,” as stated in the declaration, “their best endeavours to
facilitate the achievement […] in Palestine of a national home for
the Jewish people” have started even before the Balfour
Declaration where Palestine was felt as early as that time (i.e.
1910) to have been “lost” and that “nothing but blood” was “left”.
This is a primary source that traces the apprehension, alarm and
suffering of the Palestinians, and later Zionist occupation, and the
ensuing and ongoing homelessness of the Palestinians – “victims of
discursive injustice,” “veterans of creative suffering” – to at least a
hundred years until now (i.e. 1910-2010).
2.5 THE PALESTINE QUESTION: CAUSES OF

EXACERBATION
All the formative or constitutive events along with the tools and
socio-political factors mentioned in the Overview were crucial to the
implementation of the settler Zionist enterprise in Palestine and the
1948 Zionist encroachments and the consequential creation of the
Zionist entity. There are, however, causes that, following the
colonialist entity’s formation, have aggravated the Palestine
74
Question. Under ten consecutive subtitles/subsections, I shall
highlight, just as I did about the genesis and evolution of the
problem created in Palestine, a number of events and root causes
that aggravate this time “the complexity of the conflict,” and that I
thus believe to be central to such exacerbation. It should be noted
that some of these events and causes tend to overlap with what I
have called formative events behind the establishment of the Zionist
entity. The following subtitles, explained briefly below, summarise
these events and causes of exacerbation: Israeli Occupation of the
Remnant of Palestine (1967); Apartheid Politics; Israelispeak and
Israeli Media; Israeli Violations of International Norms of Conduct;
Politics of Expansion and Dispossession; Dictatorships of the Arab
World and Anglo-American Stance; Weak Official Palestinian
Stance; PLO and the Change of Strategy; Arab Inexperience of the
Power of Logos and Pitfalls of Discourse; and finally Injustice vs
Intifadas.
2.5.1 Israeli Occupation of the Remnant of Palestine (1967)
The war of 1967 was to prove as decisive in its

consequences as that of 1948-9. It left Israel firmly in
control of all the land of mandatory Palestine, as well as
extensive Egyptian and Syrian territory, and tilted the
balance of Middle East power firmly in an Israeli direction.
(Fraser, 1995: 81)
I begin with the demoralising defeat of ‘Arab armies’ in the 1967

Israeli invasion or the aggression of 5 June. This full-scale “blitzkrieg
[Israeli] surprise attack, starting on 5 June 1967 on Egypt, Syria and
Jordan" (Hasan Abu Nimah, 2010) that resulted in the new state’s
Anschluss or annexation, besides Syria’s Golan Heights and Egypt’s
Sinai Peninsula, of the rest 22% (Saleh, 2001) of historic Palestine:
the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, has wiped
Palestine off the map completely.
This complete and utter rout, and the resultant sprawling expansion
of the colonialist entity over all historic Palestine and adjacent
sovereign territories has acted as a coup de main that, given the
bubble of Nasserism, was beyond all Arab and especially nationalist
or Nasserist expectations, hence the designation an-Naksa
(Setback), as described by Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970).
A decisive event in the geography and ideology of the Levant, an-
Naksa served, ipso facto, as the death knell to certain borrowed
ideologies and a realty check to others. Being such a watershed, the
75
Naksa tilted the regional balance of power greatly in favour of the
Zionist entity; hence, as mentioned by Hasan Abu Nimah (2010),
creating through aggression new further “irreversible facts” or what
Israelis call “facts on the ground” that would sooner or later dictate
new realities. In particular, an-Naksa gave the Palestine Question a
novel trajectory in the art of dictates and diktats. It created a new
reality that would later come to function as the starting point to any
future settlement or ‘final’ disposition with the Palestinians.
It is significant to emphasise here that the 1967 Israeli occupation of
the rest 22% of historic Palestine was not the result of a
miscalculation or a fluke, or circumstances or as Michael Oren
suggests, ‘the vagaries and momentum of war’ (Finkelstein, 2003:
xvi), but rather the result of long-standing harboured Zionist
premeditation. In this regard, Sternhell, (cited in Finkelstein, 2003:
xvi), observes:
The role of occupier, which Israel began to play only a

few months after the lightning victory of June 1967, was
not the result of some miscalculation on the part of the
rulers of that period or the outcome of a combination of
circumstances, but another step in the realization of
Zionism’s major ambitions.
To conclude this macro cause of exacerbation - the 1967 Israeli

Occupation of the remnant of Palestine, known among Arabs as the
‘Setback’ as was first called by Nasser and the Six-Day War (see
Chapter 1) among Israelis - has exacerbated further the woeful
condition of Arabs, in general in their struggle against the colonialist
entity, and the Palestinians, in particular, both the uprooted4 and the
now occupied.
2.5.2 Apartheid Politics
There is democracy in Israel but none in the territories. A

whole generation of Israelis grew up with a
nondemocratic system next to them, as nondemocratic
rulers. There is a difference between the arrest of Arabs
and Jews. When you [a Jew] get arrested, the police or
4
“In fact, within 10 days of the [1967] war, more than 125,000 Palestinians were
expelled by the Israelis from their land, mainly East Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Jericho,
and became DPs [Displaced Persons], while after this date Israel continued to brutally
expel an average of 500 Palestinians everyday from their land. The majority of these
were from the districts of Hebron, Bethlehem, Nablus, Jenin and Qalkiliya” (Zakariah,
2008: 192).
76
secret service people will say, “We will give you Jewish
treatment.” You will be slapped around perhaps but not
tortured. Arabs who are arrested are beaten and tortured.
It is difficult to convince Israelis that this undemocratic
way of ruling and treating Arabs is wrong or evil. Israelis
see it as a normal practice [toward Arabs, not
themselves].
(An Israeli journalist; cited in Smith, 2007: 421)
Institutionalised discrimination and “apartheid politics” is another

exacerbating factor in the Arab struggle against Israeli occupation
and the appalling and harsh daily reality of the Palestinians. Jewish
ethnic supremacy discussed in Subsection 2.3.10 or the extant
racial ideology of Zionism and the Jewish tradition of Halacha, calls
for discrimination between the Jew and the Gentile, i.e. the non-Jew,
in a way that denigrates and dehumanises the other (Ismail, 2009).
A settler society (Troen, 2008), ‘Israel’ practises discrimination
against the Palestinians. It does so against those expelled in 1948
and those in the 1967 Occupied Territories and those Arab citizens
forming part of its citizenry. While the Israeli Law of Return, “one of
the first pieces of legislation to be enacted by the new state”
(Gavron, 2004: 26), for example, allows every foreign Jew who has
never been to Palestine to come from any part of the world to the
new state and get naturalised, it deprives the very sons of the soil it
has expelled of such Right to Return.
A consequence of her “Zionist ideology and praxis” to keep the
‘State of Israel’ a Jewish state, Israel has enacted and codified a
number of other discriminatory laws against its Israeli Arab citizens;
laws that intensify the agony of the occupied and sufferings of “Arab
Israelis” or those remaining Palestinians who managed to survive
the 1948 “radical procedure”.
Many of these laws the Zionist Israeli leadership has enacted in
particular with the aim to confiscate Palestinian lands. Indeed, by
“the termination of the British Mandate in May 1948, the Jews were
[only] holding a total area of 372,925 acres, or 5.67 per cent of the
total land area of the country” (Sulaiman, 1984: 33). So, “prior to the
declaration of the State of Israel,” as mentioned by Ismail (2009):
[...] the Zionists did not have more than 5.5% of the total
area of Palestine [...] and at best the area did not exceed
8%. However, through systematic land confiscation and
expropriation, more than 93% of the land has been
transferred to Jewish ownership (48).
77
Among these Israeli laws concerning land and property confiscation
are the Land and Property Law (1951); Prescription Law (1960);
Absentee Property Law (1950); Development Authority (Transfer of
Property) Law (1950); Land Acquisition Law (1953) (Ismail, 2009).
These laws and “a host of others that followed” such as Law of the
Land of Israel (1960), Law of the Israel Land Authority (ILA) (1960),
Law of Agricultural Settlement (1967) (Pappe, 2006) have been
central to the expropriation of Palestinian properties and lands.
According to the Law for Absentee Property mentioned above, for
example, “about 20-30% of the Palestinians in Israel have been
considered “present-absentees”. “This law has allowed the Israeli
authorities to expropriate their lands and estates despite their being
“citizens”” (2009: 49).
Israelispeak, however, misrepresents reality by showing ‘Israel’ as a

‘liberal’ democracy. In the words of Ismail (2009: 45):
Zionist political literature pretends that Israel is a

democratic liberal state, but the nature of the Zionist
political system shows actually the opposite. It reveals a
“state of domineering ideology, i.e. Zionism, which
demarcates the state boundaries in a way irrelevant to
the geography occupied by this state, and considers it a
state for the Jews wherever they are, rather than a state
for the citizens dwelling in it”.
This has made the Israeli academic, Sami Smooha, as mentioned

by Zreiq (1996: 320) to state that Israel is not a liberal democracy
but rather an “ethnic democracy”.
Indeed, Israeli discrimination engulfs every sphere and “aspect of
the life or reality of the Palestinians” (Ismail, 2009: 29). It is
manifested in the sphere of job representation and budgets, in
education, in sentencing and judgements, in naturalisation, and all
other aspects of life (2009).
To show Israeli discrimination in the sphere of sentencing as an
example, let us consider the table overleaf as provided by Ismail
(2009: 55), based on a study conducted by Hagit Turgeman at the
University of Tel Aviv, on “1,200 criminal cases in the two central
courts of Nazareth and Haifa.
78
Table 2.1
Jail sentencing in Israel according to convict and victim
Percentage of those sentenced to

Convict Victim
jail (%)
Jew Arab 14
Jew Jew 40
Arab Arab 46
Arab Jew 77
Source: Ismail (2009: 55)
Such discrimination has led the Palestinians to experience daily

harsh and inhuman living conditions. Ismail (2009) stresses that
such discrimination and such discriminatory laws are against the
principles of the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of
all Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the December 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They are, to quote Martin
Luther King, Jr. (28 August 1963) in his speech I Have a Dream,
bespeak the past “manacles of segregation” and present “chains of
discrimination” (James, 2004: 67). They are laws reminiscent of
South Africa’s Apartheid Regime, Europe’s disenfranchisement, and
Nazi Germany’s eugenics laws.
Indeed, viewing Palestinians as but goyim, a sub-race unworthy of
living, and hence Zionism’s mission in making Palestine a Jewish
state, a state for Jewish habitation only, has made Israeli politicians
to consistently and openly play the race card and speak of ‘Israel’ as
a Jewish state created for the ‘God’s Chosen’ only.
Gilad Sharon, son of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, for
example, states openly that “Israel was not established to bring a
democratic regime to a benighted region. ‘Israel’ was established as
a national home for the Jewish people” (Ismail, 2009: 38). He
asserts that the “fact that the Arabs of Israel are citizens of the
Jewish state and not citizens of an Arab state is a mishap of history”
(2009: 38). Indeed, as stated by a B’Tselem (Israeli Information
Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) study, cited in
Finkelstein (2003: xx):
Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of

separation based on discrimination, applying two different
systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of
individuals on their nationality. This regime is the only
one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of
distasteful regimes from the past, such as the Apartheid
regime in South Africa.
79
As a manifestation of this harsh reality created by ‘Israel’’s “regime
of separation based on discrimination” in the Occupied Territories, it
might suffice in this context to quote from Smith (2007) a horrifying
longueur about the conditions in the Gaza Strip:
Conditions in the Gaza Strip have always been harsh

owing to the extraordinary population density of the area,
in world statistics perhaps second only to Bangladesh.
Refugees from 1948 and 1967 made up about 70 percent
of the population in an area one-fifth the size of the West
Bank. The Palestinian population had been squeezed by
the Israeli expropriation of 42 percent of Arab land after
1967 […]. As Sara Roy has shown, “One [refugee] camp,
Jabalya, is home to sixty thousand people living on one-
half square mile of land, giving the camp a population
density…double the density of Manhattan. […]”. On the
other hand, sixteen Jewish settlements created out of
land taken from Arabs housed approximately 2,500
Israeli settlers, compared to a Palestinian population of
750,000. Water-use restrictions imposed on Arabs to
benefit Israeli settler agriculture resulted in a severe
decline in the productivity of the Gaza citrus industry.
When population imbalances are set against resource
allocations, “individual Israelis consume seven times the
amount of water consumed by individual Gazans.” (416-
417).
Indeed, Israeli discrimination against Palestinians - whether those in

Palestine or even those in the diaspora - do not only conjure up
horrible images of the Apartheid regime once practised in South
Africa, but also confirm that the events of 1948 against the native
civilian population of Palestine, perpetrated by the early Zionists,
were in every sense calculated, pre-planned and predetermined.
A “central plank in Israel’s founding ideology,” Zionist practices have
also led - in Israeli discourse - to the so-called ‘demographic threat’
or problem and thus the ongoing calls or proposals for further
“compulsory transfer”/expulsion of the remnant of Palestinians as a
continuation of the politics of apartheid and transfer harboured and
premeditated, as stressed in this study, decades prior to 1948 and
as a solution to counteract the higher rate of birth among the
Palestinians that is, according to Israelis, posing a demographic
threat.
In an article: More Israeli Jews Favor Transfer of Palestinians, Israeli
Arabs, Haaretz writer Amnon Barzilai (2005, October) observes, as
80
phrased by Smith (2007: 533) that “A growing number of Israelis [...]
favor transfer of Palestinians out of the territories and Israeli Arab
citizens from Israel”. Indeed and until today, we still find statements
such as that made by MK Yehiel Duvdevani that “If there is a way to
solve the problem through the transfer of the [...] remaining Arabs,
then we will do this” (Ismail, 2009: 74). Indeed alive still is this
rightist Israeli dogma that “Only Transfer Will Bring Peace,” as a
huge “Right-Wing Israeli Demonstration against the 1995 Interim
Agreement (Oslo 2)” (Smith, 2007: 466) on October 5, 1995
advocated openly without any sense of shame or humanity.
The percentage of Jews supporting compulsory transfer (see
Section 2.2 and Subsection 2.3.13) has, according to the Arab
Institute for Human Rights (AIHR), reached 62% (Ismail, 2009).
However, according to the Israeli New Historian Ilan Pappe (2006),
such percentage goes actually up to 90%. In his 16-page review of
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Lendman (2007: 14) states that
“Pappe believes the consensus in Israel today is for a state
comprising 90% of Palestine “surrounded by electric fences and
visible and invisible walls” with Palestinians given only worthless
cantonized scrub lands of little or no value to the Jewish state”.
Actuated through various pretexts and means (Ismail, 2009),
institutionalised discrimination and systematic elimination of
Palestinians are a day to day reality experienced by the
Palestinians. The erection of territorial and residential segregation or
walls, and assassination, for example, are manifestations visible
enough on such policies. Such segregation embankments separate
Arab neighbourhoods from those of the Jews in a number of mixed
cities in ‘Israel,’ a form of segregation that is not practised in any
part of today’s world save in the self-styled ‘Jewish State’.
Ethnic supremacy and settler Zionism have always been a driving
force in the elimination or ‘cleansing’ of Palestinians to establish a
new settler society, in the racial discrimination practised in that land,
in making the problem intractable, a fact that does not only render
‘Israel’ a settler colonialist state from the very start, but also
aggravates the complexity of the ongoing Palestinian suffering and
the prospect of an amicable solution.
In a nutshell, ‘Israel’’s Zionist ideology and institutionalised
discriminatory measures against the Palestinians not only bring to
mind dark past apartheid regimes and prove the existence of two
distinct strata of citizens, but what also, I believe, make this unequal
conflict chronic, and the Palestinian issue “intractable” (see Chapter
6).
81
2.5.3 Israelispeak and Israeli Media
It pains our people greatly to witness the propagation of

the myth that its homeland was a desert until it was made
to bloom by the toil of foreign settlers, that it was a land
without a people, and that the colonialist entity caused no
harm to any human being. No: such lies must be exposed
from this rostrum, for the world must know that Palestine
was the cradle of most ancient cultures and civilizations.
Its Arab people were engaged in farming and building,
spreading culture throughout the land for thousands of
years, setting an example in the practice of freedom of
worship, acting as faithful guardians of the holy places of
all religions... Those who call us terrorists wish to prevent
world public opinion from discovering the truth about us
and from seeing the justice on our faces. They seek to
hide the terrorism and tyranny of their acts, and our own
posture of self-defense.
Another cause in the exacerbation of the Arab struggle against

Israeli occupation is hasbara or what I referred to prior to ‘Israel’’s
creation in 1948 as israelese (see Subsection 2.3.10) and what I am
inclined also to call following ‘Israel’s creation as Israelispeak, what
Ismail (n.d.) calls “Zionist disinformation machinery” and Finkelstein
(2005): “Zionist mythology” (see Subsection 2.3.10 above).
A Hebrew untranslatable, hasbara, while literally denoting
‘explanation,’ is used to connote “public diplomacy,” “advocacy” or
“soft power”. Thus, a euphemism for pro-Israel propaganda, hasbara
plays a role in the mystification rather than ‘explanation’ of reality.
There is the periodic falsification of inconvenient facts through
manipulation of statistics. This has to do with “the periodic
reappearance of spurious scholarship”5 and thus “the fictional
5
Examples of spurious scholarship, as exposed and refuted by scholars such as
Finkelstein, Chomsky, Arthur Koestler, Frank Menetrez, Edward Said, Mohsen Saleh,
Ilan Pappe, Charles Smith, Fayez Rasheed, etc., are the following books:
1. Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, first published in 1903
2. From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine,
by Joan Peters, published in 1984
3. A Place Among the Nations: Israel and the World, by Benjamin Netanyahu,
published in 1993.
4. Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, by Mitchell Bard,
published in 2001.
5. The Case for Israel, by Alan Dershowitz, published in 2003 by Wiley
82
construction of reality”. It has also to do with Israelispeak and its role
in shaping and reshaping “concepts and realities in the minds of the
target masses,” in moulding the mentality and opinion of the public
in a way that perverts the truth and creates a gap between “image
and reality”. It has to do with establishing ideologies and “hegemonic
identity narratives” such as the ‘historical right,’ ‘ancient historic
connection,’ ‘Return to Zion,’ ‘Land of Israel,’ etc.
Elmessiri (2001) states that Zionist propaganda, “a construct
founded on omission and invention”:
[...] refutes or discards anything that does not jibe with

what is convenient and vests such sweeping propositions
as “a land without people for a people without land,” with
a sanctity of mythical proportions (1).
2.5.4 Israeli Violations of International Norms of Conduct
In a long list of violations, “Jeremy R. Hammond (2010) provides “a

list of 79 United Nations Security Council resolutions directly critical
of Israel for violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions, the U.N.
Charter, the Geneva Conventions, international terrorism, or other
violations of international law” (Hammond, Israeli Violations of UN
Security Council Resolutions, <http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic>
(accessed 21 April, 2010:1). Hence, it needs little argument to prove
that ‘Israel’’s constant violation of the Charter of the UN,
international norms of conduct; and according to Philo and Berry
(2004), Friel and Falk (2007), and Hammond (2010) violations of
international law and UN resolutions is another cause that
aggravates the Arab struggle against Israeli occupation.
2.5.5 Politics of Expansion and Dispossession
Construction in the settlements has continued virtually

uninterrupted since 1967, under dovish Labor
governments as well as during periods of right-wing rule.
In 1977, there were 31 settlements with a combined
population of 4,400; by 1992 the number had risen to 120
settlements with 100,000 inhabitants. By the end of 2009,
the settler population of the West Bank had reached
306,000. There are another nine settlements, or
settlement neighborhoods, in annexed East Jerusalem,
which are home to around 190,000 people.
83
(Largest Jewish Settlements in the West Bank,
<http://imeu.net/news/article0020045.shtml> (accesses
27 May, 2012))
Through the ongoing and sprawling construction of Israeli settler

colonies in the West Bank, ‘Israel’’s systematic politics of expansion
and dispossession is yet a further and main cause of exacerbation in
the sufferings of the “reluctant warriors”. It is maintained by
Finkelstein (2003) and actually a great number of other political
pundits that this cause, in particular, aggravates the situation to a
ferocious degree, as it constitutes one of the major Israeli-designed
obstacles towards the realisation of an independent Palestinian state
or Palestinian self-determination and thus peace.
Supported by Menachem Begin and initiated by Gush Emunim
(‘Bloc of the Faithful’) (Shash, 1999) - the extremist racist settler
movement, founded by Moshe Levinger in ‘Israel’ - the construction
of settlements or those massive colonies has begun shortly after
‘Israel’’s territorial occupation of the rest of historic Palestine. Since
then and more dramatically since the late 1970s, and more
particularly when Likud came into power for the first time in 1977,
the construction of such Israeli settler colonies in the territories
occupied by force in 1967 (Gavron, 2004) has started to mushroom,
and yet more exponentially since the early 1990s following the
‘peace process’. According to Gavron (2004), activists of Gush
Emunim consider those territories as the rest of ‘Israel,’ ‘liberated’
rather than ‘occupied’. For them, settling those territories will hasten
the coming of what they call the “messianic age”.
With such ideology, such extremists belong to Revisionist Zionism or
the Zionist Revisionist Movement founded “in the 1920s” (Smith,
2007: 565) by Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880- 1940), a Revisionist
Russian Zionist leader who, unlike the other trend in Zionism,
“advocated a Jewish state in an area both west and east of the
Jordan River” (Britannica Concise Encyclopedia 2010).
A bit different from Labour Zionism or the Zionist ideology of Labour,
the Zionist ideology of Likud (lit. “consolidation”) - the other main
political camp in ‘Israel’ - is that of Revisionist Zionism (Shash,
1999). Shash (1999) and Smith (2007) maintain that since the
coming of Likud into power for the first time in 1977, and particularly
“once Menachem Begin took office in 1978” (Smith, 2007: 413),
more “land requisitions” took place as the move in the Israeli
government has been towards the Anschluss or annexation of the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip, occupied by force in 1967 as lands
of historic ‘Israel,’ ‘liberated’ and thus must not be returned to Arabs,
a position different from that held by Ben-Gurion or Labour Zionists
84
in general who attribute more importance to preserving the ‘Jewish
character’ of the state rather than its ‘historical’ boundaries. Hence,
in the words of Smith (2007):
Whereas an annual average of 770 Israelis settled in the

territories from 1967 to 1977, that average increased
under Likud to 5,960 annually from 1978 to 1987. The
location of settlements also changed: now they were
often deliberately planned to abut Arab communities and
to take over their lands, constituting a visible threat
designed from Ariel Sharon’s point of view to intimidate
Arabs and encourage them to leave [...] (413-414).
Therefore, and a bit different from Revisionist Zionists, Labour

Zionists view returning part of such territories to Arabs in return for
peace, as (more) advantageous.
However, Shash (1999) maintains that actually both trends of
Zionism or Israeli political camps view their positions as
advantageous and as the ‘right thing to do,’ whether to include to
‘Israel’ or exclude from it the territories or 22% of former Palestine
occupied by force in 1967. The difference is ideological, and thus it
is generally these two trends that actually control the position of
each of these two political camps in Israeli politics regarding their
stance and conceptualisation of the nature and future of the
Palestinian entity.
Hence, as Likud came into power in 1977, politics of expansion or
the construction of Israeli settler colonies in the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip - championed by Israeli figures such as Menachem
Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon, and Benjamin Netanyahu - has
particularly begun to mushroom (Shash, 1999), despite obvious
violations to international law, and in particular the UN Charter
(1945) and the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949). This is in an
attempt to create “facts on the ground,” a policy of which ‘Israel’ is
typical (see Chapter 5).
However, it should be noted, as observed by Shash (1999) that
despite the ideological differences among the right and the left in
‘Israel,’ concerning the remnant of Palestinian lands ‘Israel’ occupied
in 1967; whether they are, for instance, to withdraw from or annex
such territories debated for a Palestinian entity, a general consensus
among them about certain principles is maintained. Among those
general common denominators which are relevant to this context are
the unanimity among Israelis that there is “no return to the pre-June
5 lines (of 1967)” (Pappe, 2006) or as stated by Ehud Barak in 1999
- as one of four security “red lines” - “no return to the 1967 borders”
85
(Smith, 2007: 499), and that thus most of the huge townships they
have constructed on such lands occupied since 1967 are to remain
(Shash, 1999), thus making what is called the ‘peace process’
nothing other than a means to temporise and thus further
consolidate Israeli power in those occupied territories through the
continued creation of ‘facts on the ground’ (see Chapter 6).
Furthermore, it is maintained that these huge townships or
“settlement blocks” (Reinhart, 2006) constructed on lands of the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip,6 both debated as site of a future
Palestinian state based on the two-state formula, are a major Israeli-
designed obstacle to any attempt at conflict resolution, particularly
these attempts that are based on partition or the two-state solution
(see Chapter 3).
Such politics of expansion, the constant attempts of the colonialist
entity to create “facts on the ground” to further its “annexationist
ambitions,” and in the process undermine any real prospect for
Palestinian self-determination, are a major cause in the aggravation
of the Arab struggle against Israeli occupation.
2.5.6 Dictatorships of the Arab World and Anglo-American

Stance
It is maintained that international “biased interests and power

struggles,” along with absence of serious Arab/Muslim official
stance, impact of the Israeli lobby on US foreign policy, US
“tolerance of Israeli intransigence” and long-time “subservience to
Jewish influence” despite “two thousand years of Christian contempt
for Jews” (Andreas Griffin; quoted in Victor, 2005: 115), all play
central roles in aggravating this century-long morass.
In this connection, Karma Nabulsi, following his exposition of the
venality of the Palestinian Authority, states as reported by Al
Jazeera and The Guardian (January 24, 2011)
(http://warincontext.org/2011/01/24/the-palestine-papers/):
The same is true of the outrageous role of the US and

Britain in creating a security bantustan, and the ruin of
our civic and political space. We already knew, because
we feel its fatal effects.
6
It should be mentioned here that since September 2005, those settlements in the
Gaza Strip have been, as a result of Palestinian resistance, evacuated and dismantled
following Israel’s plan to put an end to its costly presence in the Gaza Strip, and hence
Ariel Sharon’s unilateral disengagement plan of 2004.
86
Similarly, it is maintained that contemporary autocratic or oligarchic
rule in most Muslim nation-states; their lack of joint action and
sequacity to their colonial masters and the adoption of their secular,
anthropocentric (rather than the Islamic holistic theocentric)
paradigm of civilisation (Hassan, 2010), have all exacerbated the
struggles and sufferings of the Palestinians. Such a stance on the
part of those unelected leaderships, those “post-colonialist
appointed puppet leaders of Muslim countries” (Yasin, 2004) has
made the Palestinians’ national struggle for the restoration or
reconstruction of their polity, the body politic they aspire to, “a dream
far from reality”. Indeed, as reported by Al Jazeera Center for
Studies (4/1/2011: 1), this constitutes, according to Saleh (2011),
the first major “sign of decay in the Palestinian Statehood project”:
Arab and Islamic weakness and disunity, including the

absence of a common stance or vision towards the
Palestinian issue and a concrete strategy of support in
various political, financial and resources’ forms. The
Palestinians thus have been standing almost alone in
facing the Occupation.
This reality of the dictatorial systems of governance implanted in the

Muslim world lends support to the widespread assumption that most
current leaders of the Muslim world and particularly the Arab world
have been appointed by external intervention rather than elected by
their peoples. In the words of Friedman, they are “unelected
autocrats” (Amer, 2009: 25). Thus, they have always been enslaved
and are thus devoid of any political will.
Indeed as Divine (2008: 5) - a professor of Jewish Studies at Smith
College, Northampton, Massachusetts - states, “One could easily
argue that Middle Eastern regimes and the liberation movements
they have supported - perhaps, even more than Israel - have
deprived the Palestinians of their political birthright”. Hence, the
tribal or dictatorial “politics of the Arab world” have contributed to
“Palestinian failures to achieve self-determination” (2008), and
hence they are a cause for the exacerbation of the undeniable pain
of the Palestinians.
It needs little argument to state that such positions on the part of
those regimes, those oppressive fascist juntas, which are antithetical
to Islam and thus the sanctity of human life, exacerbate the
sufferings of the Palestinians who expect out of a sense of Muslim
brotherhood as Islam ordains other Muslim nations to extend a hand
and help liberate Palestine; a task which is, according to Islam, is
87
the responsibility of every Muslim, each within his or her own
capacity.
However, given such regimes and the consequent trend to
normalise relations with the occupier, what is seen in reality is the
opposite of such a Dunkirk spirit. Egypt’s 1978 normalisation of
relations with ‘Israel,’ according to a host of men of letters and
intellectuals, for example, was a shocking “new shift in Egypt’s
policy” towards the “enemy,” which dealt a blow to Muslims or “the
general view which, sees the conflict with Israel as a historical and
national [or religious] imperative” (Sulaiman, 1984: ii). This is a fact
that led in 1981, for instance, to the assassination of Sadat (1918-
1981), President of Egypt, as the one behind such “new shift in
Egypt’s policy” towards the “enemy”.
This stance on the international plane, particularly the Anglo-
American (Evangelical Christians), and impotence on the official
Arab and Muslim plane are central factors to the growing sufferings
of the Palestinians. As noted, this stance motivated by imperial
interests was also among the formative factors that have facilitated
in the first place the implementation of this colonialist entity or
colonial enclave in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world.
Earlier I also described, based on the 2006 work of Pappe, the
Arabs and UN’s role in solving the problem created in Palestine as
incommensurate, as the UN did not act responsibly, and the arrival
or expected succour of “Arab armies” was late; it took place actually
after much of the “cleansing” of Palestinians at the hands of the
marauding Zionist gangs: the Hagana, Stern Gangs, and Irgun had
already taken place. The role of the UN and the Arabs could was
ignominious and failing as the UN could have done something, and
the Arabs despite their inexperience in warfare and nascent
independence from colonial powers (Saleh, 2003) could have been
something.
2.5.7 Weak Official Palestinian Stance
Corruption of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and lack of a unified

stance among Palestinian factions can be thought of as an
exacerbating cause in Palestinian struggle.
It is maintained (Saleh, 2011) that this corrupt stance of the PA,
along with that of the US and the UK (see Subsection 2.5.6), and the
lack of a common ideology and unity of purpose among other
Palestinian factions have played a significant role in undermining
Palestinian decision-making and thus the ability to resist occupation.
88
In this context, Karma Nabulsi, following an exposition of “the
largest-ever leak of confidential documents related to the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict,” states, as reported by Al Jazeera and The
Guardian (January 24, 2011):
With any luck the sheer horror of this account of how the
US and Britain covertly facilitated and even implemented
Israeli military expansion – while creating an oligarchy to
manage it – might overcome the entrenched interests
and venality that have kept the peace process going. A
small group of men who have polluted the Palestinian
public sphere with their private activities are now exposed
(http://warincontext.org/2011/01/24/the-palestine-
papers/).
According to Pappe (2006), the unpatriotic stance of the Fatah-led

Palestinian Authority and its pro-Israeli measures against Palestinian
resistance to the Israeli occupation, along with its widespread
corruption, makes the role of the PA in Occupied Palestine as that of
a “quisling proxy comprador enforcer for Israeli and US imperial
interests” (Lendman, 2007: 15). Indeed, the PA is in no way - being
appointed rather than elected - less Orwellian than those oligarchies
or oppressive juntas in the rest of the Middle East. It is just another
implanted or appointed, subservient and self-interested Middle-
Eastern regime whose main role, besides the pursuit of their own
self-interests, is to ensure whether willingly or otherwise the
implementation of the dictates and diktats of the masters rather than
the interests of their downtrodden peoples, thus making the PA
irrelevant to Palestinian interests in their quest for freedom and
independence. Hence, Nabulsi’s words:
For the overwhelming majority of Palestinians, official

Palestinian policy over these past decades has been the
antithesis of a legitimate, or representative, or even
coherent strategy to obtain our long-denied freedom
(http://warincontext.org/2011/01/24/the-palestine-
papers/).
Palestinians lack a unified vision and stance as to national liberation

of the whole of historic Palestine or the establishment of a state on
part of Palestine. The PLO, for example, in 1974, in its Ten Point
Programme, and in a historic compromise and attempt “at a peaceful
resolution” with the Zionist entity had implicitly adopted the one-state
solution and thus called for the establishment of a “national
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authority” on any liberated Palestinian territory (which is to be
understood as part of a democratic, bi-national state in
Israel/Palestine) (see Chapter 5).
This gradual slackness in the PLO’s vision and position, and her
overt renunciation of “armed struggle” as the only means of
liberating Palestine weakens the Palestinian stance and hence adds
to the aggravation of the Palestinian reality as it not only neutralises
a big section of the Palestinian population but also works to
undermine the resistance of other Palestinian factions who view
“armed struggle” as the only means that can force the enemy to
change its intransigent position.
2.5.8 PLO and the Change of Strategy
The PLO’s original position and strategy regarding the case and
liberation of Palestine was that of “armed struggle”. The goal was
the liberation of all of Mandate Palestine as clearly stated in Article 9
of the Palestinian National Charter (PNC) (1968): “Armed struggle is
the only way to liberate Palestine”.
However, ever since The Khartoum Conference in August 1967, and
the Ten Point Programme in 1974 (see Chapter 5), the official Arab
firm stance towards full restoration of Mandate Palestine has begun
to waver and become continuously concessive, leading - overtime
and as further Israeli “facts on the ground” get created - to drastic
changes not only in tactics but also the strategy.
Seeing Israeli intransigence to implement the implicit proposal for
the binational solution, the PLO has officially since 1988 made a
second historic compromise that was the beginning on a roller
coaster for further explicit (this time) compromises, and changed its
stance further. It began advocating the old notion of partition or the
two-state solution. However, this was not based on the 1937 Peel
Partition Plan or Peel Commission proposal of partition which
allocated 33% of Palestine to a Jewish state, nor was it based on
the 1947 UN proposal which allocated 56% of the land to a Jewish
state, but rather on the June 4, 1967 de facto borders, which meant
a de facto recognition of 78% of the territory of historic Palestine the
Zionists seized in 1948.
Thus, based on Resolution 242, previously rejected for it gave the
Jewish state 78% of historic/Mandate Palestine (see Chapter 5), the
PLO had, in Algiers in November 1988, announced Declaration of
the State of Palestine (Shafiq, 2009), a few years before the 1993
Oslo Accords or Declaration of Principles (DOP) in which ‘Israel’ and
the PLO had exchanged letters of recognition (see Chapter 5).
90
2.5.9 Arab Inexperience of the Power of Logos and Pitfalls of
Discourse
The two official historical narratives that compete over the

story of what happened in Palestine in 1948 both ignore
the concept of ethnic cleansing. While the Zionist/Israeli
version claims that the local population left ‘voluntarily’,
the Palestinians talk about the ‘catastrophe’, the Nakba,
that befell them, which is […] an elusive term as it refers
more to the disaster itself rather than to who or what
caused it.
(Pappe, 2006: preface)
While certain utterances can warrant action and have repercussions

of far-reaching scope, certain others don’t; and worse still, might
even obfuscate a crime as to make it as though it was an act of God
rather than the result of man’s inhumanity to man; a fact of which
many Arabs seem to be nescient, and hence a cause for
exacerbation.
A prime example of this is the infelicitous term ‘Nakba’ (ΔΑϛϧ), heard in
Arab discourse or literature when talking about the 1948 mass
expulsion of the Arabs of Palestine at the hands of the then
predecessor of the Israel “Defence” Forces (IDF), the Zionist gangs
of the Hagana, Stern Gangs, and Irgun.
Representing this “crime against humanity” as the “Nakba” (Saleh,
2003; Pappe, 2006), Palestinians have inadvertently helped in the
obfuscation of the nature and magnitude of this man-made crime.
The ‘Nakba’ or ‘Catastrophe,’ is a linguistic (mis) representation of
what Zionists committed with malice aforethought in 1948, for what
was committed then was (and still is) a crime, not calamity.
First used by the Syrian historian Constantine Zureiq in his 1948
book: Ma’na al-Nakba (the meaning of “catastrophe”) to record the
atrocities perpetrated by Zionists in 1948 against the unarmed native
population of Palestine is hollow and shallow as a catastrophe or
cataclysm, as Ilan Pappe (2006) suggests can mean any natural
disaster, and not necessarily, the man-made forcible removal of the
Palestinians, committed with malice aforethought. In other words,
the term ‘Nakba’ de-agentialises (Van Leeuwen, 2009) the event as
being the product of a calamity or natural disaster to be saddened
at, rather than the product of human agency to be deplored,
condemned and reversed (see also Table 5.6).
Thus, the term ‘Nakba’ being such an “elusive” term obfuscates or
renders absent the agent behind such ‘disaster,’ and thus helps
perpetuate injustice. It obscures causal agency and hence obviates
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the need for blame attribution, responsibility and accountability and
hence rehabilitation. As Pappe (2006: xvii) puts it, ‘Nakba’ “refers
more to the disaster itself rather than to who or what caused it,”
hence mitigating or diluting or obfuscating the severity of the event
being “a crime of ethnic cleansing”.
However, Pappe (2006.) explains that “The term Nakba was
adopted, for understandable reasons, as an attempt to counter the
moral weight of the Jewish Holocaust (Shoa),” which literally means
‘catastrophe’. So this explains why the term ‘Nakba’ is being used by
the Palestinians and Arabs, and why Ismail (n.d.) refers to it as the
“Palestinian Holocaust”. However, “in leaving out the actor,” Pappe
continues, “it may in a sense have contributed to the continuing
denial by the world of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and
after” (xvii).
Indeed, what Zionists committed in 1948 was an act of ethnic
cleansing, i.e. depopulation, mass destruction and mass expulsion;
and there must be “no room for ambivalence in this matter,” as
emphasised by Pappe (2006); it was a crime against a people
whose only ‘crime’ was the inexorable fact that they were born and
bred, generation after another, in that land.
Thus, ‘Nakba,’ or even more misleading ‘voluntary exodus’ – rather
than forced exile or mass expulsion – as maintained by the official
Israeli version or Israeli historiography, being such a misnomer,
does not have the shocking and galvanising legal implications that
‘ethnic cleansing’ as a crime has, and thus does not warrant any
commensurate action or attempt at rehabilitation. It makes the
criminal premeditated act of “forced exile” as though it was an act of
God; a fait accompli that has to be acquiesced, and that nothing
could be done to redress it.
It is because of this that I am inclined to feel that this “elusive”
designation might have been - besides ‘voluntary exodus” -
popularised by Zionists themselves as it serves in the obfuscation or
mystification of such a war crime, and hence its obliteration from the
“global public memory”. Or else, it is an indication that, unlike Jewish
Zionists, Arabs and Muslims at large have evidently failed to
conceptualise their problems properly, failing to present and
represent their usurped rights at the level of discourse, an ability in
which Israelis are quite adept.
Evidently, Arabs and Muslims in toto have failed at the level of
beyan or articulate discourse and representation, tools synonymous
with mystification and domination, enlightenment and emancipation.
They have failed to represent their sufferings. They have failed to
propagate or articulate their ongoing enslavement by those
92
conscious of the power of logos; a cause that perpetuates their
enslavement.
Indeed, enslavement, as articulated by Fairclough (1989) and
Misaddi (2007) and indeed many other CDA scholars, starts from
discourse, and emancipation from such enslavement starts from the
critical analysis of such discourse.
Hence, Arabs or the Palestinian negotiator in particular has to
recognise the extent to which social and political change or
continuity is the result of linguistic representation or discursive
practices. In his seminal book: Politics and the Authority of
Language, written in Arabic, Misaddi (2007) observes:
It will not benefit Arabs [or any one for this matter] greatly
to possess the weapon of wealth, nor will it help them to
be the sole producer of oil or make use of the nuclear
energy peacefully unless they possess the weapon of
discourse. Arabs will not make a political victory in the
international arena unless they master the construction of
discourse, excel in its deconstruction, and gain mastery
over its subtleties (116).
Indeed, unlike Arabs - as Chapter 5 finds out - Zionists have not

failed to make utmost use of logos; they speak to the world in spiel
so ciceronian, and in a manner so glib, and in English almost
flawless. They have mastered manufacturing discourse, and made
use of the discourse industry to their interests.
Calling the 1948 “ethnic cleansing” or “forcible removal” (Pappe,
2006) or “uprootedness” (Barakat and Dodd, 1968) or “forced exile”
(Omran, 1966) - what Palestinians until today call the “Nakba” - as
the “War of Independence,” or “voluntary exodus” - as noted at the
beginning of this chapter - for example, is one example; is a case in
point (for further examples of Zionist or Israeli expedient
lexicalisation or manipulation of terms with which Israelispeak or the
“Zionist mythology” abounds, refer to Section 1.3 of Chapter 1, and
Chapter 5 for a CDA of discourses that have been orchestrated, in
ad hoc workshops of discourse to sustain the status quo).
So, in terms of linguistic felicity, ingenuity and manoeuvrability, the
kind of language used by the Arab negotiator seems less effective
than the language employed by their Israeli counterparts who have
perfected the discourse of peace, far less effective in terms of
representation and persuasion, let alone any aptitude for whitewash,
discursive maquillage and the virtuoso manipulation of either facts or
lies, perfected by Zionists.
93
This is an assumption that underlies being unaware of the material
and dialectical relationship between discourse and society; of the
power of logos in institutional and societal change; of the role of
discourse in the reproduction or transformation of the status quo – a
goal to which this study contributes. Indeed, the assumption that
Arabs and Muslims have largely failed to articulate their sufferings at
the discourse level is a major reason why they are still suffering.
Unlike the progenitor of political Zionism and in effect ‘Israel’ when
he articulated Jewish sufferings and established their question as a
world question in his 1896 discourse of The Jewish State, Arabs and
Muslims have failed to be as effective.
Of course, this must not be taken as diminishing the role and
interests of British government or “exploitative British colonialism”
with “expansionist Zionism” and the Jewish Agency - as explained in
this chapter - in bringing about the Zionist enterprise into existence,
and the current role of the US in ensuring the perpetuation of the
current status quo or the military supremacy of Israel in the region.
On the contrary, this should be taken to enforce my argument that
discourse is a powerful tool used by those conscious of such power
to dominate those unaware of such power (see Subsection 2.3.4:
“McMahon’s Deception: The Roots of Arab Bitterness”).
Now, this account ought to stimulate the dominated or manipulated
to realise some of their points of weakness and some of the causes
behind the perpetuation of the status quo or this bitter reality, and
then set out to improve them accordingly as this is a central cause in
the ongoing exacerbation of the Palestinian reality. This has after all
been a major drive behind this study:
No one can master politics unless they master the game

of language; and we should not grow tired of reiterating
that it will not avail Arabs [or any one for this matter as
noted earlier] to have wealth, glory and great numbers;
unless, in an age of ‘political spin and soundbites,’ they
become distingué in the strategies of discourse (Misaddi,
2007:168).
2.5.10 Injustice vs Intifadas
All those events, complexities and facts resulting from the build-up
of all those intertwined past and present causes - the 1948 mass
expulsion of Palestinians; Israeli occupation of the remnant of
Palestine in 1967; discrimination against its own Palestinian citizenry
and those in the territories; Israelispeak and Israeli media; Israeli
94
antipeace politics; violations of international law; politics of
expansion or ongoing construction of massive Jewish population
centres in the territories; continued oppression and policies of
realpolitik; dictatorial politics of the Arab world; inexperience of
Arabs of the power of logos and pitfalls orchestrated in discourse;
along with the mutuality of interests of certain past and present
superpowers with those Israeli encroachments - had galvanised the
Palestinians in the territories to rise up “in December 1978 against
the occupation in a basically non-violent civil revolt, the intifada”
(Finkelstein, 2003: xix), and to another intifada in 2000, as a
corollary of the continuation of such encroachments, of the
continuation of the occupation.
Landmark events, those popular uprisings were in particular
reactions to the iniquities of the Israeli system of apartheid practised
against the Palestinians, ongoing Israeli occupation. They were
expressions of pent-up frustration and fury; reactions that stress the
reflection that “a riot is at bottom the language of the unheard”.
Indeed, in Chapter 1, I stated that this is a study on the
dispossessed and occupied Palestinians whose eagerness to find a
solution to their dispossession and sufferings makes them inclined
to accept even unjust solutions; and a study on the occupying
Israelis whose penchant to temporise and create more obstacles, in
an attempt to create “facts on the ground” makes them ready to
reject even just solutions. Hence are the words of the Jewish
Haaretz Journalist, Amira Hass as cited in Finkelstein (2003: xxii):
the Palestinians would accept a situation of coexistence

in which they were on an unequal footing vis-à-vis the
Israelis and in which they were ranked as persons who
were entitled to less, much less, than the Jews. However,
in the end the Palestinians were not willing to live with
this arrangement. The new intifada [...] is a final attempt
to thrust a mirror in the face of Israelis and to tell them:
‘Take a good look at yourselves and see how racist you
have become’.
2.6 THE PALESTINE QUESTION: IS THERE A WAY OUT?
Individually and collectively, the formative events and factors

contributing to the Zionist annexation of Palestine and the resultant
homelessness and sufferings of the Palestinians, along with those
exacerbating the Palestine Question, have all made the Palestinians
feel to have been stuck in a time warp where the past 1948 Nakba
95
or “ethnic cleansing of Palestine,” the 1967 Naksa or Israeli
occupation of the rest of Palestine, and present or continued
attempts at the elimination of the rest 20% of those natives
remaining, despite..., in Palestine, seem to be infinite, thus making
the Palestinian people share what a Haaretz writer, as cited in
Finkelstein (2003: xx) has recently lamented:
Where is the public outcry against this attempt to divide

the territories and enforce internal passports [... and]
humiliate and inconvenience a population that can
scarcely earn a living or live a life as it is?
Ironically, “all this takes place at a time when the whole world is
drawling about” (Ismail, 2009: 5) “the sanctity of human life,” “human
rights,” “animal rights” and ‘gay rights’ and ‘gay liberation’.
Nevertheless, it ignores blissfully and insouciantly, the ongoing
slaughter, diaspora and sufferings of the Palestinians.
As hard to believe as it is for what ‘Israel’ commits does defy belief
or logic. Still, this is a fragment of the appalling reality of the
embattled and beleaguered Palestinians: whether those rendered
homeless 64 years ago and who are still languishing in diaspora
under grim conditions, or those - facing with stones the juggernaut of
the Israeli war machine - in the remaining 22% territories of
Palestine occupied since 1967, or those forming part of the citizenry
of ‘Israel’ since its formation in 1948 on 78% of the territory of former
Palestine.
As the Chapter is coming to an end, though the Palestine Question -
as a corollary of the systematic encroachments on and
transformations of the physical and “human geography” of Palestine,
and the ongoing Israeli disregard for The Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (1948), the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), and
the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of
Racial Discrimination (1965), along with the “American tolerance of
Israeli intransigence,” and this ‘blissful’ international indifference to
such violations - has not yet come to an end, I wonder and ask:
when will the Palestinian people - those “reluctant warriors,” “victims
of discursive injustice,” of Zionism and racism, “veterans of creative
suffering,” those defenceless underdogs - be able “to join hands”
with other free citizens of the world and “hew out of the mountain of
despair a stone of hope”?
96
CHAPTER THREE
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
3.1 OVERVIEW
How do we recognize the shackles that tradition has

placed upon us? For if we can recognize them, we are
also able to break them.
(Franz Boas; quoted in Fairclough, 2001a: 1)
IN outline, this chapter reviews works dealing with the relationship

between language and power or the material and dialectical
relationship between discourse and social structures. It explores the
ideological use of lexical items. The chapter thus first discusses the
multifaceted functions of language beyond traditional
communication, stressing the notion of the “multifunctionality of
language in texts,” and the role language plays in perception, in
positioning and representation, in the construction or distortion of
reality and our conceptualisation of it, etc. It explores the dialectics
and interplay between the authority of language and politics,
between discourse and the (re) production of domination, discourse
and socio-political change; and the role discourse plays in the social
mystification of events, (de)legitimation of others, in the stabilisation
or perpetuation of inequalities and injustices, etc. The chapter also
reviews in details the concepts of discourse, Discourse Analysis,
and Critical Discourse Analysis in their relation to domination and
emancipation. Next, the chapter, in an attempt to map the literary
history of the most debated overtures of peace aimed at the
resolution of the Palestinian struggle, gives an overview of the
proposals debated for an end to this protracted problem; and closes
with the review of some related research works.
Going into more detail, I wish to state that in Chapter 1 and in line
with the theoretical objective of this study, I attempted to stress the
need for what Fairclough called critical language awareness (1995;
2001a). In doing so, I tried to adumbrate the central role language
plays in enacting and sustaining domination, in constructing the
political event; in altering people’s perceptions; in manufacturing
ideology and consequently consent and domination. I attempted to
draw attention to the indirect interrelation of language and power
(Fairclough, 2001a); of the interplay between “politics and the
authority of language;” of the ideological relationship between
singularity of the political event and plurality of its discursive
versions (Misaddi, 2007); of the nexus between “language and
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sociocultural change;” language and “social-institutional practices;”
language and “social and political structures” (Fairclough, 1995),
language and “societal disparities and inequalities” (Wodak and
Meyer, 2009: 32). I drew attention to “the apparent determinism of
the relationship between the macro and the micro” (Fairclough,
1995: preface) or the reciprocal influence between discourse and
social structure (Titscher, Meyer, Wodak & Vetter, 2000) discourse
and the acquisition of power and “exclusion and subordination” or
the perpetuation of such states of affairs on the one hand, and CDA
and emancipation from such states on the other (Fairclough, 2001a).
I attempted to sensitise readers to some of the linguistic properties
deployed by the Israeli political cabal to influence perception to
induce certain interpretations and mystify social events and thus
maintain “unequal relations of power”. I attempted to project the
assumption that the “angles of telling” discourse orchestrators adopt
through the nominations (discursive construction of social actors)
and predications (discursive qualification of social actors) they select
or sculpt are meticulously calculated to serve particular cognitive
and ideological purposes.
In this chapter, I endeavour through the review of certain seminal
works pertaining to language and its centrality to power relations
and human existence, to further highlight such dialectical or two-way
relationship between linguistic and social structure (Kress and
Hodge, 1979), concomitance between the political and literary crafts,
and dialectics between the discursive and political event (Misaddi,
2007) or “linguistic and social structure” (Kress and Hodge, 1979). I
highlight the role language plays in constructing the political event
and hence our reactions; the role language plays in twisting the
political event, and vice versa. I highlight the concept of
interdiscursivity or the discursive event in its veiled relation to other
discursive events drawn from the collective political memory. I
highlight the role language or discourse plays in the construction,
continuity or transformation of reality (Montgomery et al., 1992); in
the “constitution of identities, relationships and knowledge” (Halliday,
1978, 2004; Fairclough, 1995, 2001a; Titscher et al., 2000: 149); in
the “mystification of social events” (Wodak and Meyer, 2009: 7); in
the stabilisation of inequalities and injustices (2009); in the
management of the mind (Van Dijk, 1993); in the perpetuation of a
certain reality (Fairclough, 2001a); in othering (Said, 1978); in
(de)legitimation (Amer, 2009); in positioning; in constructing the
operational names of wars and their implications (Misaddi, 2007). I
look into the mechanics of discourse and domination (Fairclough,
2001a), of discourse and the reproduction of social structures; and
emphasise the fundamental notions of discourse as “a form of social
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practice,” of the “multifunctionality of language,” of the assumption
that “language is both socially constitutive and socially determined”
(Fairclough, 1995; quoted in Titscher et al., 2000: 148-149); the
notions or assumptions upon which the whole area of CDA is
predicated and with which it is concerned and to which CDA
scholars are and should always, as stated by Van Dijk (2008)
remain committed.
In light of such notions and interconnection between human speech
and human reason, I further highlight here the instrumental role
language plays as a vehicle, not only in the transmission and
reception of a certain knowledge or the reflection and description of
reality but also as a means central to the construction of this reality
(Montgomery et al., 1992) and our perception of it, and the angle we
adopt in our interpretation of it; I highlight the role of language as a
means central to the establishment and maintenance of ideologies
and hence the perpetuation of the status quo; a means central to
social control and domination, to normalisation and naturalisation
(Fairclough, 2001a; Thomas et al., 2004), to persuasion (Cook,
2003), to manipulation and mystification (O’Halloran, 2003; Wodak
and Meyer, 2009), to “abstraction and euphemism” (Cohn, 1987), to
desensitisation and deadening (Misaddi, 2007), to “power and power
abuse,” (Van Dijk, 2008), to legitimation or delegitimation (Amer,
2009), etc.
Here I stress the problem-oriented, eclectic and interdisciplinary,
critical and hermeneutic, transforming or emancipatory and linguistic
character and orientation of CDA, characteristics that, according to
Wodak and Meyer (2009: 2) set it apart from other approaches to
Discourse Studies such as Discourse Analysis.
I lay great emphasis on the transforming or emancipatory role CDA
plays in demystifying Israelispeak, in detecting and unearthing the
discourse strategies and linguistic means used to justify, legitimate,
delegitimate, stabilise, intensify, perpetuate, etc. a certain state of
affairs. I highlight the democratic role CDA plays in enlightenment
and emancipation, or as Misaddi (2007) - in his seminal book:
Politics and the Authority of Language, crafted in Arabic - puts it:
“the emancipation of a people from the oppression of politics,” which
“starts with the critical analysis and exposition of the linguistic
manipulations or manoeuvres of politicians” (p. 357).
As stated in Chapter 1, such critical analysis can sensitise readers’
awareness and thus make them “more able to resist manipulation”
(Cook, 2003: 122; Fairclough, 2001a). It helps uncover newspeak or
those linguistic manipulations of politicians, and thus “empower
those who are being manipulated” (Cook, 2003: 62) to discursively
resist such manipulation to free themselves from the domination or
99
abuse of the dominant bloc, and the oppression of what I called in
Chapter 1the political cabal.
Next, the chapter provides a concise review of the prominent
proposals, presented for an end to the Israeli occupation, through
the construction of a certain modus vivendi, and closes with a review
of related research works.
Therefore, this chapter can be thought of as made of two conceptual
parts; while the first is devoted to the elaboration and review of
certain cornerstones or works in the fields of discourse and CDA
and their relation to domination and control and enlightenment and
emancipation, respectively, the second - an extension of Chapter
Two - provides an outline of the major patterns of settlement
proposed for ending “decades of confrontation and conflict” through
the ‘establishment’ of a Palestinian state as a solution to the
protracted Arab-Israeli entanglement.
In dealing with the first part, the chapter focuses primarily on the first
prime objective of this study: demonstrating and hence sensitising
readers’ awareness of the reproductive function of language or
discourse, the role discourse plays in constructing reality and
reproducing the status quo on the one hand; and helping increase
readers’ consciousness of the transforming function of discourse,
the role the critical studies of discourse play in emancipation or
social change on the other.
In brief, this chapter reviews literature on the three main conceptual
features, referred to in Chapter 1 as the tripartite structure of study:
Discourse, CDA, and the Palestine Question.
3.2 LANGUAGE BEYOND COMMUNICATION: AN OVERVIEW
Physically, human beings are generally among the weakest of

animals. In terms of strength or celerity or agility, for example,
humans, when compared with many other creatures in the kingdom
of animals or birds or even insects, pale into insignificance. Despite
such fact, the human being has conquered, not only the planet Earth
and tamed and harnessed the forces and resources of nature to
their needs, but also gone into other spatial and temporal
dimensions as to conquer and yield malleable other Worlds. Homo
sapiens have been able to do this and far more, primarily through
one extraordinary and unique human-specific faculty: beyan.
According to Harris and Taylor (1989: 177), “Many philosophers had
agreed that without language (beyan) human reason would be
deprived of its principal instrument of expression,” thus making this
faculty central to the essence of man. Indeed, as Harris and Taylor
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(1989: xi) proclaim, it is “the power of logos,” the characteristic that
is, not only “distinguishing man from beast” (1989: 126) but also
empowering man over beast that sets apart the human being as
unique and powerful.
What Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) called in his theory of the
linguistic sign: langue, the Greek word logos - translated into English
as ‘speech’ (“word, reason”) or the Arabic word beyan, translated as
‘speech and articulate thought’ (Mohd Asad) or ‘speech and
Intelligence,’ according to Abdullah Yusuf Ali (2007) - designates
“not merely the capacity for articulate discourse but the [inseparable]
rational faculty underlying and informing the spoken word in all its
forms” (Harris and Taylor, 1989: xi).
Hence, what logos or beyan and Saussure’s notion of langue have
in common, according to Harris and Taylor (1989: 177) “is the idea
of a single organizational structure which accounts simultaneously
for both human speech and human reason”. They account for the
inseparability of thought and sound or sound and thought as
stressed by Saussure in his 1916 posthumously published Cours de
Linguistique Générale, thus setting apart the human being as
unique.
This intrinsic interrelation of human speech and human reason, of
language and the mind or brain, of language and perception, of
thought and articulation, of the human being and beyan, this
“intrinsic inseparability of the phonetic and conceptual facets of
language” (Saussure, 1916; cited in Harris and Taylor, 1989: 177),
of the signifier (sound sequence or label) and signified (meaning or
concept) as termed and stressed by Saussure (1989) (Thomas et
al., 2004), is what makes language come into a unique position of
power and influence and what makes man, as noted, unique.
So without language, not only do humans cease to be humans in the
sense of being articulate, rational and intelligent, but also become
possibly the most vulnerable among the Sustainer’s diverse
creations. So, it is beyan, logos, this capacity for articulate discourse
and thought, speaking and thinking which, in the words of Harris and
Taylor (1989: xi), “distinguishes humanity from all other living
species, and it is logos which provides the basis for the Classical
definition of the human being as the ‘rational animal’”.
It is clear, therefore, that it is language, this miraculous or God-given
faculty of beyan that has distinguished man, making him a unique
creation, a human being. It is this that has thus made man articulate,
and thus rational, intelligent and accountable; a thesis that makes
language to precede thinking or determine it; the (relativist) notion
that the structure of language determines the structure of thought; or
to use Badi and Tajdin’s (2005: 193) words: “I Speak, Therefore I
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Think,” with its obvious allusion to Descartes’ Latinate formula:
“cogito ergo sum”: I think, therefore I am.
Hence, according to Saussure, who viewed sound and thought or
thought and sound as inseparable, languages are “the instruments
which enable human beings to achieve a rational comprehension of
the world in which they live” (Harris and Taylor, 1989: 177).
Therefore, “instead of seeing words as mere adjuncts to our grasp of
reality, Saussure saw our understanding of reality as depending
essentially upon our social use of the verbal signs which constitute
the language we use” (1989: 177). So it is because we speak that
we think. Hence is the view that language constitutes reality; that our
perception, conception and comprehension of reality are dependent
on language; that our understanding of what exists around us is
language-dependent; that our “composition, decomposition and
recomposition of thoughts and ideas” as noted by Condillac (Harris
and Taylor, 1989) are dependent on language; that “thought is
dependent on words” (Orwell, 1949/2008).
In other words, if language does not exist, what we perceive as a
laptop or table, for instance, will not exist; it is through logos that
they have been conceived; it is through what we call language that a
laptop has become or come to be known as a laptop, and a table, a
table, etc.
Similarly, the manufacture of events and the development of social
and professional positions are largely constructed and made
possible through language. Thus, not only does language reflect
one’s subject position, as qualified and constrained by a certain
discourse type, e.g. medical discourse, but also construct it. In other
words, there is no way a doctor or a professional in any field can
become so without the constructing medium of language. Thus a
subject who has become a doctor, for example, has become so
because of being trained through language in the discourse type
responsible for the constraint and hence qualification of that subject
in that field, the medical field (Fairclough, 2001a), a fact that goes
beyond the traditional conception of language as a mere means of
communication.
Thus again, in the words of the founder of structuralism, “words are
not peripheral but, on the contrary, central to human life (Harris and
Taylor, 1989: 177). “Human existence,” according to Saussure, “is
by definition, a linguistically articulated existence”. It is all about
language! Many of our daily activities and “professional practices”
are, as suggested by Christopher Candlin in his preface to
Fairclough’s 1995 publication: Critical Discourse Analysis, “most
obviously languaged”. “We manage our affairs by use of language.
We use it to construct a social reality to suit our needs” (Widdowson,
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1992: 75). Indeed, as put by Cook (2003: 3), “Language is at the
heart of human life”. “Without it,” he continues:
most of our activities are inconceivable. Try to imagine

relating to your family, making friends, learning, falling in
love, forming a relationship, being a parent [...], having
political ideals, or taking political action, without using
words.
An instrument central to human existence and coexistence, thus,

language or more accurately beyan is what makes human beings
when compared with all other living organisms or creations,
powerful, unique, and accountable. It is what, as can be gathered
from the works of such scholars, makes the rational animal, rational
or man, man.
As such a fact or connection might not be lucid to ordinary people
given the notion that language is conceived of as merely a means of
communication, and not the essence of their humanity, rationality
and thus singularity and accountability, I set out in this section of the
chapter to look into some purposes and aspects of language uses,
purposes and aspects or functions other than those of mere
communication and social interaction. I look in particular into those
functions of language where the tussle in power relations and social
change is the focus.
My aim from this is to clarify, in relation to or through a review of
literature, such connection and the notion of the “multifunctionality of
language” and its centrality to power creation and power
perpetuation (discourse or the reproductive function of language) on
the one hand, and enlightenment and emancipation from such
domination (CDA or the transforming function of language) on the
other hand.
Hence, it is this focus or these two functions of language use in
particular that are the primary concern of this chapter and one of the
two main objectives of the study as a whole; an aspect of language
use that makes us view language as a hegemonic, mind-taming,
mind-shaping tool rather than a neutral means of communication; a
tool for wielding influence; and a tool for political emancipation rather
than mere chatting, and hence the title of this section: Language
beyond Communication.
Thus, away from language as a tool of mere or neutral
communication, let us now explore some of the functions besides or
beyond mere communication; and hence look into the
roles/functions language - through the various discourses that make
up identities, relationships and “bodies of knowledge” (Halliday,
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1978; 2004; Fairclough, 1995; 2001; Titscher et al., 2000) that in
turn constitute “sets of practices,” and through the various “societal
meaning-making systems” or the ideological apparatuses of the
state - plays in the dynamics of power.
3.2.1 Language: Multifunctionality and Centrality
According to Thomas, Wareing, Singh, Peccei, Thornborrow and

Jones, (2004: 6), “There are several different ways of thinking about
language; which way you think about it depends on which aspect of
language you are interested in”. Thus, language can be approached
from a Structuralist perspective or a Functionalist perspective, as a
meaning potential; or can be thought of a system for the conveyance
of social and personal needs, or in terms of diversity and variation,
or the different pragmatic functions carried out through various
linguistic structures, or in terms of competence and performance, or
as a means of dominance and hegemony, or enlightenment and
emancipation, etc. Put differently, language can be viewed or
studied from many different angles. This is an aspect about
language that corroborates the assumption that language mediates
human life in all its aspects and complexities; making it possible for
us to carry out a wide array of various instrumental functions we
need to carry for us to live and function in a given community or
society (for an exposition of some of those functions, see Halliday,
1973 and 1975).
Drawing on Roman Jakobson’s (1896-1982) work on the six basic
functions of language, Thomas and associates (2004) observe that
“In the course of a day you will probably use language referentially,
affectively, aesthetically and phatically” (p. 8). The other two
functions are the “conative” and “metalingual” as expounded by
Jakobson. Out of these six functions, it is only the referential that is
concerned with the transmission of information; and though the
transmission of information is associated with power and is hence
significant, it is the other purposes behind communication that I
focus on in this work: communication, not in the traditional sense of
language being an innocuous or neutral means for the transmission
of information but rather, as observed by Thomas and associates
(2004: xviii), “a channel for how we see and construct the world
around us,” a means of shaping thoughts and affecting perception,
“a way of behaving and making others behave” (Firth, quoted by
Brown, 2000, 250), a means of naturalising us into accepting certain
ideas […] (2004), a tool for positioning and representation, for
defending the indefensible, for the exercise of power, or as aptly put
104
by Habermas (1967: 259) “a medium of domination and social force”
(quoted in Wodak and Meyer, 2009: 10).
In other words, my focus here, as noted, is on the reproductive and
transforming functions of language; those concerned with the
reproduction or perpetuation of domination, and those concerned
with transformation and social change; functions that again, as
stressed, go beyond the traditional role of language as a means for
the exchange of information, at least in that simplistic sense. Thus
“utterances,” as observed by Bourdieu (1991; quoted in Jaworski
and Coupland, 1999):
are not only (save in exceptional circumstances) signs to

be understood and deciphered; they are also signs of
wealth, intended to be evaluated and appreciated, and
signs of authority, intended to be believed and obeyed”
(emphasis in original) (502).
Therefore, Bourdieu comes to the conclusion that “Quite apart from

the literary (and especially poetic) uses of language, it is rare in
everyday life for language to function as a pure instrument of
communication” (Jaworski and Coupland, 1999). Hence, not in being
a medium for communication per se does the power of language lie,
but rather in its being a shaper of realities and perception and a tool
for the exercise of power and social control, hegemony and
dominance, and the perpetuation of such realities or their
transformation.
Thus, far from being a wide gulf as some may think, particularly
those who view language as a mere or neutral medium of
communication, there is the closest of links between language and
power, language and politics (Misaddi, 2007), and language and
domination (Fairclough, 2001a). There is such interrelation between
linguistic representations and political realities.
Hence, according to Halliday (1975), language is a modality not only
for the transmission of culture, but also the construction of reality; it
is a means of “construing experience and enacting interpersonal
relations” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 30); a means of enacting
and defining social relations and ‘social roles’ (see Subsection 3.2.2)
or what Fairclough (2001a: 31) calls subject positions such as
doctors, teachers, engineers, architects, actors, scientists,
practitioners, sexologists, lawyers, etc.
It is a means of creating agents of action and affected entities; of
celebrity or the making of celebrity (Misaddi, 2007); a means of
positioning and representation; of perpetuating “unequal relations of
power;” of (de)legitimation of actors and events, including self-
105
legitimation (Amer, 2009); of exposition or concealment; of the
mystification or demystification of social events (Wodak and Meyer,
2009: 7); of deadening; of the stabilisation or intensification of
inequalities and injustices (Wodak and Meyer, 2009), of “Othering”
or the construction of the “Other” where the other is being always
denied agency and often made to occupy powerless object positions
(Said, 1978); of “the production, maintenance, and change” of power
relations in society, of the construction of the political event; of
supranational or cross-national détente; of peace or war; indeed, of
a whole battery of functions.
Hence, as noted, away from its being a medium of communication,
the centrality of language to the very essence of human life and
existence, from the moment of birth to the throes of death, is
“something one cannot afford to neglect” (Amer, 2009: 26).
The centrality of language to human affairs is indeed pervasive or
we can state it the other way round that the pervasiveness of
language in human affairs is central. Hence, language, according to
Misaddi (2007) is central to positioning and responsibility; and
according to Simpson (1993) to the adoption or projection and
communication of a certain attitude or position, and the change of
existing ones.
It is, as observed by Misaddi (2007) central to the encapsulation of
the past and present, to the undertaking of a certain promise with
history, to the ciphered reduction of politics and history, and to the
change of the course of history.
Misaddi (2007) further notes that language is also central to
warmongering or pacification; to the construction of operational
names of wars (see Subsection 3.2.10) that cause certain
connotations to reverberate or illusively bespeak some calculated
political implications; it is thus a means for mystification and
manipulation.
A “loaded weapon,” a tool instrumental in power acquisition and
power relations, language according to Thomas and associates
(2004), is central to the manufacture of ideology, consent and
domination. It is, as observed by Van Dijk (1993; quoted in Titscher
et al., 2000) central to management of the mind, and, as al
Ghathami (2004) states, the control of cognition and the elicitation of
its responses.
Furthermore, language, in the words of Thomas and associates
(2004: 170) is often central to one’s “sense of cultural identity”. They
note that it is central to the construction and preservation of personal
or individual, and group/social or ethnic identity; central also it is to
the accentuation of the “‘alien’ identity of ethnic minorities” (p. 110).
More specifically, they observe that “the construction of personal
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identities” takes place through “the use of names and systems of
address,” and “the construction of group identity” takes place
through “types of representation and adherence to linguistic norms”
(p. 172). Now, as the sole means to do this, i.e. naming and
representing, is language, then again we can see how central
language is to the construction of our identities and thus who we
are, “and where we belong and why, and how we relate to those
around us” (Joseph, 2013: 55).
Language, as noted by Thomas and associates (2004) is also
central to “creating social distance or intimacy,” to “marking
deference [...] or insult,” etc. (p. 164). The centrality of language,
according to them, can also be seen in its role in making a certain
member a core or peripheral member of the membership of a
particular group, as well as their position within it.
Thomas and associates (2004) also note that language is also the
means to carry out style-shifting or audience design as termed by
Bell (1984) or simply register: the linguistic convergence or linguistic
divergence made by speakers to either “fit more closely with those
of the person they happen to be talking to” in order to “show
solidarity and approval in their dealings” or to “emphasise the
difference between themselves and the person or people they are
talking to” (p. 169). So whether a speaker chooses, for whatever
reason, to converge (linguistic convergence) with or diverge
(linguistic divergence) from the linguistic norms of a certain group,
variety or register and hence display either solidarity or distance is
language-dependent.
Central is also language, as noted by Misaddi (2007), to the
construction of deflection or diversion of attention, collective
unconsciousness and desensitisation, doping and the deadening of
the senses (see infra Subsection 3.2.5).
Therefore, the linguistic sign or linguistic representation can be
used, as maintained by various language scholars and CDA
researchers such as Cohn (1987); Montgomery and associates
(1992); Simpson (1993); Titscher and associates (2000); Fairclough
(2001; 2009); Cook (2003); O’Halloran (2003); al Ghathami (2004);
Thomas and associates (2004); Misaddi (2007); Van Dijk (2008;
2009); Amer (2009); Wodak and Meyer (2009); Reisigl and Wodak
(2009), etc., to influence and control cognition; to manage the mind
and determine or at least shape thought, to affect perception and
deflect attention, to mystify events, to manipulate us into
mechanically doing things we would not, if said the normal way, do,
to deaden the senses, to “foreground or [...] obscure responsibility
and agency,” to “make notions which are in fact debatable seem like
‘givens’” or to make “questionable ideas or issues more palatable
107
and ‘normal’” or in the words of Orwell (1949): “to make lies sound
truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of
solidity to pure wind” (cited in Sant, 2008: 35).
So, language can be employed, in connection with political events,
by “power-holders” (Fairclough, 2001a) and “powerful social actors”
(Amer, 2009) or more generally those conscious of its power to
either dispose the target audience towards a particular interpretation
and angle of view or, according to Misaddi (2007), keep their minds
wandering without being able to delve into the deep recesses of
orchestrated hidden meanings where different shades of
implications are being reflected against the subtlety of phraseology,
thus making it difficult to arrive at a reliable interpretation, and hence
creating diversion.
Therefore, the traditional conception of language as a means of
communication or the “telementational conveyance of ideas” (Harris
and Taylor, 1989: 114) to use Lockean terms, fails to capture the
multiple functions and hegemonic roles language can be brutalised
to play. Indeed, far beyond communication or the mere transmission
of messages, language can be effectively employed in politics and
other fields to construct reality, to make us ideate the world in a
particular way, to produce and maintain “hegemonic relations or
unequal relations of power,” to enact, conceal, legitimate and
reproduce “power, dominance, hegemony, [and] inequality” (Van
Dijk, 1993; quoted in Titscher et al., 2000: 147), “to identify potential
allies and enemies” (Joseph, 2013: 56), to affect perception, to
position and represent, and to empower man over other beings on
the one hand, and one man over another on the other.
Thus, besides its being a means of communication, a vehicle for
“telementation” or “the conveyance of ideas from the mind of one
individual to that of another (Harris and Taylor, 1989: 110), a role
which might be deemed secondary given what the language or its
use in certain ways can effect beyond such role, language is
“socially constitutive;” it is a medium of domination and control
where the status quo is being reproduced, hence the reproductive
function, or social change and emancipation, hence the transforming
function, an assumption about language which makes it, in the
words of Fairclough (Titscher et al., 2000: 149) “doubly constitutive;”
constitutive in a “conventional” sense, i.e. maintenance of the status
quo, and constitutive in a “creative” sense, i.e. social change (2000).
So language can be employed to either reproduce or resist power
abuse and domination. This is a long with a host of other related
functions, which as noted above makes it “rare in everyday life for
language to function as a pure instrument of communication”
(Bourdieu, 1991; quoted in Jaworski and Coupland, 1999: 502).
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3.2.2 Language: Metafunctions
For Halliday, language - as a socio-semiotic system, what he calls a

social semiotic (1978) – involves and serves three generalized
overarching functions, what he calls the metafunctions:
1. ideational – to represent people, objects, events, and

states of affairs in the world
2. interpersonal – to express the speaker’s attitude to
these representations
3. textual – to array [or weave together]1. and 2. in a
cohesive and appropriate manner.
(O’Halloran, 2003: 16)
Through the [Hallidayan] notion of the multifunctionality of

language in texts, Fairclough operationalizes the
theoretical assumption that texts and discourses are
socially constitutive: ‘Language use is always
simultaneously constitutive of (i) social identities, (ii)
social relations and (iii) systems of knowledge and
beliefs’ (Fairclough 1993: 134). The ideational function of
language constitutes systems of knowledge; the
interpersonal function creates social subjects or identities
or the relationships between them. That implies that
every text contributes -albeit in a small way - to the
constitution of these three aspects of society and culture
[…].
(Titscher et al., 2000: 149)
In his attempt to expound a theory of language and learning, and

more specifically, of language functions, Michael Halliday in the
1970s introduced the concept of metafunctions; the notion that
language as conceived by Halliday (1978; 1985; 2004) is
multifunctional, that each text has simultaneously a number of
functions to play. Thus, “Halliday, following Malinowski’s argument
that language is a mode of behaviour, writes that there is no such
thing as a “purely” grammatical element”.
The assump tion is that language leads to certain behaviour, to act
in a particular manner. It is behavioural. It is functional. It is actional.
Halliday’s success in his tripartite systemic functional model of
language lies in his delineation of this functional nature of language;
of his view of grammar “as functionally organized, where ‘function’ is
understood as a reply to the general question ‘why is language as it
is?’” (Titscher et al., 2000: 170). He has changed or replaced “the
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traditional grammatical classifications and the constituent elements
of clauses which we identify” with:
systemic functional categories which realise or achieve

one of the three macro-functions of language. The
functional terminology is significant because it makes
explicit the behavioural, functional, origins of grammar.
(<http://golum.riv.csu.edu.au/~srelf/SOTE/EML504/Hallid
ay.htm> (accessed 24 February 2010)).
Halliday (1978/1994/2004) perceived language as a means (i) to

represent experience and represent the world, (ii) to enact social
relations and “produce social interactions between participants in
discourse,” and (iii) to relate that to the world through the text or
discourse,” hence the “notion of the multifunctionality of language in
texts,” which forms the basis for Fairclough’s Dialectical-Relational
Approach (DRA) to Critical Discourse Analysis (Titscher et al., 2000:
148- 149).
Within the context of his view of language as multifunctional,
Halliday looks at the major functions of language, this “meaning
potential,” from three broad all-inclusive angles, hence the three
metafunctions: the ideational, interpersonal, and textual. So every
text or discursive event or “instance of language use” has
simultaneously an ideational function, an interpersonal function, and
a textual function, where experience is being represented and the
world constructed, social relations enacted and social interactions
with other people are made possible, and where all this is made
coherent and related to the world through the text (Fairclough, 1993:
138; 1995: 6; quoted in Titscher et al., 2000: 148- 149). Drawing on
this Hallidayan notion of the “multifunctionality of language in texts,”
Fairclough (1995) observes:
Texts are social spaces in which two fundamental social

processes simultaneously occur: cognition and
representation of the world, and social interaction. A
multifunctional view of text is therefore essential. I have
followed systemic linguistics (Halliday 1978) in assuming
that language in texts always simultaneously functions
ideationally in the representation of experience and the
world, interpersonally in constituting social interaction
between participants in discourse, and textually in tying
parts of a text together into a coherent whole (a text,
precisely) and tying texts to situational contexts (e.g.
through situational deixis). This multifunctionality of
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language in texts can be used to operationalize
theoretical claims about the socially constitutive
properties of discourse and text [...] (6).
According to Bloor and Bloor (1995), the three Hallidayan

metafunctions represent the ways human beings utilise language to
bring about a number of functions that are enacted by and
associated with language. In their work: The Functional Analysis of
English, Bloor and Bloor (1995) give a précis of the functions each
Hallidayan metafunction plays as follows:
1. Language is used to organize, understand and

express our perceptions of the world and of our own
consciousness. This function is known as the
ideational function. The ideational function can be
classified into two subfunctions: the experential and
the logical. The experiential function is largely
concerned with content or ideas. The logical function
is concerned with the relationship between ideas.
2. Language is used to enable us to participate in
communicative acts with other people, to take on roles
and to express and understand feelings, attitude and
judgements. This function is known as the
interpersonal function.
3. Language is used to relate what is said (or written) to
the real world and to other linguistic events. This
involves the use of language to organize the text itself.
This is known as the textual function (9).
So while the ideational metafunction is concerned with how we

ideate the world and with what it is we want to talk about, the
interpersonal metafunction is concerned with how we interact, and
the textual metafunction is concerned with how we organise what we
want to talk about: our message, in the form of text.
Halliday also introduced the concepts of field, tenor and mode.
According to Chakorn (n.d.):
Halliday successfully [re] introduces the concept of

context of situation. He states that context is originally
associated with register in terms of the three dimensions:
Field, Tenor, and Mode, which together construe the
context of situation in texts (4).
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Field (topic or the subject matter), tenor (role of the speakers, their
tone and level of formality) and mode (“form of textualization” (from
Fairclough, 1995: 14) or medium of communication) are three
proposed determinants or factors of variation in texts or registers. In
other words, field, tenor and mode can help us distinguish a register
or probably genre from another.
Now, within the context of situation, the ideational metafunction is
concerned with field or topic or content of the text; the interpersonal
metafunction is concerned with tenor or the relationship between the
speaker and listener or writer and reader, and the textual
metafunction is concerned with the communicative mode or “form of
textualization” or medium of communication, i.e. whether speech or
writing, etc.
The metafunctions have been contributory and instrumental in many
other works across language studies including CDA as suggested.
The beauty or contribution of Halliday’s functional model, as I see it,
is that, unlike traditional grammar labelling, they have made us
conceive of language as functional and defined broadly those higher
functions enacted by and through language, and provided us with a
descriptive framework. As Chakorn (n.d.: 2-3) alludes, they have
shown us “the functional relationship between language and other
social aspects especially the social character of texts”. They have
helped us see how texts are structured and why they are structured
in the ways they are.
For example, when we talk about “the representational meaning” or
the ideational metafunction, which deals with field or the content of
the text, and which is realised by “transitivity structures” (Halliday et
al., 2004: 309), or by choices of process, participants, and
circumstances, we know we are talking about register variation.
When we talk about “the interactional meaning” or the interpersonal
metafunction, which deals with tenor or the relationship between the
speaker/writer and listener/reader, and which is realised by “mood
structures,” or the mood system of English, and modalisation with its
two aspects: modality and modulation, we know we are talking about
language and society, the interaction between language producers
and the audience, and the “communication roles chosen”. When we
talk about “the organization of the message” or the textual
metafunction, which deals with mode, or how the text is organised,
and which is realised through “theme structures” (2004: 309), or
theme and rheme, and given and new, we know we are talking
about the different media of expression within a language, i.e.
written and spoken.
The metafunctions have shown us that the lexicogrammatical
features of a clause or discourse are instrumental in conceptualising
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reality in particular ways. Therefore, analysing language in light of
the metafunctions can provide us with insights about the role each
participant plays in constructing reality and our perception of it; and
about who is being represented as powerful and who as powerless,
who is being an agent/actor, and who is being represented as the
affected/patient/goal. Analysing a text ideationally through a
breakdown of the transitivity structures can thus reveal the agents of
action and the affecteds (Montgomery et al., 1992) as mediated by
language.
Hence, as noted, experiential analysis of “transitivity selections”
(Amer, 2009) or “transitivity analysis of clause structure” will enable
us to “identify who plays an important role in a particular clause and
who receives the consequences of the former’s actions” (Shakila,
2007: 8). It can reveal to us “who (or what) does what to whom (or
what)” (Montgomery et al., 1992: 74). In the words of Montgomery
and associates, “The patterning of transitivity choices in a text can
reveal its predispositions to construct experience along certain lines
rather than others” (p. 76). “The analysis of transitivity, therefore,”
Montgomery and associates continue, “becomes a useful way of
exploring the ideological dimension of texts” (1992: 76). It can reveal
to us how language can be manipulated to make us view certain
people or events or indeed whole societies in certain calculated
determinate ways.
In brief, the metafunctions, such function-driven or function-oriented
terminology, I would say, have revolutionised grammar; they have
done so in the sense that they have made us conceive of grammar
as “functionally organized,” as essentially functional and behavioural
in nature, as a tool for the construction of experience and reality
“along certain lines” or “angles of telling” rather than being thought of
as a mere set of boring rules or a neutral medium of representation.
3.2.3 Language: Thought and Perception
The background linguistic system (in other words, the

grammar) of each language is not merely the
reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is
itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the
individual’s mental activity, for his analysis of impression,
for his synthesis of his mental stock in trade … We
dissect nature along lines laid down by our native
languages.
(Benjamin Lee Whorf and J. B. Carroll, 1956; quoted in
Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams, 2011:3011)
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Depending on the “angles of telling” (Simpson, 1993) adopted, a
particular version of reality is constructed, and a particular
perception is induced. In this connection, Thomas and associates
(2004) provide a good example on how the different “angles of
telling” discourse producers orchestrate for ingenuous consumers,
can affect perception. They observe that when in the 1990s:
the tobacco industry in Britain was accused of not

explicitly warning consumers of the dangers of low-tar
cigarettes, which were instead marketed as a ‘healthier’
alternative to the standard, high-tar varieties…a
spokesperson for the anti-tobacco league stated in a
radio interview that such ‘irresponsible advertising’ was
akin to telling people that they’d be safer jumping out of a
second, rather than fifth, storey window (18).
Thus, beyond its banal use as a tool of telementation and the

transmission of ideas, language influences our perception of the
world where a certain variety of tobacco, in our case, becomes, not,
for example, less lethal or detrimental but ‘healthier;’ and where
“smoking seriously” – notice only “seriously” – as I once accidently
read on a cigarette pack “harms you and others around you;” giving
you the image of a loving advising and responsible company, in
place of that of the actually totally irresponsible, self-seeking criminal
company that exploits the tantalising power of signs in further
manipulating the perception of the victims.
So use or manipulation of language can affect the way we perceive
the world and even our own selves in a particular way. It can alter
our perception of the world. In the words of Thomas and associates
(2001: 4), “which word is chosen may… affect people’s perception of
the world, and of themselves”.
Hence, according to Thomas and associates (2001), when one is
given the impression that their bad performance at school was the
result of “low attainment” rather than “low ability” for example, they
may want to return to “learning later in life”. While the lexical
selection “low ability” might indicate to a person that they can never
improve, “low attainment” might encourage the same person to
return back to learning later in life as an opsimath or an autodidact
as their bad performance or low attainment early in life might be
thought of as the result of “poor teaching, or an inappropriate
curriculum, or government policy,” etc. rather than the result of their
own poor capabilities (2001). So while the choice “low ability” would
have a negative impact on the learner’s perception of his/her own
self, “low attainment” would not where here a whole battery of
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reasons could be brought to justify one’s “low attainment”.
Therefore, it is clear how our choice of words can affect our
perception of ourselves and of the world.
Linked to this or more than this is the arguable notion that language
shapes thinking and controls thought. So it is not only that language
affects one’s perception but also as suggested by Sapir and Whorf
“the thought processes of its speakers” (Thomas et al., 2004: 25).
Thus, as noted by Thomas and associates, not only do people
speaking different languages view the world differently (linguistic
relativism), but also think differently (linguistic determinism). So the
way one views the world and the way one thinks about the world are
all tied up with the kind of language one speaks. In other words, the
way we think seems to be relative to the language or languages we
speak. And since each language is a different system of
representation “that mirrors, and indeed so reinforces, the ‘world’ of
its speakers” (2004: 19), then the way those speakers perceive and
think about the world is different.
Now, whether linguistic relativity and determinism, known as the
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis remain a hypothesis or not is not a concern
for this research. My concern is that certain uses of a language do
affect and influence, in a way or another, the perception and thought
processes of their speakers. Thomas and associates (2004: 27)
note that within the resources of each language, various “angles of
telling” are possible. Different linguistic signs and syntactic
constructions (linguistic representations) can make us perceive
things and people, and think about them in particular way or ways.
As observed by Whorf, in his capacity as a fire inspector:
…people were much more careful around what were

labelled gasoline drums than with empty gasoline drums.
People’s interpretation of the linguistic sign empty
influenced their perception of these drums as being safer
than their full counterparts, and obscured the fact that
they still contained explosive vapour.
(quoted in Thomas et al., 2004: 25)
In light of this, “angles of telling” - instantiated in the different lexical

items and or syntactic constructions that wily politicians or those
who wield power in society or generally those who are conscious of
the power of beyan select or derive or even sculpt out of the supple
body of language - can influence our perception differently. In the
words of Montgomery and associates (1992: 76), they can produce
different or “particular versions of reality”. Hence, the choices logos-
conscious users make through meticulous orchestration of
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transitivity relations, and the “linguistic and discursive strategies”
they deploy can encode certain views of the world or make us ideate
the world or a particular issue or event or a certain people or
philosophy or even our own selves in a particular way.
As noted in Chapter 1 and passim, such linguistic practices:
lexicogrammar and strategies, which are “invested with power
relations and ideological processes” (Fairclough, 1992: 7) as can be
detected from discourses of othering and sexism, and in general
colonialist discourses (Said, 1978), for example, can help “project
positions and perspectives,” “communicate attitudes and
assumptions,” stereotype certain people in certain ways, “induce the
readers into occupying reading positions,” instil into our
subconsciousness certain notions, suggestions and conceptions,
and promote certain ideas of some sort about the subjects that are
being dealt with or represented in a certain discourse. So the way
clauses are worded and constituents are ordered serves to construct
certain attitudes and positions, perceptions and ideologies.
Such lexicogrammar or “angles of telling” is meant as it shapes the
political event or reality and our perception of it in a particular way,
the way expedient to the discourse producer and their interests.
Therefore, language, “the great Conduit,” to use Lochean
terminology, is not a neutral medium. Language when put into
discourse becomes as noted by Fairclough (1992) ideologically
marked and to do with power. Implicitly or explicitly, each discourse
has or directed by or calling for a particular ideology, a particular
function, a particular mode of action, a particular view of the world.
Hence, instead of being a neutral tool, “language,” as stated by
Thomas and associates (2004: xviii), “is a channel for how we see
[or are meant to see] and construct the world around us”.
3.2.4 Language:
Construction of Reality and our Conceptualisation of it
Montgomery and associates (1992: 73) observe that the “Selection

of one term rather than another often entails choosing particular
modes of conceptualizing the reality in question”. Hence, as
maintained throughout this study, the “angles of telling” we adopt
through particular “structural and sign choices,” and the transitivity
choices text or discourse producers choose, construct our
experience of reality and our conceptualisation of it (to others) in
certain determinate ways. They serve particular cognitive purposes,
and allow, according to Simpson (1993: 89), “speakers to encode in
language their mental picture of reality and how they account for
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their experience of the world”. Thus, as maintained by Montgomery
and associates (1992); Thomas and associates (2004); and Misaddi
(2007), depending on their political perspective or ideological bent,
viewpoint, or affiliation or harboured agenda, speakers, in general,
and discourse producers or technologists, in particular, frame or
represent events in quite different ways (see Chapter 1 and passim).
For example, in the media coverage of the 1983 miners’ strike,
Montgomery and associates (1992: 76) observe:
the action of picketing was constructed in quite different

linguistic ways by different newspapers, depending on
their political perspective. The Daily Mail, which generally
supported the government position, described events on
the picket line in sentences such as the following:
41 policemen had been treated in hospital;

police horses and their riders were stoned;
five police horses were also injured;
pickets demolished a wall;
pickets bombarded the police.
Here, as observed by Montgomery and associates (1992: 76), we

find that “‘the police’” figure in the accounts mainly in the (semantic
patient) role of the affected (of usually violent actions). Where
‘picketing miners’ appear in action clauses it is usually as agents,
mostly of (violent) actions performed against the police”. Now, “In
contrast to the Daily Mail,” Montgomery and associates (1992: 76)
state that “a newspaper such as the Morning Star, whose support for
the miners was unwavering throughout the strike, described events
on the picket line in sentences such as:
police attacked isolated groups of miners;

several miners were hit with truncheons;
one miner was pounced upon by other policemen;
the miners massed around the entrance;
3000 pickets yesterday gathered outside Cortonwood
Colliery”.
On their comments on these sentences or transitivity selections

produced by the Morning Star, Montgomery and associates (1992),
state:
Here police become agents of (violent) actions by which

the miners are affected. And whilst the miners are
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sometimes presented as agents, it usually involves
processes of non-violent movement (as in ‘the miners
massed around the entrance’) (76).
The transitivity choices or linguistic representations produced by

each newspaper construct, as noted, reality and what we see or
meant to see differently, in a manner that would result in different
ideation of the world or the event in question and hence actions or
reactions. The event in these examples, which is “the 1983 miners’
strike,” is the same. However, the event’s representation by different
discourse producers is quite different; a difference that underlies
different political perspectives; a difference that is carried out
through language. In other words, this “brief analysis,” as observed
by Montgomery and associates (1992: 76), “shows that the actual
events of the picketing are constructed in quite different ways
through the transitivity choices adopted in the respective
newspapers”. Such analysis of “the way events are represented”
can reveal to us, as stated by Thomas and associates (2004: 59)
“how different points of view, or ideologies, are constructed
linguistically”.
Therefore, how agents or agency is represented entails different
interpretations and thus the construction and conceptualisation of
the political event and hence reality. Thus, choosing, as Misaddi
(2007) states, to describe a person who has been trained for
travelling in a spacecraft as an “astronaut” or “cosmonaut” or
“spationaut” or “taikonaut” is not the same as each would be
represented by the Americans, Russians, French, and Chinese,
respectively. Not only will each lexical choice or linguistic
representation (text production) position you differently but also
entail constructing and interpreting reality differently (text
consumption) and hence projecting or foisting a different version of
and conceptualisation of reality.
Similarly, calling the mechanism of Hamas’ takeover of Gaza since
June 2007 as a “coup” or a “military showdown” entails
conceptualising the event in question and hence one’s position
differently, and with each having different implications and
repercussions. While the former linguistic selection incriminates, for
example, and makes the act of takeover as a putsch or Anschluss or
usurpation, the latter justifies it as a decisive inevitable measure to
end a morass (the status quo) and settle a dispute.
So, soundbites or discourse is employed by those conscious of its
distinct power to linguistically construct the version of events or
reality that serves their interests, whether noble or ignoble; to
“produce and maintain social inequalities;” to perpetuate “hegemonic
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relations or unequal relations of power” (Simpson, 1993; Fairclough,
2001a), etc.
Accordingly, language “can be recruited in an attempt to promote or
legitimate particular versions of reality” (Montgomery et al., 1992:
74); to establish and maintain ideologies “to naturalise us into
accepting certain ideas [by making them sound natural and
commonsensical] about ‘the way things are and the way things
should be’” (Thomas et al., 2004: 33).
3.2.5 Language: Construction of Diversion and Deadening
My reason for wanting to spend a year among these men

[US defense intellectuals] was simple, even if the
resulting experiences were not. The current nuclear
situation is so dangerous and irrational that one is
tempted to explain it by positing either insanity or evil in
our decision makers. That explanation is, of course,
inadequate. My goal was to gain a better understanding
of how sane men of goodwill could think and act in ways
that lead to what appear to be extremely irrational and
immoral results.
(Cohn, 1987: 1)
Words are brutalised, used or abused by certain quarters not only to

dispose receivers towards a particular way of conceptualising reality
or to deprive them through language-induced reductionism and
mystification of conceptualising such reality in the way it should be
perceived, but also to create, in the process diversion and
deadening, leading gradually to the total removal from the reality or
war or domination behind the abstract, sanitised, euphemised,
friendly, sentient and metaphorical arcane language used, where the
chasm - caused by such apparently innocent sanitised language -
between image and reality is astounding, to say the very least
(Cohn, 1987). The numbing language of defense intellectuals, the
language of nuclear war – what Cohn (1987) calls “technostrategic”
– this technostrategic discourse is a prime example of this kind of
language brutalisation, where language is made to defend the
indefensible, and desensitise us to the horrors of war through
“abstraction and euphemism” and the use of recurring deceptive and
illusive imagery – technostrategic discourse.
According to Carol Cohn (1987), as mentioned by Thomas and
associates (2004), using terms or euphemisms, for example, such
as clean bombs or taken out or counter value attacks or collateral
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damage, as used by the specialised language of the US nuclear
industry, to mean “warheads,” “destroyed,” “destruction of cities,”
and “human corpses,” respectively, can show us the extent to which
language can normalise and naturalise us into accepting things we
would normally conceive of as repugnant and dreadful. This is
language! This is technostrategic discourse! This is nuclear
parlance! This is Israelispeak! This is discourse with its “enormous
destructive power”. This is the role it plays, as maintained by Cohn
(1987) and Misaddi (2007), in euphemism and reductionism, in the
manufacture of diversion and the construction of deadening; in
exercising desensitising effects on us; in making us accept
subconsciously horrific ideas and horrendous concepts, and view
them as normal and natural.
When the phrase “cookie cutter” is deployed to describe “a
particular model of nuclear attack” (Cohn, 1987) and names such as
“Little Boy” and “Fat Man” (1987) are given to the bombs that
reduced Hiroshima and Nagasaki to a Guernica, and when “clean
bombs are employed in surgically clean strikes where an opponent’s
weapons or command centres can be taken out, meaning that they
are accurately destroyed without significant damage to anything
else” (Thomas and associates, 2004: 28), we can recognise in such
language, as maintained by Thomas and associates (2004), Cohn
(1987), and Misaddi (2007), the horrific power of logos in evoking
images contrary to the grisly reality behind such ‘clean’ words or
sanitised strikes; in desensitising defense intellectuals and those
“sane men of goodwill” involved in ‘defense’ rather than offence; in
evoking images of domesticity, cleanliness, harmlessness and birth
in place of mass destruction, incineration of cities, mass murder and
human death; and thus distorting and redefining our perceptions of
reality and the world; in “minimizing the seriousness of militarist
endeavors [and in] denying their deadly consequences” (1987); in
“changing the reality of war through semantics” to use Robert Fisk’s
words (quoted in Shaun Ho, 2010) and taming us “to pat the bomb”
where the bomb’s lethality, as a result, would disappear. It will be
like patting a baby or pet dog – small, cute and harmless; “not
terrifying destructive” (1987).
Cohn (1987), “who wrote of her first-hand experiences of the
technostrategic language used in the US nuclear industry,” thus
“believes,” as stated by Thomas and associates (2004):
that the ‘angle of telling’ embodied in such modes of

representation makes it easier to ignore the human cost
of nuclear war. It is weapons, not people, that are seen
as vulnerable, which have to survive, and which can get
120
killed, sometimes through fratricide (the destruction of
one warhead by another from the ‘same side’).
Nukespeak is relative to the perspective of the creators
and controllers of nuclear weapons: the worldview it
encodes is not that of the victim (28-29).
Hence, in the words of Montgomery and associates (1992):
Adopting a phrase such as collateral damage makes it

more likely that one will also select phrases such as
surgical strikes with 80 per cent success rate because
they all serve to represent war from a particular
perspective [which is that of the “creators and controllers
of nuclear weapons,” as mentioned by Cohn] (73).
The term collateral damage – a term out of hundreds as indicated by

Cohn (1987) – where the mass murder of people and incineration of
cities is being thought of as collateral, “collateral to the real subject”
which is weapons, helps not only obfuscate reality where “the
seriousness of militarist endeavors” is being minimised, but also
programme and desensitise those involved in the war business -
since human death here does not count or is not the actual cost or
loss. In technostrategic discourse, “the reference point” as pointed
out by Cohn (1987), “is not human beings but the weapons
themselves”. Hence, human death is collateral; it is additional or
secondary damage to the ‘real’ loss – weapons.
Thus, “Cohn felt,” as Thomas and associates (2004: 29) state, “that,
as she gained fluency in this ‘new language,’ the less concerned she
became about nuclear war” and the less concerned those involved
in this business would become about human beings. She learnt how
to “pat the bomb”. Language here is being used as a force for the
manufacture or construction of desensitisation and deadening. And
though, Cohn (1987) attributes two other factors behind this
desensitisation process and lack of concern about human life, she
believes language to be the most “significant” factor, where what
language reveals here is “a whole series of culturally grounded and
culturally acceptable mechanisms that make it possible to work in
institutions that foster the proliferation of nuclear weapons, to plan
mass incineration of millions of human beings for a living:
Language that is abstract, sanitized, full of euphemisms;

language that is sexy and fun to use; paradigms whose
referent is weapons; imagery that domesticates and
deflates the forces of mass destruction; imagery that
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reverses sentient and non sentient matter, that conflates
birth and death, destruction and creation--all of these are
part of what makes it possible to be radically removed
from the reality of what one is talking about, and from the
realities one is creating through the discourse (Cohn,
1987).
Such examples show us the extent to which language can affect and
“alter our perception of certain signifieds (concepts) by replacing
old signifiers (labels) with new ones” (Thomas et al., 2004: 41); to
“manufacture an ideology” and consequently naturalise us into
accepting certain ideas […] (2004), to deflect attention and deaden
the senses (Misaddi, 2007); to desensitise us to the horrors of war
through deceptive and illusive “war terminology” (Cohn, 1987), etc.
When on December 17, 1998, as observed by Misaddi (2007: 66),
American helicopters had bombarded Baghdad, Bill Clinton
appeared on television and said in an unprecedented Anglo-Arab
accent, after he spoke about the end of his ‘smart attacks,’
“Ramadan Karim!”. Can we see the extent language or the
conscious orchestration of words can go in the construction of
diversion and deflection of attention away from criminal acts?
Misaddi (2007) provides another linguistic representation or
discursive strategy or instance of calculated language use that
directs perception away and thus constructs deadening or at least
cloudiness of vision and diversion through taming language itself
and the receivers of language psychologically by nudging them to
conceptualise or not to conceptualise an event in a particular way.
This representation is the antithetical phrase “friendly fire”.
According to Misaddi (2007), first constructed and employed by
Americans, following the shooting and killing on April 4, 1994, by
mistake of 26 soldiers from the coalition forces by the coalition
forces, this antithetical construction was calculated to make room for
defusion and diversion.
So apart from defusing tension as a result of this fatal flaw and
possibly inexcusable error, this antithetical dyadic construction, as
termed by Misaddi, along with other antithetical constructions such
as “creative anarchy” or “peaceful force” and their ensuing
analogous formations, such as “peaceful revolution,” “peaceful
change,” “peaceful estrangement,” “violent peace” or “peace
offensive,” etc. are all meant to make an outlet for diversion and
deadening through directing perception away from the true nature of
things or the horror of reality.
In the same fashion, Misaddi observes (2007) that we are also to
understand, not only François Mitterrand’s 1981antithetical dyadic
122
construction, “peaceful force,” and its subsequent uses and ensuing
analogous formations as pointed out above, but also to view, in the
same manner, the politicism or antithetical illusive dyad: “Peace of
the Brave” or “La Paix des Braves,” its 1958 etymological de
Gaullean origin or its Arabic equivalent ϥΎόΟηϟ΍ϡϼγ" as clung to and
repeated every now and then by Yasir Arafat; ever since deciding to
“leave the horse lonely,” and take the slippery slope to the “peace
offensive,” despite mounting criticism.
This concise account shows us the grave role discourse plays
through meticulous calculation and orchestration of certain patterns
of lexicogrammar in the construction of not only diversion but also
complete deadening or unconsciousness of a certain event or its
thorny dimensions.
3.2.6 Language: Positioning and Representation
According to Misaddi (2007), what one says reveals their position

towards what is being said (see Chapter 1). Thus, discursive events
or “particular linguistic choices” - used to enact or conceal, legitimate
or mystify a certain event or intimate something in particular, or
leave the imagination to run wild without arriving at a particular
implication or...or...- “often,” as observed by Montgomery and
associates (1992: 73), “involve adopting certain positions regarding
contentious issues and rejecting others”. Therefore, Simpson (1993:
6; quoted in Thomas et al., 2004: 32) states:
we can assume that language is not a transparent,

objective medium for communication but, instead, a
‘projection of positions and perspectives... a way of
communicating attitudes and assumptions’.
In this context, Misaddi (2007) gives a good example regarding

linguistic representation and positioning and hence responsibility. He
says that if we assume that a group of people were discussing an
issue and that when they were at the heart of their discussion, a
newcomer, known well to them all and they known well to him,
comes in and joins the discussion, we are to imagine, after the
discussion is over, each of the discourse participants, in reporting
the event, as saying, as a way of representation: “and while we were
discussing, Mr so and so came in;” “[...] Mr... barged in on our
conversation;” “Mr... surprised us;” “Mr... had joined us” (p. 169).
On his comment on this example where representations are different
in the case of each reporter of the event, Misaddi (2007) states that
123
though “the truth is one, and the event is one,” each reporter or
discourse participant had represented the event differently as each
verb used, signals different indications or connotations and hence
positions or positioning.
The point Misaddi (2007) is raising or emphasising in this context is
that whatever one says, the mere act of saying something gets him
or her to be semantically involved, what he describes as “semantic
involvement,” and hence responsible for that position made by the
very words uttered, whether one was conscious of the implications
of what he or she said or unconscious.
So, whether you choose, for example, to describe what took place
on 9/11 as the “events of 9/11” or “crimes...” or “terrorist acts...” or
“suicide attacks...” or “America’s Black September” or just
“detonation of the towers,” you will have to be semantically involved;
“you will not be able to escape from the grip of language as you are
obliged to take a certain position inside the straightjacket of
discourse” (Misaddi, 2007: 240).
So, positioning and representation - or the notion that what a
discourse participant says (positioning) or how they say it or
“chooses to refer to something or someone” (Thomas et al., 2004)
(representation) reveals their position towards what is being said - is
made through language. Language here does not only reflect one’s
position towards a particular issue or event but also constructs this
position.
This is an assumption that, according to Misaddi (2007), makes 5
issues about language or the “angles of telling” we adopt, clear.
First, it makes a discourse participant or producer responsible for
what he or she utters even if he or she had thought that what they
uttered was mere or neutral description or narration. Second, it
makes the margin for objectivity or impartiality very narrow or
limited. Third, it makes language to no longer be viewed as that
innocent or objective as it is often mistakenly thought of. Fourth, it
makes clear the point that people’s awareness of this other
dimension of language varies from one to another. Fifth, it makes
the point that the exploitation of this dimension by a discourse
participant or producer upon their knowledge of the others’
unawareness of this dimension is what makes language to be a
mighty weapon in the field of discourse and domination.
3.2.7 Language: Imperialism and “Othering”
As shown in the previous subsections, language can be used to

subtly promote a certain idea, concept or stereotype or ideology; to
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shape one’s perception of things and ideation of the world; to forge a
certain discourse to enact and sustain domination. This, as
maintained throughout this CDA study takes place through a certain
selection of vocabulary and a certain pattern of transitivity
structures. As stated in Chapter 1, denying a certain people from
occupying any subject position or certain subject positions, for
example, while persistently representing them in powerless object
positions, can shape the minds of the target audience in accordance
with a certain harboured image or twisted view of such people, an
image of them as the “Other,” as argued by Edward Said in his
influential book, Orientalism.
In the words of Divine (2008), “[...] a catalyst for the development of
postcolonial studies”:
Orientalism presumably showed how the West both

created the Orient as a proving ground for its own identity
and forged a discourse that sustained its domination over
a large part of the globe (1).
According to Said (1978), imperialists and writers of colonialist

discourses tend to construct the Orient as the “Other,” “securing
them in powerless object positions and reserving the more powerful
subject positions for the Westerners”. “To Said,” as stated by Divine
(2008):
Imperialism was the great moral monstrosity that had

escaped both scrutiny and a full moral judgement. It may
have quickened the pace of European commerce, but it
also siphoned off wealth and freedom from peoples too
weak to resist the onslaught of modern canons. A large
portion of the globe was presumed to exist primarily for
the convenience and enrichment of Europe and America.
For centuries, Europeans and Americans…hid the
magnitude of their oppression and violence behind
improvised rationales that celebrated their power to
encircle the globe as bringing enlightenment and
civilization to peoples depicted as ‘savages’ (2).
What is important in this context is that, as noted, discourse has

been crucial and central to the initiation and perpetuation of
imperialism on the one hand, and “enlightenment and emancipation”
from the trammels of imperialism or occupation as stressed by
Misaddi (2007) and other language-conscious scholars on the other.
Hence Divine (2008) states:
125
One might ask whether the view of language as the key
to understanding both colonialism and the process of
becoming emancipated from the strictures of foreign
domination has not encouraged postcolonial theoreticians
to treat all texts as alike. Novels, political speeches,
policy statements, and newspaper articles are cast,
simultaneously, as reflective of a distribution of power
and of an outlook (3).
Let us now consider an extract taken from the novel A Passage to

India by E. M. Forster (1924/1952):
These hills look romantic in certain lights and at suitable

distances, and seen of an evening from the upper
verandah of the club they caused Miss Quested to say
conversationally to Miss Derek that she should like to
have gone, that Dr. Aziz at Mr. Fielding’s had said he
would arrange something, and that Indians seem rather
forgetful (138-139).
Here Indians, represented as the other, are forgetful. Such

representation or stereotyping cannot take place outside language.
Notice how Indians, all Indians with no exception, as a race or a
‘sub-race,’ are being viewed, categorised and discursively
represented as rather “forgetful”.
Let us now consider a slightly longer extract that shows “othering,”
taken also from the same novel:
…“Here is my cousin, Mr. Mohammed Latif. Oh no, don’t

shake hands. He is an Indian of the old-fashioned sort,
he prefers to salaam. There, I told you so. Mohammed
Latif, how beautifully you salaam. See, he hasn’t
understood; he knows no English.”
“You spick lie,” said the old man gently.
“I spick a lie! Oh, jolly good. Isn’t he a funny old man? We
will have great jokes with him later. He does all sorts of
little things. He is not nearly as stupid as you think, and
awfully poor. It’s lucky ours is a large family.” He flung an
arm round the grubby neck.
“But you get inside, make yourselves at home; yes, you
can lie down.” The celebrated Oriental confusion
appeared at last to be at an end. “Excuse me, now I must
meet our other two guests!”
126
He was getting nervous again, for it was ten minutes to
the time. Still, Fielding was an Englishman, and they
never do miss trains, and Godbole was a Hindu and did
not count, and, soothed by this logic, he grew calmer as
the hour of departure approached… (142-143).
Just reflect upon this: “The celebrated Oriental confusion appeared

at last to be at an end,” pan-Oriental confusion, a characteristic that
is portrayed as a congenital genetic feature of all Orientals, of whole
societies, and not only that, but also celebrated Oriental confusion
that seems nothing less than a genetic fact; how cruel! How
snobbish! And look at this: “Still, Fielding was an Englishman, and
they never do miss trains, and Godbole was a Hindu and did not
count”.
This is also not to mention stigmatising, stereotyping labels of the
natives or locals as: “old-fashioned,” “…hasn’t understood…,”
“grubby neck,” and “…not nearly as stupid as you think”. Is this a
compliment?
These are two examples of “othering” where the other or them as
opposed to us or we is represented in prejudicial and pejorative
stereotypical terms like ‘forgetful,’ ‘unpunctual,’ ‘backward,’
‘criminal,’ ‘terrorist,’ ‘primitive,’ ‘savage,’ ‘stupid,’ ‘grubby,’ ‘old-
fashioned,’ ‘lazy,’ etc.
My point from this CDA account is to show how discourse, as
maintained by Said (1978); Misaddi (2007); Fairclough (2001a);
Thomas and associates (2004); and Montgomery and associates
(1992: 76) etc., can be used or abused (brutalised) to accomplish
hidden motives; to show the insidious workings or uses of language
in shaping our worldview, in nudging us almost subconsciously into
encoding certain views of the world, and maintaining “hegemonic
relations or unequal relations of power,” in conceptualising the world
in a particular way, in shaking our belief systems, “in establishing
and maintaining ideologies,” in sowing doubts into our minds
regarding concepts we (might have) thought of as universals or
truisms.
3.2.8 Language: Ideology and Power
[…] the study of ideology requires us to investigate the

ways in which meaning is constructed and conveyed by
symbolic [semiotic] forms of various kinds, from everyday
linguistic utterances to complex images and texts; it
requires us to investigate the social contexts within which
127
symbolic forms are employed and deployed; and it calls
upon us to ask whether, and if so how, the meaning
mobilized by symbolic forms serves, in specific contexts,
to establish and sustain relations of domination.
(Thompson, 1990: 7)
Organizations that strive for power will try to influence the

ideology of a society to become closer to what they want
it to be. When most people in a society think alike about
certain matters, or even forget that there are alternatives
to the status quo, we arrive at the Gramscian concept of
hegemony.
(Wodak and Meyer, 2009: 8)
Misaddi (2007: 46) observes that throughout human history, rhetoric

in relation to politics had simultaneously functioned “like a two-track
railway: one as a tool for conveying the message, and the other as a
vehicle for influence and sway”. Misaddi (2007), further, notes that in
the past, getting the message across, whether that of telementation
or that of influence was in direct proportion with the length of rhetoric
or discourse. In other words, the longer a discourse was, the higher
the chances of achieving the end result were. Hence, according to
Thomas and associates (2004):
Politicians throughout the ages have owed much of their

success to their skilful use of rhetoric, whereby they
attempt to persuade their audience of the validity of their
views by their subtle use of elegant and persuasive
language (39).
However, Misaddi (2007) states that things have now changed

where the relationship is based on inverse proportion. Co-option or
persuasion now depends on brevity and concinnity rather than
verbosity and tautology, hence the birth of political soundbites which
employ rhetorical devices and propaganda as tools for political
discourse (2007). Thus, Thomas and associates (2004) state:
Although politicians today do not follow the original Greek

rules in their strictest form, they often adopt identifiable
habits of speech and observe a broader ‘body of rules’
which govern the linguistic structures and devices which
they use to increase the impact of their ideas (45).
128
Now, besides the use of presupposition and implicature as “two
categories of implicit content” (Fairclough, 1995: 5), or devices,
Thomas and associates (2004) quote the following five rhetorical
devices used in political discourse as examples of “identifiable
habits of speech” used by politicians as tools for persuasive
language to “achieve ideological and communicative potency” (p.53)
and consequently influence people’s “perception of events or of
whole societies” (p.46): metaphor, euphemism, pronouns, ‘rule of
three’ or the three-part-statement, and parallelism (pp. 45-53) (for
further examples of such linguistic techniques of persuasion and or
masking rhetorical devices, see Table 4.1).
Besides, effective acquisition and perpetuation of political power is
contingent upon the establishment of a dominant ideology: “one
which makes the beliefs which you want people to hold appear to be
‘common sense’, thus making it difficult for them to question that
dominant ideology” (Thomas et al., 2004: 38). Ideology, a product of
discourse/ISAs, is thus the pathway to effective control and power or
“at least acquiescence,” as “ideology is the prime means of
manufacturing consent” (Fairclough, 2001a: 3).
Ideology, according to Thompson (1990) is “meaning in the service
of power”. Thus, ideologies are “sets of interrelated ideas”
(Johnstone, 2002: 3) that “serve to circulate power in society” (2003:
3), to help sustain the domination of one individual or group or
culture over the other.
Ideologies or those “sets of interrelated ideas,” which are meant to
“circulate power” or the domination of one over the other are
established through discourses or through what Althusser calls ISAs
- (Ideological State Apparatuses) as opposed to RSAs (Repressive
State Apparatuses) - such as “political parties, trade unions,
religious and educational institutions, the family and culture,” etc.
whose means of performance is language. In other words, to secure
and perpetuate power, you need, as noted by Thomas and
associates (2004), based on the work of the French philosopher
Louis Althusser (1918-90), to establish an ideology. The mechanism
for establishing and maintaining an ideology is the ISAs which
collectively “act to integrate individuals into the existing economic
system by subjecting them to the hegemony of a dominant ideology”
(p. 11). This “subjecting,” according to Thomas and associates
(2004) is created by “the organisations and institutions around us” -
what Althusser calls ISAs - through language for it is language that
makes the dominant ideology seems “common sense”. Put
differently:
129
[...] the values and beliefs we hold which seem to be
‘normal’ and ‘commonsense’ are in fact constructs of [the
ISAs,] the organisations and institutions around us,
created and shared through language. It is more effective
and efficient for a system to control our behaviour by
controlling our perception of reality than it is to control us
with force [what Althusser calls RSAs or Repressive
State Apparatuses] (such as the police, prisons and the
military) (Thomas et al., 2004: 11).
Hence, Reisigl and Wodak (2009) state:
Ideologies serve as an important means of establishing and

maintaining unequal power relations through discourse: for
example, by establishing hegemonic identity narratives [e.g.
Zionism: the ‘historical right’/ ‘ancient historic connection’/
‘Return to Zion’/ ‘Land of Israel’/ “land of their fathers”/
‘promised land’ etc.], or by controlling the access to specific
discourses or public spheres (‘gate-keeping’) (88).
Reisigl and Wodak (2009) further state:
[...] ideologies also function as a means of transforming

power relations more or less radically. Thus, we take a
particular interest in the ways in which linguistic and other
semiotic practices mediate and reproduce ideology in a
variety of social institutions (88).
Examples of ideologies are Socialism, Capitalism, Fascism,

Zionism, “political correctness,” etc.
Over time, some ideologies might wane in popularity and the
number of adherents, and some may remain to exert influence for a
longer time or even for good. One particular dominant ideology that
has been there for hundreds of years is Christianity as it is today,
and not as it was revealed about two thousand years ago; it is the
‘divinity’ of Jesus Christ which the Church “invented” by rewriting the
gospel accounts”. “Jesus Christ has been invented by (Paul and
made official by) Constantine and the Church for political purposes;”
to subject the people to the ideology of the Divine Right of Kings.
Ideologies, as maintained by Thomas and associates (2004), are
difficult to question as one is certain to risk being socially
stigmatised as a heretic or dissident or insane. One might even risk,
in certain cases, being murdered:
130
People who question the dominant ideology often appear
not to make sense; what they say won’t sound logical to
anyone who holds that ideology [...]. So, while it is
possible to question the dominant ideology, there is often
a price to be paid for doing so (Thomas et al., 2004: 38).
Ideologies are powerful tools of control and subjection. Thus, what is

made on the ground is a progeny or the result of a certain ideology
which is the product of a discourse of some kind especially political
discourse. In the words of Misaddi (2007: 13): “it is political diction
versus political action” or the political event versus the discursive
event. In a different place, he states that “the speech act or linguistic
event is a political event par excellence,” (p. 338) and that “the
construction of reality passes through the construction of discourse”
(p. 35). Thus, the relation between discourse and social structures is
clearly dialectical. Discursive events or generally semiotic practices,
whether at the dimension or level of situation, institution or social
structure affect the political event, and the political event produces
certain discursive events.
Indeed, the reproductive function discourse has in politics, in
“establishing and maintaining ideologies” (from Thomas et al., 2004:
38) that appear natural and commonsensical, in constructing and
conceptualising reality, and constructing through distorting a certain
reality should not be underestimated. According to Misaddi (2007),
language and politics go hand in hand. They are concomitant. The
presence of one entails the other. Thus and in a manner dialectical,
a political course of action is a consequence of a certain political
discourse and vice versa.
As such, language is not only a means of communication for a
certain political event but also a means of construction for that event
(Misaddi, 2007), and not only that but also continued mystification,
and thus sustained domination. Language, as observed by Misaddi
(2007), constructs and shapes and reshapes the political event. It
manufactures or colours or twists the event in accordance with the
vested political interests and ideological affiliation of the discourse
producer. It can be used or indeed abused to validate or at least
obscure the nature of things by not calling a spade a spade and
hence serve in sustaining domination. This is an assumption that
makes language a tool constitutive of and at the helm of domination.
So, as suggested by Misaddi (2007), it is all about the game of
language in the chess of discourse.
Misaddi (2004) observes that when imperial Powers began at the
eve of the Industrial Revolution to invade, under the guise of
“bringing enlightenment and civilization” (Said, 1978, quoted in
131
Divine, 2008: 2) and occupy foreign nations of the ‘Third World’ –
the “savages” as they called them - a change in colonialist
nomenclature had to take place for such territorial occupation and
economic exploitation to endure in the Orient and other colonised or
would-be colonised parts of the world. They had to call such
terrorism – but which they have never for two hundred years of
exploitation and oppression defined or called as terrorism –
something else. It became ‘terrorism’ later when those nations under
the yoke of injustices and the heat of exploitation began to rise
against the ‘white man’s duty’ or this oppression and daylight
robbery of their lands and livelihood (Yasin, 2004).
Hence, in 1910, Machiavellian discourse technologists came up with
the euphemism “colonialism” whose etymology can be traced to the
Latin word colonia, denoting ‘settlement, farm,’ from colonus ‘settler,
farmer,’ from colere ‘cultivate’. This served in the intended
obfuscation or mystification and hence domination of the “savages,”
whether those in Asia or Africa or Latin America, etc.
Accordingly, an invader and occupier became as someone who
“cultivates” and “reclaims wasteland,” thus turning bloody
“occupation” and terrorism into a noble mission of cultivation and
land reclamation, instead of exploitation and domination (Concise
Oxford English Dictionary).
However, as Misaddi (2007) observes, when “colonialism” in the
minds of the occupied began to transpire as a cunning linguistic sign
for “occupation” or rather terrorism, though as a cultivator in the
minds of the occupiers, the euphemism had to undergo a further
change, and hence was called, following the formulation of the
League of Nations in 1919, a “mandate,” and a “protectorate” in the
second half of the twentieth century; another new invention that
meant to disguise “occupation” again by giving it, through linguistic
manipulation, a new cloak of promotion.
However again, as “mandate” transpired to be nothing but another
guise or linguistic ploy, an instance of discursive maquillage or
camouflage for the same event, a further change took place when
the League of Nations was in 1945 replaced by the United Nations
when “mandate” became “tutelage” (Misaddi, 2007).
Thus, observing the history of the selections or linguistic formulae/
representations given to occupation or foreign domination and
terrorism whether colonialism where the impetus is the ‘white man’s
duty’ and the impression thus given is that people are in a raging
need of help in cultivating, constructing and investing their lands, or
mandate where the impression given is that every care is being
taken in selecting and thus mandating someone over someone
rather than through the use of force, or tutelage where the minor
132
under tutelage is being taken care of until he or she grows up one
day and become strong enough to take care of him or herself, we
can recognise in all these instances the sinister workings of
language or rather the sinister role language is being put to where
language is being brutalised to achieve such nefarious interests. We
can recognise the enacting and reproductive function of discourse in
establishing and maintaining ideologies, in maintaining a certain
state of affairs, in distorting reality, in sustaining domination or
“asymmetrical relations of power,” and justifying or legitimating
enslavement. Notice also how in all these examples of linguistic
representation how a spade is not simply being called a spade.
3.2.9 Language and Society: Dialectical Relationship

CDA sees discourse […] as a form of ‘social practice’.
Describing discourse as social practice implies a
dialectical relationship between a particular discursive
event and the situation (s), institution (s) and social
structure (s), which frame it. The discursive event is
shaped by them, but it also shapes them. That is
discourse is socially constitutive as well as socially
conditioned- it constitutes situations, objects of
knowledge, and the social identities of and relationships
between people and groups of people. It is constitutive
both in the sense that it helps to sustain and reproduce
the social status quo [the reproductive function of
discourse], and in the sense that it contributes to
transforming it [the transforming function of discourse].
Wodak and Meyer (2009: 5-6)
It should be clear by now that the relationship between discourse

and society is dialectically constitutive as discourse, as maintained
by Fairclough (1995; 2001), constitutes and is constituted by society.
For example, “the discursive event,” as stated by Wodak and Meyer
above (2009: 6), “is shaped by situations, institutions and social
structures, but it also shapes them”.
Hence, unlike two ships that pass in the night, discourse and society
are dialectically interrelated. Discourse constitutes social structures,
and those structures constitute discourse. Thus, in the words of
Fairclough (1995), “language is both socially constitutive and
socially determined” (quoted in Titscher et al., 2000: 148). So
discourse can constitute or construct and deconstruct social
structures on the one hand and social structures can impinge or
have effects on discourse on the other. Or in the words of Fairclough
133
again (1995: 27) “[...] social structures determine properties of
discourse, and [...] discourse in turn determines social structures,”
hence is Fairclough’s description of the relationship between
discourse and social structures as “dialectical,” and Titscher and
associates’ of “language and social structure” as “reciprocal”.
Titscher and associates (2000) further state:
Society and culture are dialectically related to discourse:

society and culture are shaped by discourse, and at the
same time constitute discourse. Every single instance of
language use reproduces [sustains] or transforms
[emancipates] society and culture, including power
relations (146).
So, dialectically, discourse has ideational and material effects on

society (Harman and Ramirez, 2007), and institutions existing in
society can effect and affect discourse.
3.2.10 Names of Wars and Political Implications
The use of grammatical devices is not capricious or

arbitrary; that it directly reflects the semantic values
communicated by these devices, and the rational
behaviour of the humans who are using them in an
attempt to communicate particular types of messages
under particular communicative conditions.
(Huffman, 1993: 48)
It has been stressed all throughout this study that grammatical

devices or syntax, as well as vocabulary can achieve such
“particular types of messages”. Therefore, syntactic and lexical
choices or what Halliday (2004) calls lexicogrammar (i.e. grammar
and lexis) are integrated to produce calculated effects and
behaviours.
Semiotic representations in discourse whether political, commercial,
promotional, propagandist, etc., are, as stated by Huffman (1993)
thus not arbitrary or whimsical or coincidental as each
representation whether linguistic or non-linguistic entails a different
mode of representing a particular event and hence the validation or
invalidation, (de)legitimation, etc. of such event.
Thus, arbitrariness of the linguistic or semiotic sign, particularly that
of the designations and phrases of wars has begun in the age of
imperialism and soundbites to cease, as indicated by Misaddi
134
(2007). Hence, unlike the past, names of wars in modern times are
selected in advance as each operational name is being part and
parcel of the psychological war and preparation for the intended
campaign and premeditated operation or war.
So unlike the Hundred Years’ War, for example, which was named
after 1453, that is after the end of the “intermittent armed conflict
between England and France over territorial rights and the issue of
succession to the French throne” (Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
2010), the December 2008- January 2009 Gazacaust, the latest
neo-Nazi Israeli attempt at “cleansing” in Palestine in which
internationally proscribed white phosphorous against besieged
Palestinian civilians in the beleaguered Gaza Strip was cast on their
heads, was named in advance as Operation Cast Lead. It is not
feasible that the Hundred Years’ War could or would have been
named before the onset of those conflicts. It must, unlike Operation
Cast Lead which was named in advance by the military and
discursive experts of the IDF, have been named by historiographers
after the end of those territorial conflicts.
Following America’s ‘Black September,’ the US administration, as
told by Misaddi (2007), resolved to reprise by launching on
November 20, 2001 “Justice without Borders,” the ‘manifesto’ or
operational name selected for the campaign it would use for its
protracted war on ‘terrorism’. “Justice without Borders,” with its
subtle implications is meant, as observed by Misaddi (2007) to
justify and legitimate the harboured premeditated militant dogmatic
confrontations and then invasions and then occupation the US was
planning discursively to carry out. So ‘justice’ “without Borders” here
would be synonymous with justified military action that is neither
obstructed by time nor by space, “without Borders’. Thus, according
to Misaddi (2007: 267), “The operational phrase has [in advance]
conformed to the strategic project, harboured by the US
administration”.
Bringing into the picture another example, Misaddi (2007) states that
when the US-and-UK-led coalition forces deployed troops during the
First Gulf War (1990-1991) in the Gulf region to force Iraqi troops to
withdraw from Kuwait, the following operational names were
employed as names for the following US combat operations:
“Operation Desert Shield,” “Operation Desert Storm,” “Operation
Desert Sabre” and “Operation Desert Farewell”. Misaddi (2007)
further adds that with such consistency, the US also dubbed its
operation against Iraq in 1998 as “Operation Desert Fox,” and others
during the Second Gulf War or US-led occupation of Iraq as
“Operation Desert Scorpion” (Jun. 2003), and “Operation Desert
Thrust” (Oct. 2003).
135
Such meticulous consistency in the selection of “desert” in the
naming of those military operations was certainly beyond
coincidence or arbitrariness. Misaddi (2007) asserts that only the
gullible can conceive of operational names of wars in our age as
being “arbitrary or the result of improvisation or the presence of
mind” (p. 255).
He observes that one of the implications of such consistency in the
conscious deployment of “desert” in those US operational names of
war could be the intimation or insinuation that war was born in that
region rather than being brought to it from outside. He further
observes that “it is true that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait is from
within the region, but the war of expelling the invader is brought to
the region from without” (Misaddi, 2007: 255). It is also to give the
impression that the US military involvement was to liberate Kuwait
rather than, let us say, protect US oil and other strategic interests in
the region (2007).
When Sharon, as told by Misaddi (2007) visited the White House in
2002, he managed to persuade Bush of the necessity to eliminate
Arafat who was depicted as an aide to ‘terrorists’ from the scene
(see Chapter 5). Consequently, the Bush administration took
measures to eliminate Arafat. Bush spoke of his resolve to talk with
a new leadership (Reinhart, 2004), of his demand for regime change
in Palestine as articulated in his Rose Garden Address in June 2002
(Smith, 2007). His Vice President Dick Cheney spoke of a plan to
execute the “fox,” and American discourse began, while trying to
convince others of what they have harboured regarding “Arafat’s
removal from office” to talk about the “Palestinian Fox”.
Recall, as observed by Misaddi (2007), that the US combat
operation of 1988 against Iraq was coded “Operation Desert Fox”.
Now while we know who the “Palestinian Fox” is, the question is:
who is being implicated by the fox in “Operation Desert Fox”?
Misaddi (2007) states that as certain political events derive their
codes or names, for mystification or manipulation purposes, from
past discursive events representing certain political events, rooted in
the collective political memory, it might not be easy for us to know
who is being exactly implicated by this designation. We might never
know unless we try to draw on CDA concepts such as
interdiscursivity, “the centripetal-centrifugal intertextuality of texts”
(Fairclough, 1995: preface) or in the words of Misaddi (2007) “the
collective political memory” or unwritten dictionary (see Chapter 4)
behind this implicit operational phrase.
Therefore, Misaddi (2007) states that we probably need to bring into
the picture the well-known and highly qualified German Field
Marshal, Erwin Rommel (1891-1944). Called, according to Misaddi
136
(2007), by Hitler as the “Desert Fox,” following Hitler’s doubts about
his loyalty and his implication in the July Plot to kill him, Rommel
was forced to commit suicide by taking poison (Britannica Concise
Encyclopedia 2010).
Now realising that “fox” is being historically linked with cunning or
machinations and disloyalty, we can obviously see, as Misaddi
(2007) reveals, how Arafat came to be implicitly represented, from
the Israeli and American perspective, as the “Palestinian Fox,” and
why the “fox” in “Operation Desert Fox” must or could well be
thought of as Saddam Hussein.
Again, here we see how words are being selected or sculpted with
such care, depth and deceptive enigma. With such consistency,
such implications of implications and such subtlety, war codes or
operational names of wars are, therefore, certainly far from being
capricious, improvised or chosen randomly or thoughtlessly.
At this point, the conclusion reached by Misaddi (2007: 357) that
“the emancipation of man from the oppression of politics starts with
the critical analysis and exposition of the linguistic manipulations or
manoeuvres of politicians,” along with that reached by Montgomery
and associates, 1992: 73) that the “Selection of one term rather than
another often entails choosing particular modes of conceptualising
the reality in question,” and that “Particular linguistic choices, then,
can often involve adopting certain positions regarding contentious
issues and rejecting others,” which, in turn, create different “social
and political consequences” ought to be clear. It should be clear that
lexicogrammatical features involve and invoke certain calculated
dimensions. It should be clear that words or wording in political
discourse is not arbitrary or spontaneous or simply: “it’s just a word”.
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3.3 DISCOURSE AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
To discourse analysts, “discourse” usually means actual

instances of communication in the medium of language.
“Discourse” in this sense is usually a mass noun […].
Media such as photography, clothing, gesture,
architecture, and dance are meaningful, too, and
discourse analysts often need to think about the
connections between language and other such semiotic
systems. […] Scholars influenced by Foucault (1972;
1980; 1990) sometimes use “discourse” in a related but
somewhat different sense, as a count noun. “Discourses”
in this sense can be enumerated and referred to in the
plural. They are conventional ways of talking that both
create and are created by conventional ways of thinking.
These linked ways of talking and thinking constitute
ideologies (sets of interrelated ideas) and serve to
circulate power in society. In other words, “discourses” in
this sense involve patterns of belief and habitual action
as well as patterns of language. Discourses are ideas as
well as ways of talking that influence and are influenced
by the ideas.
(Johnstone, 2002: 2-3)
We consider ‘discourse’ to be:

• a cluster of context-dependent semiotic practices
that are situated within specific fields of social
action
• socially constituted and socially constitutive
• related to a macro-topic
• linked to the argumentation about validity claims
such as truth and normative validity involving
several social actors who have different points of
view.
(Reisigl and Wodak, 2009: 89)
My view is that ‘discourse’ is use of language seen as a

form of social practice, and discourse analysis is analysis
of how texts work within sociocultural practice.
(Fairclough, 1995: 7)
The premise underlying Discourse, Discourse Analysis (DA), and

Critical Discourse Studies or CDA is one. They are all bound up with
138
the notion of discourse as a form or mode of “action” (Titscher et al.,
2000: 26), of “social practice,” of social action (Fairclough and
Wodak, 1997; Fairclough, 2001, etc.), of “use of language seen as a
form of social practice” (Fairclough, 1995: 7), of constituting reality
and of ideologies that “serve to circulate power in society”
(Johnstone, 2002:3), of reproducing and sustaining the status quo or
transforming it, inducing action and social change.
Hence, talking about discourse and its critical analysis entails
discussing – constructing and deconstructing – “discursive
structures and strategies” (Amer, 2009: 8), employed by social
institutions, social agents and those in the corridors of power or
those conscious of the power of the sign to constitute and express,
mystify and obscure, reproduce and sustain, legitimate and
perpetuate, normalise and naturalise their domination and control
over the masses and the powerless, or to transform all this.
Discourse has been noted by various scholars to be notorious for
being difficult to define. In this section, I review various definitions
given to discourse, with an emphasis on meaningful signs or objects
or cultural artefacts as being a major element in many of these
definitions.
Accordingly, I begin with a short definition provided by Stubbs (1983:
1; cited in Jaworski and Coupland, 1999: 1) who defines discourse
as “language above the sentence or above the clause”. It is
language use “beyond the sentence boundary”. According to Fasold
(1990: a), “The study of discourse is the study of any aspect of
language use,” and according to Brown and Yule (1983: 1; quoted in
Jaworski and Coupland, 1999):
the analysis of discourse is, necessarily, the analysis of

language in use. As such, it cannot be restricted to the
description of linguistic forms independent of the
purposes or functions which these forms are designed to
serve in human affairs (1).
Thomas and associates (2004) define discourse as:
[…] any piece of connected language which contains

more than one sentence. It is also sometimes used to
refer specifically to conversations. In sociology, it can be
used to refer to the way belief systems and values are
talked about, as in ‘the discourse of capitalism’. The
prevailing way that a culture talks about or represents
something is called the dominant discourse, that is, the
‘commonsense’ or ‘normal’ representation (213).
139
Fairclough (1992: 8) observes that discourse is “language use,
whether speech or writing, seen as a type of social practice”. It is
“use of language seen as a form of social practice” (Fairclough,
1995: 7).
Hence, Fairclough and Wodak (1997), and Titscher and associates
(2000: 26) state that the “action aspect” is central to their
understanding of discourse, and that “the idea of discourse as
constitutive of reality is emphasised here” (2000: 27). So what is
central to discourse and the critical analysis of discourse are their
being actional, behavioural, functional, reproductive, transforming,
etc.; they are a form or mode of action. Discourse, whether viewed
in its singular sense or plural (see epigraph above or the review
below) is understood by discourse analysts and particularly CDA
researchers as being “constitutive of reality,” of “social change at a
macro level” (Wodak and Meyer, 2009), of domination, of the
autocratic policy of: après moi le déluge, etc.
Hence, Jaworski and Coupland (1999) see discourse as “language
use relative to social, political and cultural formations- it is language
reflecting social order but also language shaping social order, and
shaping individuals’ interaction with society” (p.3). In this sense, they
further observe that discourse is:
a means which both constructs and is constructed by a

set of social practices…and in so doing both reproduces
and constructs afresh particular social-discursive
practices, constrained or encouraged by more macro
movements in the overarching social formation (3).
Acknowledged by the “CDA Group” and other scholars such as

Foucault (1972) to have “rather fluctuating meaning” (1972: 80) or
“many meanings,” ‘discourse,’ according to Fairclough and Wodak
(1997), “is used in various ways within the broad field of discourse
analysis”. “Thus,” Wodak and Meyer (2009) observe:
discourse means anything from a historical monument, a

lieu de mémoire, a policy, a political strategy, narratives
in a restricted or broad sense of the term, text, talk, a
speech, topic-related conversations, to language per se”
(2-3).
Generally defined by Van Dijk (1977; quoted in Titscher et al., 2000:

23) as “text in context,” discourse is used in applied linguistics “with
a range of meanings,” ranging from “semiosis” or the meaning-
making practices or modes/systems (semiotic systems) of which
140
“language, but also visual semiosis, ‘body language’ etc.” are
included, to discourses as categories “for designating particular
ways of representing particular aspects of social life” (Fairclough and
Wodak, 1997: 2).
Fairclough and Wodak (1997) thus define or look at discourse in
two, inter alia, relevant ways. The first way is that of semiosis
(meaning-making), or semiotic systems (meaning-making systems)
of which language is only one system, as opposed to non-semiotic
elements of social life. Here, discourse is used as an abstract noun
(mass noun). The second way is that of discourse being a countable
noun, a “way of signifying experience from a particular perspective”
(1997) or, as noted above:
…a category for designating particular ways of

representing particular aspects of social life (e.g. it is
common to distinguish different political discourses,
which represent for example problems of inequality,
disadvantage, poverty, ‘social exclusion,’ in different
ways) (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997: 2).
Hence, according to Young (2009), discourse has more recently

developed an extended meaning which goes beyond the formal
original sense and use in applied linguistics as “stretches of
language above the level of the sentence in conversations or written
texts” (p. 2), in at least two ways:
First, in the extended meaning of the word, language is

not the sole system of signs to be studied as discourse;
other semiotic systems are included, such as habits of
dress, the built environment, and, of course, gesture.
Second, the meaning of “discourse” has been further
extended to include societal meaning-making systems
[what Althusser calls Ideological State Apparatuses
(ISAs)] such as institutional power, social differentiation
of groups, and cultural beliefs that create identities for
individuals and position them in social relationships (2).
So discourse or the study of discourse is not restricted only to the

“actual instances of communication in the medium of language”
(Johnstone, 2002: 2); it covers other “media of communication”
(2002: 3);” it covers any significant semiotic event and system
(mode). It is thus not restricted to language per se as language is
only one semiotic system/mode or one realisation of what Halliday
(1975: 139) calls the social semiotic (1978), and Fairclough and
141
Wodak (1997) semiosis (meaning-making; the process of
signification in language). The social semiotic or “the system of
meanings that defines or constitutes the culture” (or society)
(Halliday, 1975: 139) is made up of a number of semiotic systems or
modes or practices of which language or the linguistic semiotic
system is only “one mode of realization of these meanings (1975:
139)”.
Thus, the extended meaning of discourse is meant to count for
those other semiotic systems or devices or elements. It is meant to
count, for example, for “visual semiotics” (Jorgensen and Phillips,
2002: 61), “multimedia semiotics” or semiotic media or what semiotic
technologies have afforded us with or produced or may produce
(Wodak and Meyer, 2009: 15). It is meant to include what
Christopher Candlin calls “the discoursed and the non-discoursed
communication” (Fairclough, 1995: preface). In other words,
discourse is meant to count for the multimodal ways or modes of
communication or signification, what Van Leeuwen (2006: 292) calls
“the multimodality of discourse” (quoted in Wodak and Meyer, 2009:
16), which integrate but go beyond the spoken or written (elements
of) discourse as to include besides writing and “verbals” as elements
of discourse or interaction and communication other semiotic modes
(e.g. musical, aural, gestural, visual, etc.) or systems, or resources,
or events or forms or elements, or data or acts or technologies or
means or devices or practices or aspects or any modern semiotic
affordances or “media and genres” – all part or realisations of what
Halliday calls, as noted, the social semiotic (1978).
Multimodal, discourse thus includes all that is meaningful; all that
falls within the social semiotic; hence part of discourse as semiotic
practices are verbals, visuals, ‘aurals,’ “multimedia semiotics,”
“social semiotics,” gesture or gesticulation, traffic signs, codes of
dress or “clothing”, “photography,” “dance,” nudity or déshabillé,
hunger strikes, “film, the internet,” “architecture,” “a building, a piece
of music,” pragmatics and paralanguage, etc. Hence, Theo van
Leeuwen, as quoted by Wodak and Meyer (2009), observes:
[c] ritical discourse analysis has also moved beyond

language, taking on board that discourses are often
multimodally realized, not only through text and talk, but
also through other modes of communication such as
images… Overall, then, critical discourse analysis has
moved towards more explicit dialogue between social
theory and practice, richer contextualization, greater
interdisciplinarity and greater attention to the
multimodality of discourse (16).
142
Therefore, CDA researchers, especially those whose “disciplinary
base is outside linguistics or language studies” (Fairclough, 1995: 4)
must take into consideration this multisemiotic nature of texts or
multimodal nature of discourse. They ought to take into account
when analysing a text that “textual analysis should mean analysis of
the texture of texts, their form and organization, and not just
commentaries on the ‘content’ of texts which ignore texture” (1995).
So here textual analysis should incorporate analysis of the content
of texts (linguistic analysis) as well as analysis of what Fairclough
(1995: 5) calls the content of texture (textural analysis).
Such a critical analysis should also pay attention to the multisemiotic
or intersemiotic nature of modern discourse or texts noted above. It
should pay close attention to what I want to call the multisemioticity
or intersemioticity of texts or the multimodality of discourse as called
by Van Leeuwen (2006; cited in Wodak and Meyer, 2009) is being
taken into account.
Using another semiotic form as part of this multi- or intersemioticity
of texts, I would like to represent graphically and thus enhance what
I am talking about here as follows:
Textual Analysis
Linguistic Textural
(Content of texts) (Content of texture)
(Analysis of other) (Analysis of other)

semiotic media or forms embedded in discourses and genres
the text (intertextuality) (interdiscursivity)
Figure 3.1: Textual analyses
The above diagram shows us the multiplicity or complexity of textual

analysis. So, textual analysis, also as noted by Fairclough (1995: 7)
“demands diversity of focus not only with respect to functions but
also with respect to levels of analysis”.
In this context, Fairclough (1995: 7) stresses that “discourse
analysis itself is not here taken to be a particular level of analysis” as
in Sinclair and Coulthard’s (1975) view of discourse analysis as
“analysis of text structure above the sentence”. According to
Fairclough (1995), analysis:
143
requires attention to textual form, structure and
organization at all levels; phonological, grammatical,
lexical […] and higher levels of textual organization in
terms of exchange systems (the distribution of speaking
turns), structures of argumentation and generic (activity
type) structures. A working assumption is that any level of
organization may be relevant to critical and ideological
analysis (7).
Talking about another angle of discourse, let me now state that at

the outset to this section, I noted that discourse/discourses are uses
of language (or now any other semiotic system) seen as “a form of
social practice” (Fairclough, 1995: 7).
According to Fairclough and Wodak (1997; quoted in Titscher and
associates, 2000: 26), “Describing discourse as social practice
implies a dialectical relationship between a particular discursive
event” and the three dimensions of discourse outlined by Fairclough
(2001a): “the situation (s), institution (s) and social structure (s),
which frame it”. Accordingly, the discursive event is shaped by these
dimensions “but it also shapes them”. So it is “socially constituted
and socially constitutive:”
[…] discourse is socially constitutive as well as socially

conditioned- it constitutes situations, objects of
knowledge, and the social identities of and relationships
between people and groups of people. It is constitutive
both in the sense that it helps to sustain and reproduce
the social status quo, and in the sense that it contributes
to transforming it (Wodak and Meyer, 2009: 6).
Further, Wodak and Meyer (2009) maintain that “since discourse is

so socially consequential, it gives rise to important issues of power”:
Discursive practices may have major ideological effects-

that is, they can help produce and reproduce unequal
power relations between (for instance) social classes,
women and men, and ethnic/ cultural majorities and
minorities through the ways in which they represent
things and position people (6).
In the words of Fairclough (1995: 18), “a discursive event works

ideologically”. It works ideologically in the sense that “it contributes
to the reproduction of relations of power” (1995: 18). Hence is
Titscher and associates’ (2000) statement:
144
[…] it emerges clearly that questions of power and
ideology are closely related to discourse: ‘Since
discourse is so socially consequential, it gives rise to
important issues of power. Discursive practices may have
major ideological effects - that is, they can help produce
and reproduce unequal power relations… through the
ways in which they represent things and position people’
(ibid.). This introduces the notion of discourse used in
critical discourse analysis (27) (see Section 3.4).
This leads us to the Foucauldian emphasis on the “interplay of

power and knowledge”. Foucault (1972; 1973; cited in Clarke, 2005)
had moved discourse analysis:
away from formal linguistic emphases toward framings of

discourses as bodies of knowledge constituting sets of
practices, distinctive disciplinary formations through
which power/knowledge (power as knowledge/knowledge
as power) operates (149).
This is a realisation or contribution that has sensitised our

awareness to a great dimension or source of power and social
control, that of social science or discourses.
Hence, “putting a new spin on the familiar saying ‘knowledge is
power’,” and in an attempt to reveal that “social science is not and
has never been a neutral enquiry into human behaviour and
institutions,” but rather being “strongly implicated in the project of
social control, whether by the state or by other agencies that
ultimately serve the interests of a dominant group” (Cameron,
Frazer, Harvey, Rampton and Richardson, 1999: 141), Foucault,
according to Cameron and associates (1999) observes:
the citizens of modern democracies are controlled less by

naked violence or the economic power of the boss and
the landlord than by the pronouncements of expert
discourse, organised in what he calls ‘regimes of truth’ –
sets of understandings which legitimate particular social
attitudes and practices. […] subjects [or discourses such]
as ‘criminality’ or ‘sexual deviance’ or ‘teenage
motherhood’ [etc.] have contributed to ‘regimes of truth’.
[…] they have both helped to construct particular people
(‘criminals’, ‘deviants’, teenage mothers’) as targets for
social control and influenced the form the control itself will
take (141-142).
145
Hence is Foucault’s depiction of bodies of knowledge or disciplines
or discourses as “technologies of power” (Wodak and Meyer, 2009:
9), as discourses act as a means to construct and then control social
categories or “relatively powerless people” such as “factory workers,
criminals and juvenile delinquents” (Cameron et al., 1999: 141). It is
a means as noted to “construct particular people (‘criminals’,
‘deviants’, teenage mothers’) as targets for social control and […] the
form the control itself will take” (1999: 142). It is a means to interpret
and explain certain social phenomena or behaviours such as
“criminality,” or “insanity,” or “abnormality,” etc. in certain ways and
then regulate and control the social categories that would result from
such discoursing and categorising; thus making “these new pieces of
knowledge function as forms of social control” (1999); an assumption
that makes discourse synonymous with power and power with
discourse, what Foucault (1972) says knowledge/power.
Now, having reviewed the multifaceted, multimodal or multisemiotic
concept of discourse and its relation to power and the exercise of
domination and social control, it is time now to turn our attention to
Discourse Analysis (DA) and later CDA and their role, particularly
CDA in enlightenment and emancipation:
a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing

written, spoken, signed language use or any significant
semiotic event. The objects of discourse analysis—
discourse, writing, talk, conversation, communicative
event, etc.—are variously defined in terms of coherent
sequences of sentences, propositions, speech acts or
turn-at-talk (Wikipedia).
It is also stated that “Contrary to much of traditional linguistics,

discourse analysts not only study language use ‘beyond the
sentence boundary’ but also prefer to analyze 'naturally occurring'
language use, and not invented examples,” what is known as corpus
linguistics (Wikipedia). Further and unlike traditional text linguistics
or text analysis where the focus and scope of analysis is largely on
text-internal factors (i.e. cohesion and coherence), discourse
analysis, according to Titscher and associates (2000), pays central
attention to the five criteria of text-external factors (see Chapter 4).
Hence, Titscher and associates (2000: 24) state that “it is precisely
these external factors that play an essential role” in discourse
analysis.
Cook (2003: 127) defines discourse analysis as:
146
The study of how stretches of language in context are
perceived as meaningful and unified by their users,
and/or the study of how different uses of language
constitute and express the values of social institutions.
So DA or CDA studies how social institutions or societal-meaning

making systems - what Althusser calls Ideological State Apparatuses
(ISAs) such as “political parties, trade unions, religious and
educational institutions, the family and culture, including the mass
media” (Thomas et al., 2004: 11) - employ language to express their
values and hence (stay in power). In this regard, Jaworski and
Coupland (1999) state:
Discourse analysis offers a means of exposing or

deconstructing the social practices which constitute
‘social structure’ and what we might call the conventional
meaning structures of social life. It is a sort of forensic
activity, with a libertarian political slant (6).
Jaworski and Coupland (1999: 6) further state that the “motivation

for doing discourse analysis is very often a concern about social
inequality and the perpetuation of power relationships, either
between individuals or between social groups”. That is why,
according to Fairclough (2001a: x), CDA is “a resource in social and
political struggles for equality and justice,” “a resource for people
who are struggling against domination and oppression in its
linguistic forms” (Fairclough, 1995: 1).
Coming to the end of this section about discourse and discourse
analysis, one might say that it should be clear by now that all social
semiotic practices are part of discourse; that everything that is
meaningful is discourse or part of discourse; that all the various
ways of thinking and talking or drawing or dancing or posing or
stripping or representing in whichever manner expressive or
meaningful about something are discourse. Hence, capitalism is a
discourse, sexism is a discourse, Christology is a discourse, ‘the
Holocaust’ is a discourse, and so is a leaflet, a policy, a play,
nudism, Zionism, ‘terrorism,’ architecture, vision 20/20 and Islam
Hadari, this dissertation, etc... Any significant semiotic event is
discourse. Discourse analysts and CDA researchers must take into
account this multimodality of discourse when analysing discourse(s)
- a form of social practice that is “socially constitutive as well as
socially conditioned”. They need often as Johnstone (2002: 2) states
“to think about the connections between language and other such
semiotic systems.
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3.4 CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (CDA)
In language studies, the term ‘critical’ was first used to

characterize an approach that was called Critical
Linguistics (Fowler et al., 1979; Kress and Hodge, 1979).
Among other ideas, those scholars held that the use of
language could lead to a mystification of social events
which systematic analysis could elucidate. ‘For example,
a missing by-phrase in English passive constructions
might be seen as an ideological means for concealing or
“mystifying” reference to an agent’ (Chilton, 2008).
[CDA aims] to analyse, and thus contribute to the

understanding and the solution of serious social
problems, especially those that are caused or
exacerbated by public text and talk, such as various
forms of social power abuse (domination) and their
resulting social inequality.
This analysis is conducted within a normative
perspective, defined in terms of international human
rights, that allows a critical assessment of abusive,
discursive practices as well as guidelines for practical
intervention and resistance against […] domination.
The analysis specifically takes into account the interests,
the expertise and the resistance of those groups that are
the victims of discursive injustice and its consequences.
(Van Dijk, 2009: 63-64)
Cook (2003: 68) observes that in order to “understand and assess

the information we receive and the motives and interests of those
who are giving it to us,” “critical approaches to discourse” come into
play to investigate systematically discursive practices to unearth the
linguistic resources deployed by the powerful to sustain their
domination over the powerless; and hence help those less powerful
groups, what Fairclough (2001b: 125) calls “the ‘losers’ within
particular forms of social life” to resist being manipulated or
dominated forever.
Against this sneak preview, I begin this section on CDA: its genesis,
significance and application, and aim and objectives. However,
before I start a review of CDA - “an interdisciplinary approach [to a
bulk of critical approaches] to the study of discourse that views
language as a form of social practice [social semiotic] and focuses
on the ways social and political domination are reproduced by text
148
and talk” (Wikipedia) - I start off with a compressed overview of its
literature.
CDA – an “emancipatory project,” a “critical perspective, position or
attitude” (Van Dijk, 2009: 62) a “field of language research”
(Fairclough, 2001a: ix), a “critical social research” (Govindasamy
and Khan, 2006), an “analytical framework - a theory and method -
for studying language in its relation to power and ideology”
(Fairclough, 1995: 1), a “young science,” a “set of principles,” a
“school or paradigm,” a research enterprise, a “research
programme,” an “established paradigm in linguistics,” an
“established academic discipline” (Wodak and Meyer, 2009: 3-5), a
“constitutive, problem-oriented,” “multi-disciplinary and multi-
methodical” (p.2) framework, an umbrella framework to a number of
non-unitary “methodological and theoretical approaches” to the
analysis of discourse such as Wodak’s DHA, Fairclough’s DRA, Van
Dijk’s SCA, Mautner’s CLA, and Van Leeuwen’s SAA (see Chapter
4) (Wodak and Meyer, 2009) – “subsumes,” according to Fairclough
and Wodak (1997: 1), “a variety of approaches [or CDA variants]
towards the social analysis of discourse…which differ in theory,
methodology, and the type of research issues to which they tend to
give prominence”. It is thus, in essence, the “socially situated […],
politically motivated […], and […] discursively constituted […] study
of contemporary social problems” (Govindasamy and Khan, 2006:
146). It is “the study of the relationship between linguistic choices
and effects in persuasive uses of language, of how these
indoctrinate or manipulate (e.g. in marketing and politics), and the
counteracting of this through analysis (Cook, 2003: 8). It is the
critical analysis of discourse strategies and structures “in search of
politically and ideologically salient features, which are constitutive of
the (re) produced power relations without often being evident to
participants” (Jaworski and Coupland, 1999: 497). It is any
“politically involved research” with a libertarian slant that “questions
the authority of truth established by means of language”
(Govindasamy and Khan, 2006: 146).
Now, as suggested by Fairclough and Wodak (1997), these various
CDA approaches or methodologies of discourse analysis “differ in
their theoretical underpinnings” (Kendall, 2007: 23). For example,
while Fairclough draws in his Dialectical-Relational Approach (DRA)
on Halliday’s tripartite model of language or Functional Systemic
Grammar (FSG), Reisigl and Wodak (2009) draw, in their Discourse-
Historical Approach (DHA), on Critical Theory, and use of
“argumentation theory and rhetoric when analysing texts and
discourses” (2007: 23). In this connection, Wodak and Meyer
(2009), state:
149
The dialectical-relational approach [DRA] draws on
Halliday’s multifunctional linguistic theory (Halliday, 1985)
and the concept of orders of discourse according to
Foucault, while the discourse-historical approach [DHA]
and the socio-cognitive approach [SCA] make use of
theories of social cognition (e.g. Moscovici, 2000) (21).
Thus, Wodak and Meyer (2009: 31) observe that though there is no
“consistent CDA methodology” and canon, the theoretical origins of
CDA are traceable:
The theoretical framework – even when this is not

explicitly stated – is derived from Louis Althusser’s
theories of ideology, Mikhail Bakhtin’s genre theory, and
the philosophical traditions of Antonio Gramsci and the
Frankfurt School (Titscher and associates, 2000:144).
Titscher and associates (2000) also add:
Michel Foucault has also been a major influence on some

exponents, including Norman Fairclough. In addition,
Fairclough’s CDA is related to Michael Halliday’s
systemic functional linguistics […], whereas Ruth Wodak
or Teun van Dijk have been more influenced by cognitive
models of text planning (144).
A widespread misconception, some may think of CDA as a method

of discourse analysis (Van Dijk, 2009). However, CDA is not a
method. It is, as noted earlier, “a critical perspective, position or
attitude, (2009: 62); it is a critical approach to “a bulk of approaches”
or methods; an umbrella term to a number of “methodological and
theoretical approaches” to the analysis of discourse.
It thus includes a number of critical methods whether linguistic such
as DHA, and DRA where analysis includes “coherence and
cohesion as well as the relationship between these two ‘textual
criteria’,” and “text-external factors;” or non-linguistic such as content
analysis, distinction theory text analysis, or any other sociological
method of text analysis where the focus and scope of analysis is
mainly on coherence (“the meaning of the text”) or only on “a few
instances of one of these two dimensions” (Titscher et al., 2000: 24
and 227). Hence, according to Wodak, (critical) “discourse analysis
is not only to be perceived as a “method” or “methodology” but also
as theories about text production and text reception” (Kendall, 2007:
38).
150
Critical Discourse Analysis/Studies, as “a separate field” and unlike
“many other disciplines (such as history, sociology, psychology,
etc.)” that study texts, examine and analyse texts “in detailed,
systematic and retroductable ways” [retroductable “means that such
analyses should be transparent so that any reader can trace and
understand the detailed in-depth textual analysis”.] (Kendall, 2007:
38).
Having provided an overview about CDA, now I proceed to limn an
account of the genesis of CDA. I foreground this account with the
following two quotations:
Since the publication in 1989 of Norman Fairclough’s

Language and Power and Ruth Wodak’s Language,
Power and Ideology, and the launch in 1990 of Teun van
Dijk’s journal, Discourse & Society, Critical Discourse
Analysis (CDA) has not only grown into a major field of
research in its own right but has also been widely
adopted by researchers in a range of disciplines from
biblical studies (van Noppen 1996) to urban planning
(Hastings 1999) (Haig, Some Observations on the
Critique of Critical Discourse Analysis,
<http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/proj/genbunronshu/25-
2/haig.pdf> (accessed 2007:129).
My view is that the abuses and contradictions of capitalist

society [“which divides society into two classes:
nonowning workers and nonworking owners”] which gave
rise to critical theory have not diminished, nor have the
characteristics of discursive practice within capitalist
society which gave rise to critical discourse analysis.
(Fairclough, 1995: 16)

According to Wodak and Meyer (2009: 3), historically, “CDA as a
network of scholars emerged in the early 1990s, following a small
symposium in Amsterdam, in January 1991”. In this symposium, the
“CDA Group,” pioneers of CDA researchers: “Teun van Dijk,
Norman Fairclough, Gunther Kress, Theo van Leeuwen and Ruth
Wodak” met for two days and discussed “theories and methods of
Discourse Analysis, specifically CDA” (2009). Wodak and Meyer
(2009), observe:
Since then, new journals have been created, multiple

overviews have been written, and nowadays CDA is an
established paradigm in linguistics […] In sum, CDA has
151
become an established discipline, institutionalized across
the globe in many departments and curricula (4).
CDA or its theoretical origins seem, based on my readings and

cognition, to have stemmed or developed from “Critical Theory” –
the result of “the abuses and contradictions of capitalist society”
(Fairclough, 1995: 16) - and Critical Linguistics (CL) (Wodak and
Meyer, 2009) and “Louis Althusser’s theories of ideology, Mikhail
Bakhtin’s genre theory, and the philosophical traditions of Antonio
Gramsci and the Frankfurt School” (Titscher et al., 2000: 144), and
what has come to be known in social theory as the ‘linguistic turn,’
the zeitgeist consciousness that language is and can be employed
for purposes other than those of the telementation of ideas from the
mind of one individual to another, to that of action, power and social
control.
CDA was born out of the abusive “characteristics of discursive
practice within capitalist society” (Fairclough, 1955: 16). It has
emerged from a heightened sense of the role of language in
structuring power relations in society (Wodak and Meyer, 2009);
from “Habermas's claim that language is also a medium of
domination and social force […]” (2009: 10); from a post-war
recognition of “the roles and importance of language and
communication in totalitarian regimes and their propaganda” (2009:
17); from the consciousness of the role of language in naked,
structural and symbolic violence; from the views, notions and
assumptions that language is multifunctional (Halliday, 1978, 2004);
“that in modern and contemporary (‘late modern’) society discourse
has taken on a major role in sociocultural reproduction and change”
(Fairclough, 1995: 2); that “domination and oppression” take place
and get legitimated and perpetuated in and through “linguistic
forms;” that “social control and power are exercised with increasing
frequency by means of texts […]” (Titscher et al., 2000: 152-153);
that “inequality and injustice are repeatedly reproduced and
legitimized by language” (2000: 164); that “discourse cannot exist
without social meanings, and that there must be a strong relation
between linguistic and social structure” (Kress and Hodge 1979;
cited in Titscher et al., 2000: 145); that “Meanings are produced and
reproduced in a dialectic process of negotiation” (2000); that
discourse constitutes things rather than being a neutral tool of
labelling things.
It has developed from the zeitgeist that “human existence is by
definition, a linguistically articulated existence” (Saussure 1916;
cited in Harris and Taylor, 1989); that “the construction and
reflection of social realities through actions that invoke identity,
152
ideology, belief, and power” (Young, 2009: 1) occur through
discourse; that “social realities are linguistically/discursively
constructed;” (2009: 2); that discourse is a form of “social practice”
(Fairclough, 2001a) or “social action” (Young, 2009, 2); that
discourse is “not merely a surface of inscription, but something that
brings about effects” (Foucault 1976; quoted in Clarke, 2005:174);
that discourse constructs reality or social structures and vice versa;
“that language is centrally involved in power, and struggles for
power” (Fairclough, 2001a: 14); that the structure of language
determines, as maintained by linguistic relativists, the structure of
thought; “that language determines our perception of the world”
(Thomas et al., 2004: 39 ); that thus “language can be used to
influence people’s political and ideological views” (2004: 41); that
“different points of view, or ideologies, are constructed linguistically”
(2004: 59); that “language is both socially constitutive and socially
determined” (Titscher et al., 2000: 148); and that “meaning is
negotiated in interaction, rather than being present once-and-for all
in our utterances” (Young, 2009: 2).
It has developed from the recognition that discourses “construct
particular people (‘criminals’, ‘deviants’, teenage mothers’) as
targets for social control” (Cameron et al., 1999: 141); that “new
pieces of knowledge (constructed in the form of certain discourses)
function as forms of social control” (1999); that language is
responsible for positioning and hence responsibility, that language is
an authority and that “nothing can be perceived outside this
authority” (Misaddi, 2007).
It is a development from the recognition that “the use of language
could lead to a mystification of social events which systematic
analysis could elucidate” (Wodak and Meyer, 2009: 7); that
discourse can be used as a “tranquillising drug of gradualism,”
indefinite temporisation and deceptive optimism; and that language
is a “key to understanding both colonialism and the process of
becoming emancipated from the strictures of foreign domination”
(Divine, 2008: 2) and such indefinite
Such developments behind the emergence and proliferation of CDA,
the interrelation of discourse and domination and the interplay of
power and knowledge have provided, as noted earlier and in
Chapter 1, the theoretical origin of this study.
3.4.1 Significance, Scope and Application of CDA
CDA is interested in a very general way in dominance

and power relations between social entities and classes,
153
between women and men, between national, ethnic,
religious, sexual, political, cultural and sub-cultural
groups. […] Its point of departure is always the
assumption that inequality and injustice are repeatedly
reproduced in language and legitimized by it.
Based on those notions, assumptions and developments that have

provided the genesis for CDA - and the theoretical origin of this
Critical Discourse Study - CDA has emerged and developed as a
highly significant area of enquiry whose applications are - due to its
diverse and eclectic theory and methodology (Wodak and Meyer,
2009: 31), critical and problem-oriented approach, linguistic
character and interdisciplinary orientation – quite wide and whose
major aim is to make through its “emancipatory and democratic
purposes” and properties (2009: 120) our world a better world.
Hence, CDA, according to Titscher and associates (2000):
sees itself as politically involved research with an

emancipatory requirement: it seeks to have an effect on
social practice and social relationships, for example in
teacher development, in the elaboration of guidelines for
non-sexist language use or in proposals to increase the
intelligibility of news and legal texts. The research
emphases which have arisen in pursuit of these goals
include language usage in organizations and the
investigation of prejudice in general, and racism…in
particular (147).
CDA, as noted, is “a critical perspective, position or attitude within

the discipline of multidisciplinary Discourse Studies” (Van Dijk, 2009:
62). It is, according to Fairclough (2009: 167), “a form of critical
social science geared to a better understanding of the nature and
sources of social wrongs, the obstacles to addressing them and
possible ways of overcoming those obstacles”.
Hence, CDA, a science for the critical “analysis of language” or
discourse and thus a “resource in social and political struggles for
equality and justice” (Fairclough, 2001a: x) is “an interdisciplinary
approach [to a bulk of critical approaches] to the study of discourse
that views language as a form of social practice and focuses on the
ways social and political domination are reproduced by text and talk”
(Wikipedia); all with the goal to enlighten and emancipate; to help
eradicate inequalities and injustices, and in so doing make the world
a better place for habitation.
154
Unlike linguistics, CDA is concerned with actual speech and writing
and their relation to social action and problems. Hence, it is more
about what actually happens in a society rather than what should or
could or would have happened. It is not aimed at analysing an ideal
speech situation. Thus, CDA is concerned with actual everyday
speech or locution, with data from the real world; it is, in linguistic or
Saussurean terms, concerned with parole (speaking) rather than
langue (language).
Saussure stated the importance of langue, the deep abstract
structure/system that generates parole. So Saussure’s focus was
not the actual and variable individual use of language (parole) as
would be the case by CDA, but rather on the unobservable and
invariable “underlying system of language” (langue); a fact about
linguistics found “paradoxical” by CDA scholars such as Fairclough
(2001).
So while linguistics is concerned with langue (language), the
invariable inward hidden “abstract system” of language (Aitchison,
1972: 30), or what Chomsky (1986) calls competence or I-language,
CDA is concerned with parole (speaking), with what is seen, with the
individual “outward manifestation of language” (Brown, 2000: 10), or
what Chomsky (1986) calls performance or E-language. It is
concerned with linguistic or “abusive discursive practices” and their
relation to dominance and power relations in the real world. It is
concerned with the “linguistic character” of social injustice; with
social problems emanating from or exacerbated by discourse. CDA,
as shown, seeks to liberate people from “oppression in its linguistic
forms’. So unlike the emphasis of “the father of modern linguistics,”
which was on langue – apparently a fault in or shortcoming to
Saussurean linguistic thought - CDA’s emphasis is on actual
language practice rather than on language as a system or potential
or capacity or cognitive faculty or abstract internal competence, etc.
As such, CDA is a “field of language research” that has to do with
the relationship between language and power or discursive practices
and social structures so as to ensure democratic practices. CDA is
driven by the impetus to set “social wrongs” to right through the
critical investigation and exposition of language usages that lead to
specific and calculated forms of social behaviour or reproduce
certain social structures, or states of affairs.
Thus, CDA “focuses on the ways social and political domination is
reproduced by text and talk” and so the overriding objective of CDA
is “to give accounts…of the ways in which and extent to which social
changes are changes in discourse…” (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997:
1). Jaworski and Coupland (1999) eloquently observe:
155
CDA examines the structure of spoken and written texts
[among other semiotic modes] in search of politically and
ideologically salient features, which are constitutive of the
(re) produced power relations without often being evident
to participants (497).
Hence is O’Halloran’s (2003: 1) view of CDA as a branch of applied

linguistics that is being concerned, “broadly speaking, with
highlighting the traces of cultural and ideological meaning in spoken
and written texts”. According to Luke (1992: 2), CDA “refers to the
use of an ensemble of techniques for the study of textual practice
and language use as social and cultural practices”.
In trying to show the significance of CDA, O’Halloran (2003: 1)
states:
CDA has a number of techniques for uncovering
language mystification as well as language manipulation
more generally which, in an age of political spin and
soundbites, gives it an obvious appeal (1-2).
Indeed - in a technologically predaceous and cut-throat world where

“political spin and soundbites” are characteristic, and where logos is
being consciously employed by power-holders or “socially powerful
groups” to influence perception; to construct particular categories of
people “as targets for social control” or to satisfy their insatiable lust
for power and cupidity; to produce and maintain hegemonic relations
of power, and legitimate and perpetuate the status quo – sensitising
ourselves to the ways and strategies of constructing and
deconstructing discourse whether political, commercial,
propagandist, etc. cannot be more pressing.
Such sensitised awareness - where the exercise of power and social
control in modern society are exercised less by “naked violence or
the economic power of the boss and the landlord,” and more instead
by “the pronouncements of expert discourse” (Foucault, quoted in
Cameron, 1999:141) - cannot be more crucial as such awareness
can empower the dominated to resist the status quo or such
domination.
It can help free them from the deliberate mystification, or “false
clarity” or gimmicks or ploys of modern multisemiotic communication
such as conversationlisation and synthetic personalization
(Fairclough, 2001a) - “a compensatory tendency to give the
impression of treating each of the people ‘handled’ en masse as an
individual” (Fairclough, 2001a: 52) as though each one is being
individually engaged in a casual conversation with the
communicator.
156
Such awareness can help raise, according to Cook (2003) our
consciousness of:
the presentation of the same facts in ways which, while

not altering the truth of what is said, nevertheless
influence, and are perhaps calculated to influence, the
reader’s attitude. Thus just as a glass might be described
as ‘half full’ or ‘half empty’ with rather different
implications, so the same food item can be truthfully
described either 90% fat-free’ or ‘10% fat’. Both are
equally true, but to a consumer bent upon reducing their
calorie intake the former description seems more
attractive (65).
It can help raise our awareness of linguistic techniques so that when

Kaspersky says, for example, that “Already more than 250 million
users are enjoying the benefits of Kaspersky Lab protection,” we can
recognise that there are more than 5 billion 250 million who are (for
different reasons) not enjoying those benefits of Kaspersky.
So, as Cook (2003: 64) stresses, “Understanding linguistic
techniques of persuasion can enhance our ability to make the
rational informed judgements on which decision making depends”. It
can enable us to improve our sales resistance or the ability to resist
spiel or everyday “commercial persuasive discourse” (2003: 66).
You can, as observed by Thomas and associates (2004), begin
listening to what people say, reading newspapers, and watching
television commercials differently. You resist being nudged into a
certain direction or being manipulated by what could be truthfully but
not as transparently said.
Now, though as noted, the overriding objective of CDA is “to give
accounts…of the ways in which and extent to which social changes
are changes in discourse…” (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997: 1), and
hence “increase consciousness of how language contributes to the
domination of some people by others,” all with the libertarian goal to
enlighten and emancipate; and help eradicate inequalities and
injustices, and in so doing make the world a better place, the
significance, scope and applications of CDA are wide and
proliferating as can be gathered from Haig’s observation that CDA
“has not only grown into a major field of research in its own right but
has also been widely adopted by researchers in a range of
disciplines from biblical studies (van Noppen 1996) to urban
planning (Hastings 1999)” (<http://www.lang.nagoya-
u.ac.jp/proj/genbunronshu/25-2/haig.pdf> (accessed 2007:129)).
157
3.4.2 Differences and Similarities, Aim and Objectives
In general, CDA as a school or paradigm is characterized

by a number of principles: for example, all approaches
are problem- oriented, and thus necessarily
interdisciplinary and eclectic […]. Moreover, CDA is
characterized by the common interests in de-mystifying
ideologies and power through systematic and
retroductable investigation of semiotic data (written,
spoken or visual).
Out of the abovementioned review of literature, discussion and

analysis, a picture of the differences and similarities between CDA
approaches and other approaches, and the aim and objectives of
CDA should have begun to register and crystallise. Therefore, in this
section, I shall only remind the reader of these differences, aims and
objectives, which centre on correcting “a widespread
underestimation of the significance of language in the production,
maintenance, and change of social relations of power” and helping
“increase consciousness of how language contributes to the
domination of some people by others, because consciousness is the
first step towards emancipation” (2001a: 1). This is in an attempt to
curb the wrongful exercise of power through subtle linguistic and
discursive representations; goals that, if achieved, can make the
world a better place.
Thus, and based on the 1937 essay, “Traditional and Critical
Theory” of the Frankfurt School philosopher and social or critical
theorist Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) - in which he indicated that
unlike traditional theory where the orientation is just to understand
and explain, “social theory [and hence Critical (social) Theory]
should be oriented towards critiquing and changing” - critical
discourse analysis is driven by the impetus to change the status quo
(Wodak and Meyer, 2009, 6; Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
2010). It is emancipatory and socially transformative in orientation
and aims. In Fairclough’s (2009) words:
CDA is a form of critical social science geared to a better

understanding of the nature and sources of social
wrongs, the obstacles to addressing them and possible
ways of overcoming those obstacles (167).
Fairclough (2009) further states:
158
CDA oscillates… between a focus on structures…and a
focus on the strategies of social agents, i.e., the ways in
which they try to achieve outcomes or objectives within
existing structures and practices, or to change them in
particular ways (165).
For Fairclough, as depicted in his approach to critical discourse

analysis, CDA “should pursue emancipatory objectives, and should
be focused upon the problems confronting what can loosely be
referred to as the ‘losers’ within particular forms of social life”
(Wodak and Meyer, 2009: 27).
CDA is thus concerned with the ways discourse is used to enact,
normalise and reproduce dominance and power relations, or in other
words, the ways Machiavellians - esurient for more power - deploy
discursive/linguistic resources/textual properties to sustain their
purchase on the powerless on the one hand; and with addressing
social wrongs through the exposition of those discursive practices or
“structures and strategies,” carved by those Machiavellians to
sustain their power on the other, and thus work towards enlightening
and emancipating those powerless.
It is this concern which thus makes CDA linguistic, eclectic, critical,
hermeneutic, transforming or emancipatory, and interdisciplinary,
constitutive and problem-oriented (Wodak and Meyer, 2009: 2 and
19-22), and thus different from all other approaches to language
study, and thus humanitarian, enlightening and empowering in
purpose and character.
CDA is critical, according to Fairclough, 2001a: 4), “in the special
sense of aiming to show up connections which may be hidden from
people - such as the connections between language, power and
ideology”. Hence, according to Wodak and Meyer (2009: 7),
“‘critique’ is essentially making visible the interconnectedness of
things […]”. In her response, in an interview conducted by Kendall
(2007) by “means of email” to a question about “why “critical”
discourse analysis?” Wodak observes:
“Critical” means not taking things for granted, opening up

complexity, challenging reductionism, dogmatism […],
being self-reflective in my research, and through these
processes, making opaque structures of power relations
and ideologies manifest. “Critical”, thus, does not imply
the common sense meaning of “being negative”-rather
“skeptical” (17).
159
Wodak (Kendall, 2007) further adds that “Proposing alternatives is
also part of being “critical””. In their reader/anthology: Methods of
Critical Discourse Analysis, Wodak and Meyer (2009: 2) stress that
thinking of the term “critical” in negative terms “as in common-sense
usage” is one of the misunderstandings of CDA. In trying to clarify
such misunderstanding, they add that “Any social phenomenon
lends itself to critical investigation, to be challenged and not taken
for granted” (2009). In discussing critique, as one of three concepts
(the others being “power” and “ideology”) that indispensably figure in
all variants of CDA, Reisigl and Wodak (2009) make the following
statement concerning “critical” or the concept of “critique”:
‘critical’ stance should be understood as gaining distance

from the data […], embedding the data in the social
context, clarifying the political positioning of discourse
participants, and having a focus on continuous self-
reflection while undertaking research. Moreover, the
application of results is aspired to, be it in practical
seminars for teachers, doctors and bureaucrats, in the
writing of expert opinions or in the production of school
books (87-88).
Reisigl and Wodak (2009: 88) mention three related aspects of

“critique,” to which DHA adheres: (I) text or discourse-immanent
critique (aimed “at discovering inconsistencies, self-contradictions,
paradoxes and dilemmas in the text-internal or discourse-internal
structures”), (II) socio-diagnostic critique (“concerned with
demystifying the – manifest or latent – persuasive or ‘manipulative’
character of discursive practices”), and (III) and future-related
prospective critique (meant to “contribute to the improvement of
communication (for example, by elaborating guidelines against
sexist language use or by reducing ‘language barriers’ in hospitals,
schools and so forth)”).
CDA or any discourse study that “adopts ‘critical’ goals” (Fairclough,
1995: 27) aims, according to Fowler (1981: 25), to offer us “the
possibility that we might profitably conceive the world in some
alternative way” (quoted in Jaworski and Coupland, 1999: 33).
Hence, the aim of CDA is not literary criticism or “intolerant fault-
finding” (1999: 33). Rather, in its endeavour to deconstruct
“discursive structures and strategies,” CDA seeks to reconstruct the
world to change “existing perception detrimental to most people in a
society” (Govindasamy and Khan, 2006). It deconstructs discourse
practices to reconstruct reality in a more equitable manner.
160
As such, “a critical orientation is not merely ‘deconstructive;’ it may
aim to be ‘reconstructive’, reconstructing social arrangements”
(Jaworski and Coupland, 1999: 35). So it is deconstruction that aims
at (re) construction. It deconstructs language use “to reveal
underlying ideologies” to detect the discourse strategies and
linguistic means used to justify, (de)legitimate, stabilise, perpetuate,
etc. “unequal social arrangements” (Cameron et al., 1999: 142); all
with the libertarian goal to enlighten and emancipate. Hence, in the
words of Wodak and Meyer (2009):
Critical theories, thus also CDA, want to produce and

convey critical knowledge that enable human beings to
emancipate themselves from forms of domination through
self-reflection. Thus, they are aimed at producing
‘enlightenment and emancipation’. Such theories seek
not only to describe and explain, but also to root out a
particular kind of delusion. Even with differing concepts of
ideology, critical theory seeks to create awareness in
agents of their own needs and interests (7).
Thus, “The fundamental positive in discourse is therefore the

possibility of a greater clarity of vision, specifically of how language
permeates human affairs, offering us opportunities […]” (Jaworski
and Coupland, 1999: 37). Indeed, part of the forensic task of CDA
which, according to Kress (cited in Dellinger, 1995: 5) has an "overtly
political agenda,” is to focus on the negative aspects of discourse
and expose them so as to enact positive social change through new
and improved changes in discourse.
So, the aim of CDA is to redress social inequalities and injustices
resulting from the perpetuation of unequal power relations
(Fairclough, 2001a) or “unequal social arrangements” through
linguistic means. In the words of Jaworski and Coupland (1999: 6),
“the motivation for doing discourse analysis is very often a concern
about social inequality and the perpetuation of power relationships,
either between individuals or between social groups”.
In this sense, CDA scholars, as stated by Wodak and Meyer (2009:
19), “play an advocatory role for socially discriminated groups;” for
what Fairclough (2001b: 125) calls “the ‘losers’ within particular
forms of social life - the poor, the socially excluded, those subject to
oppressive gender or race relations;” to oppression and occupation,
cleansing and elimination, racism and Zionism, and so forth.
Jaworski and Coupland (1999: 6), state that CDA is a “sort of
forensic activity, with a libertarian slant”. The political slant is offset
by libertarian goals, which, in my opinion, cannot be nobler. In this
161
regard, CDA is like positive discrimination that aims at
egalitarianism. Jaworski and Coupland (1999) further observe:
Critical discourse analysis in this view is a democratic

resource to be made available through the education
system. Critical discourse analysts need to see
themselves as politically engaged, working alongside
disenfranchised social groups (35).
Hence is Van Dijk’s (2009: 63) view of CDA scholars as being

“sociopolitically committed to social equality and justice". They are
committed to eliminate “social wrongs” and social inequalities. They
are committed to deconstruct discursive practices legitimating
“unequal social arrangements” and perpetuating domination and
such wrongs. They are, Van Dijk (2009: 63) states:
typically interested in the way discourse (re) produces

social domination, that is, the power abuse of one group
over others, and how dominated groups may discursively
resist such abuse.
Titscher and associates (2000) observe that CDA:
sees itself as politically involved research with an

emancipatory requirement: it seeks to have an effect on
social practice and social relationships, for example
in…the elaboration of guidelines for non-sexist language
use or in proposals to increase the intelligibility of news
and legal texts (147).
Wodak and Meyer (2009: 7) add that “In any case, CDA researchers
have to be aware that their own work is driven by social, economic
and political motives like any other academic work and that they are
not in any privileged position”. They further state:
Naming oneself ‘critical’ only implies specific ethical

standards: an intention to make their position, research
interests and values explicit and their criteria as
transparent as possible, without feeling the need to
apologize for the critical stance of their work […] (7).
CDA approaches or various analytical frameworks are all critical and

problem-orientated. They are interested in social problems and
social wrongs. They are characterised for being critical, for showing
162
up “connections which might be hidden from people,” for “opening up
complexity,” for “gaining distance from the data,” for “embedding the
data in the social context,” for “clarifying the political positioning of
discourse participants,” for “having a focus on continuous self-
reflection while undertaking research,” and for aspiring for “the
application of results” (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009: 87-88). They are
characterised for the explicitness of their “position and commitment”
to solving such problems and wrongs (Titscher et al., 2000: 164) and
thus their choice of topics and issues. They are characterised for
being interdisciplinary; for the treatment of discourses as being
historical (“historicity of discursive events”) and can therefore only be
understood with reference to their [intertextual/interdiscursive]
context”. They are characterised for being linguistic or the need for
linguistic expertise and the salient integration in their systematic
analyses of linguistic categories such as deixis, pronouns,
performatives, processes or transitivity, global strategies, or any
other structures of meaning, etc.
Wodak and Meyer (2009: 31) state that “CDA approaches […] are
problem-oriented and not focused on specific linguistic items, yet
linguistic expertise is obligatory for the selection of the items
relevant to specific research objectives […].
CDA, as stated by Wodak and Meyer (2009: 19), “asks different
research questions”. It is motivated by a concern about social
inequality, as triggered and perpetuated by linguistic/discursive
practices rather than a concern about the formal aspects of those
practices per se. “In any case,” Wodak and Meyer (2009) observe:
related to the object of investigation, it remains a fact that

CDA follows a different and critical approach to problems,
since it endeavours to reveal power relations that are
frequently obfuscated and hidden, and then to derive
results which are also of practical relevance (20).
Hence, CDA is always issue-based, problem-based, that is, if there

is no problem or “social wrong,” there will be no need to conduct a
critical discourse analysis of any sort. In the words of Wodak and
Meyer (2009: 15), “CDA starts from a complex social problem”.
Hence, according to Titscher and associates (2000):
CDA is concerned with social problems. It is not

concerned with language or language use per se, but
with the linguistic character of social and cultural
processes and structures (146).
163
“CDA is therefore,” Wodak and Meyer (2009: 2) observe:
not interested in investigating a linguistic unit per se but

in studying social phenomena which are necessarily
complex and thus require a multi-disciplinary and multi-
methodical approach” (italics in original).
So it is not the linguistic unit per se that is the focus of CDA but
rather the text “as a manifestation of social action” (Wodak and
Meyer, 2009: 10); as a means of enacting and/or perpetuating social
injustice. That is why, “CDA researchers rarely work with
interactional texts such as dialogues” (2009: 10). Hence:
it is not the individual resources and not the specifics of

single-exchange situations that are crucial for CDA
analyses, but the overall structural features in social
fields or in overall society. Power is central for
understanding the dynamics and specifics of control (of
action) in modern societies, but power remains mostly
invisible. Linguistic manifestations are under investigation
in CDA (Wodak and Meyer, 2009:10).
As a final note, I would like to add that CDA, as captured succinctly

by Amer (2009):
aims at denaturalizing and exposing opaque and explicit

discourse structures and strategies in dominant
discourses responsible for enacting and perpetuating
domination and control of less powerful social groups (7).
Or in the words of Wodak and Meyer (2009):

CDA can be defined as being fundamentally interested in
analysing opaque as well as transparent structural
relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and
control as manifested in language. In other words, CDA
aims to investigate critically social inequality as it is
expressed, constituted, legitimized, and so on, by
language use (or in discourse). Most critical analysts
would thus endorse Habermas’s claim that ‘language is
also a medium of domination and social force. It serves to
legitimize relations of organized power. Insofar as the
legitimizations of power relations… are not articulated…
language is also ideological’ (Habermas, 1967: 259) (10).
164
It is these characteristics or principles or tenets of CDA: being
linguistic, eclectic, critical, hermeneutic, transforming,
interdisciplinary, constitutive, and problem-oriented (Wodak and
Meyer, 2009: 2 and 19-22), which set it apart, as noted, from other
language studies or DA or sociolinguistic approaches; and which
simultaneously formulate – first out of the recognition of the
dialectical relationship between discourse and society, between
micro discursive practices and macro social structures; and second
out of “a concern about social inequality and the perpetuation of
power relationships” – its emancipatory libertarian goals, which
concern the reproductive function of discourse to the enactment,
exercise and reproduction of dominance and power relations, and
the exposition (transforming function of discourse) of discursive
practices, structures and strategies deployed by the powerful to
sustain (the linguistic sources of) their power.
Now following this survey in the literature of discourse and CDA and
their relation to domination and control and enlightenment and
emancipation, respectively, I move on to the next section to review
or provide an outline of the major patterns of settlement proposed
for ending decades of occupation and oppression through the
‘establishment’ of a Palestinian state as a solution to the problem
created in Palestine.
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3.5 EIRENIC PROPOSALS TO END ISRAELI OCCUPATION:
AN OVERVIEW
[…] some Israeli and Palestinian thinkers have previously

argued for a bi-national state [the one-state solution] as a
more attractive alternative to separatism [the two-state
solution].
(Oslo Accords, Wikipedia, accessed 26 Dec., 2007: 8)
There is no simple solution for the Palestinian refugee

problem - only a creative one. [...] The model of two
extraterritorial nation states - Israeli and Palestinian - is a
model that falls somewhere between the two-state
solution which due to power inequalities is now leading to
an apartheid system, and the absolutely unpopular
solution of a bi-national state. A sort of “confederation”
may be a more feasible solution: two extraterritorial
nation states, with Jerusalem as their capital,
contemporaneously forming, without territorial divisions,
two different states.
(Hanafi, 2004, The broken boundaries of statehood and
citizenship, <bitterlemons.org> (accessed July 1, 2011))
If the state of Jerusalem is established, the Palestinians

will be required to give up their independent Palestinian
state, even before experiencing it. Paradoxically, they
might be the first to welcome the proposal, provided it
brings them genuine equality. Many Palestinians have
told me that they would prefer a single state but accept a
two-state solution because that is what the Jews want.
(Gavron, 2004: 235)
In the protracted Arab struggle against Israeli occupation, past,

present and future all intricately integrate where one tense draws on
the other. Therefore, research on the Palestine Question, its origins
and evolution, as discussed in Chapter 2, entails canvassing and
reviewing a complexity of literary history.
Similarly, reviewing works dealing with overtures of peace aiming at
the discursive construction of historic Palestine requires sifting
through a tapestry of literature of views, presented in forms of
various proposals, visions and eirenicons, by various bodies,
leaders and prominent figures. Such review also requires some
analysis and critical evaluation of those proposals aiming at ending
or rather suspending such problem through the orchestration of a
166
modus vivendi of some sort between Israelis and Palestinians or
Muslims in general worldwide.
Due to the orientation of study, however, a complete survey of the
many proposals, which actually exceed 100 in number (Saleh, 2003)
beginning from 1937, is outside the scope and significance of study.
Therefore, my review in this chapter focuses only and in general on
two major patterns or trends of settlement that have emerged and
been debated over the years: the one-state solution and the two-
state solution (see below). However, I shall provide an in-depth
critical evaluation – as a transition to the forthcoming analysis
chapter – of an Israeli proposal touted as ‘Israel’s best and final
offer’ - the July 2000 Camp David peace proposal.
Now, besides the “Husayn-Arafat Accord” (Smith, 2007: 409) of
1985 or the “so-called Jordanian option,” which treats the
“Palestinians as non-existent” (Pappe, 2006: 239), and the three-
state-solution or the Egyptian-Jordanian Solution, following Hamas’
electoral victory in the democratic election of January 2006 and then
takeover of Gaza in June 2007, overtures of peace and eirenic
proposals that have been put forth since 1937, in an attempt to ‘end’
the status quo, are primarily of two sorts. There are those
envisioning a one state or one country: the unitary solution, i.e. the
establishment of a single bi-national democratic Israeli-Palestinian
state, or the establishment of a “multicultural nation” as it would be
called today (Gavron, 2004) on the one hand, and those envisioning
separatism or two nation states: the two-state solution, i.e. one
Jewish nation state and one Arab nation state on the other.
In addition, there are those who envision “the model of two
extraterritorial nation states - Israeli and Palestinian,” as advocated
by Sari Hanafi (2004), a Palestinian sociologist who states, as noted
in one of the epigraphs to this section, that this is:
a model that falls somewhere between the two-state

solution which due to power inequalities is now leading to
an apartheid system, and the absolutely unpopular
solution of a bi-national state (6).
3.5.1 One-State Solution
Prominent proposals and intellectuals or supporters of the one-state

solution, the single bi-national state or the “multicultural nation”
(Gavron, 2004) as would be described in modern parlance, consist
of or include Ali Abunimah (2006); Daniel Gavron (2004); Ilan Pappe
(2003); Edward Said (1999; cited in Gavron, 2004); and the PLO
167
(1974), etc. Such proposals or solution dates back to the 1920s
when the German Jewish theologian and philosopher Martin Buber
(1878-1965) “advocated Jewish-Arab cooperation in Palestine”
(Britannica Concise Encyclopedia 2010).
3.5.2 Two-State Solution
As for proposals of those calling for separatism or the two-state

solution, two separate nation states, “the two states for two peoples”
solution, they date back to 1937, ten years before the November
1947 UN GA Resolution 181, known as the (Palestine) Partition Plan
or Partition Resolution, which meant to divide historic Palestine
between Palestinians and Jews. This was stated in the report of the
Palestine Royal (Peel) Commission, set up by the British, following
the 1936-1939 Great Arab Revolt that erupted in Palestine as a
reaction to British occupation and the ensuing Zionist immigration in
large waves or aliyoth to Palestine. Among adherents of the two-
state solution are Sari Nusseibeh; Abdulla Abu-Hadid; Shlomo Sand
(2009); and the PLO (since 1988).
3.5.3 Palestinian Stance
Coupled with the popular position, the official Palestinian stance

regarding those eirenic proposals was until 1974 firm and clear cut:
full liberation of historic Palestine. Hence, neither partitioning or the
two-state solution nor the unitary solution was entertained as
Palestine was seized by force of arms, and that thus the only
conceivable just solution would be its restoration in full.
This stance towards full liberation, however, began in the 1970s to
shake as the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), found itself
almost alone in the face of Zionist encroachments, “American
tolerance of Israeli intransigence,” and Arabs’ trend towards
normalisation of relations with the ‘enemy’. Hence, the stance of full
liberation or the establishment of a “secular state for Muslims,
Christians, and Jews” - “who were living in Palestine before the start
of the Zionist invasion” - has, beginning from 1974, begun to
diminish.
168
3.5.4 PLO and the One-State Solution
In 1974, the PLO, in its Ten Point Programme, and in a historic

compromise and attempt “at a peaceful resolution” - despite the
ongoing belligerent Israeli occupation and ‘Israel’’s denial of being
the perpetrator of the Palestinian ‘Nakba’ - had implicitly adopted the
one-state solution and called for the establishment of a “national
authority” (NB rather than a “Palestinian state” in Mandate Palestine)
on any liberated Palestinian territory (which is to be understood as
part of a democratic, bi-national state in ‘Israel’/Palestine). However,
and despite this unprecedented concession or major transformation
in the PLO stance and discourse, which meant that the PLO was
implicitly abandoning “the 1968 PLO Charter that called for
Palestinian statehood in what was now Israel” (Smith, 2007, 409),
seeing Israeli intransigence to implement the implicit proposal for the
binational solution, the PLO has officially since 1988 made a second
historic compromise that was the beginning on a roller coaster for
further explicit (this time) compromises, and changed its stance and
discourse further.
3.5.5 PLO and the Two-State Solution
As noted, the PLO’s stance and discourse have changed drastically.

It began advocating the old notion of partition or the two state-
solution, not based on the 1937 Peel Commission proposal which
allocated 33% of historic Palestine to a Jewish state, nor on the
1947 UN proposal of partition which allocated 56% of the land to a
Jewish state, but rather now on the June 4, 1967 de facto borders,
which meant the de facto cession of 78% of historic Palestine the
Zionist forces seized in 1948.
Thus, beginning from 1988 throughout Oslo, the PLO, based on
Resolution 242 (1967) - previously rejected categorically, for it
implicitly acknowledged the 78% of historic Palestine the Zionist
Hagana forces dominated in 1948 - announced the Declaration of
the State of Palestine on November 15 1988 in Algiers (Shafiq,
2009), a few years before the 1993 Oslo Accords or “Israel-PLO
letters of recognition”.
So moving “toward the concept of “two states for two peoples,”
beginning officially from December 1988 until the signing of the
Accords in September 1993 in Oslo, “the PLO has accepted the
existence of Israel in the 1967 borders” (i.e. the de facto cession of
78% of the land of Historic Palestine to a Jewish state) (Gavron,
2004: 233), rather than those corresponding to the UN partition plan
169
of 1947 (i.e. the de facto cession of 56% of the land to a Jewish
state) as was pursued by the PLO until 1988. This has meant, as
noted, the de facto recognition of not only the 33% proposed in 1937
for a Jewish state or the 56% of 1947, but rather 78% of the
territories the Zionists have colonised from Palestine by force of
arms since 1948.
However, even those 78% of the total area of historic Palestine - 22-
“23% more than Israel was granted pursuant to the 1947 UN
partition plan” - have not seemed enough to the leaders of the
nascent expansionist state, as they are, in their pursuance of
expansionist antipeace politics (see Chapter 2) regarding the 22%
remnant of former Palestine: the West Bank and the Gaza Strip –
site of a future Palestinian state – thwarting any attempt at clinching
a settlement (see below).
3.5.6 Camp David Peace Proposal (July 2000) (‘Israel’s best and
final offer’)
Example of an Israeli ‘Peace Offer,’ - touted as ‘Israel’s best and

final offer’ - the July 2000 Camp David Summit was hosted by
President Bill Clinton and promoted by Prime Minister Ehud Barak,
Israelispeak or discourse and “compliant media” as the “best deal
any Israeli leader had ever proposed” (Gavron, 2004: 2).
Outwardly appearing to be in quest for the two-state solution, this
supposedly “best and final” Israeli “offer” coming after decades of
occupation and suppression is, according to Finkelstein (2003),
Saleh (2003), Pappe (2006), and Smith (2007) nothing but
expansion and “consolidation of Israeli power” through the further
cantonisation of the West Bank into useless disconnected enclaves
that lack geographical contiguity, territorial integrity and sovereignty
or control of territory and thus viability. In the words of Smith (2007),
this situation is referred to as “Israel’s carving up of the West Bank
into enclaves overseen by Israeli checkpoints” (preface).
Related to this context and in response to the question: “How did
Israel’s [Camp David peace] proposal envision the territory of a
Palestinian state?,” the Negotiations Affairs Department of the PNA
stated the following:
Israel’s proposal divided Palestine into four separate

cantons surrounded by Israel: the Northern West Bank,
the Central West Bank, the Southern West Bank and
Gaza. Going from any one area to another would require
crossing Israeli sovereign territory and consequently
170
subject movement of Palestinians within their own
country to Israeli control. Not only would such restrictions
apply to the movement of people, but also to the
movement of goods, in effect subjecting the Palestinian
economy to Israeli control. Lastly, the Camp David
proposal would have left Israel in control over all
Palestinian borders thereby allowing Israel to control not
only internal movement of people and goods but
international movement as well (quoted in Chang, 2005:
362).
Initially, according to Camp David, while Israel would permanently

keep 20% of the West Bank, it would return a total of 80% of the
territory to the Palestinians, 66% upon Camp David and 14% would
be retained by ‘Israel’ “for periods ranging from twelve to twenty
years”. So ultimately, according to ‘Israel’’s “best and final” “offer”
“after twenty years, the Palestinians would have 80% percent of the
West Bank and Gaza” (Smith, 2007: 503), whose totality if returned
in toto, does not exceed 22% of historic or former Palestine.
As seen by Pappe (2006), what Camp David offered was the
withdrawal “from parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, leaving
the Palestinians about fifteen per cent of original Palestine. But [still
more tragic] that fifteen per cent would be in the form of separate
cantons bisected by Israeli highways, settlements, army camps and
walks” (p. 242).
So, the 20% of the West Bank ‘Israel’ wants to permanently retain
and which preserve “90.6 percent” of the settlements or rather huge
Jewish Zionist colonies, “effectively cut the West Bank into three
sections with full Israeli control from Jerusalem to the Jordan River”
(Smith, 2007: 503).
As ‘Israel’ would remain permanently in control of “the banks of the
Jordan River,” Barak’s proposal was also “intended to provide
encirclement of “independent” Palestinian areas” (2007: 503).
Therefore the outcome of the “viable,” “independent” Palestinian
“state” proposed by Barak - again “Israel’s best and final offer” -
would be surrounded from the east and west by ‘Israel’. It would be
encircled by ‘Israel’ proper along the western border, cantonised or
“cut into three pieces” from inside separated by Jewish Zionist
colonies and encircled by “Israeli checkpoints and military bases”
along the eastern border – the border with Jordan.
“Such a Palestinian state,” according to the Negotiations Affairs
Department of the PNA, “would have had less sovereignty and
viability than the Bantustans created by the South African apartheid
government” (quoted in Chang, 2005: 362).
171
Furthermore, regardless of the 15% or “the few crumbs thrown from
the master’s table” (Finkelstein, 2003: xx) - and touted as
“unprecedented” and “extremely generous,” and that Barak had
“defied an Israeli axiom and shattered a strong taboo” and “offered
the Palestinians concessions that no one had dreamed Israel would
volunteer” (see Chapter 3: Section 3.7) as fancied to be framed by
Machiavellians and unscrupulous discourse orchestrators - “the
issue is not one of percentages as stated by the Negotiations Affairs
Department of the PNA:
...the issue is one of viability and independence. In a

prison for example, 95% of the prison compound is
ostensibly for the prisoners - cells, cafeterias, gym and
medical facilities but the remaining 5% is all that is
needed for the prison guards to maintain control over the
prisoner population. Similarly, the Camp David proposal,
while admittedly making Palestinian prison cells larger,
failed to end Israeli control over the Palestinian
population (quoted in Chang, 2005: 361).
Thus, according to Halper (2000: 5; quoted in Amer, 2009: 19):
regardless of what Barak offered to hand back to the

Palestinians at Camp David, Israel would continue to
exercise its control over Palestinian territories through a
‘matrix of control’, which is ‘an interlocking series of
mechanisms, only a few of which require physical
occupation of territory, that allow Israel to control every
aspect of Palestinian life in the Occupied Territories’.
It is significant to note before leaving this part that “Barak’s final

proposals at Camp David [which amounted finally to an offer of 91%
of WB; 77% of which would be in actual Palestinian possession for
up to twenty years, not 91%] were,” according to Smith (2007: 502),
nonetheless “pathbreaking”. They were so “in that,” Smith (2007)
continues:
no Israeli leader had ever made such terms available to

Palestinians, but they were unofficial rather than official
offers and doubts remained as to his commitment to
them. Throughout Camp David, he refused to talk to
Arafat, even at social occasions. Moreover, Barak would
not put anything in writing (he feared a record that his
opponents at home could use against him) and he never
172
made offers personally, using Clinton to suggest they
were American ideas (502).
But Smith (2007) also asks if Barak’s proposals or ideas were really
“as generous as later proclaimed”. Smith (2007) adds that the fact is
that what “Barak presented Arafat with” was a Hobson’s choice, “an
all-or-nothing set of choices,” an application of the autocratic policy
of après moi le deluge; ““a corridor leading either to an agreement or
to confrontation” where the blame would be laid on the Palestinians
and relations would be downgraded “[resulting in] a situation far
grimmer than the status quo [i.e. eruption of a second intifada]””
(502).
Smith (2007) states that “observers were highly critical of Barak,
noting that his take-it-or-leave-it approach to the Palestinians and
refusal to consult his negotiating team contradicted his image of
flexibility” (503). But Israeli and American global media discourse
has presented the story differently, thus, through a systematic policy
or discourse strategy of victim-agent reversal (see analysis chapter)
misrepresenting reality and distorting facts. The Americans and
“Israelis were provided with a one-sided version,” states resigned
head of Shin Bet, Ami Ayalon, in an interview (December 22, 2001)
recorded in Smith (2007:547): ““We were generous and they
refused.” This is ridiculous. And everything that follows from this
misperception is flawed”.
In reality, ‘Israel’’s Camp David ‘peace’ proposals (and for this
matter those that followed until the writing of this dissertation),
touted and promoted discursively as “unprecedented,” meant, in
light of Israeli intransigence, American tolerance of such
intransigence, manipulation and bad faith (see analysis chapter),
little more than the maintenance of Israeli control of the life and
livelihood of the beleaguered Palestinians, and guaranteed security
for ‘Israel’ in exchange for a group of disconnected cantons, a group
of “disconnected islands in an Israeli-controlled sea,” “a fragmented
and emasculated Palestinian state,” surrounded by checkpoints
allowing no freedom of movement, “a truncated and divided
Palestinian state in the West Bank,” a ‘state’ “separated into
enclaves, with Israelis manning checkpoints and barriers at
Palestinian enclave boundaries,” a group of enclaves that lack
economic viability, territorial or geographical contiguity, territorial
integrity and sovereignty and thus viability and independence, but
still represented as a ‘state,’ and as “We were generous and they
refused,” blaming and victimising the victim further, discursively.
173
3.5.7 Saudi/Arab Peace Initiative (March 2002)
Likewise, though with significant change in the language of

discourse, the March 2002 Saudi/Arab Peace Initiative, and its re-
adoption at the 2007 Riyadh or Arab League Summit has also been
held in pursuance of the two-state settlement to which again the
invariable Israeli hallmark has been either outright rejection or
neither acceptance nor rejection: a tertium quid.
Example of a Palestinian/Arab peace offer, the Saudi/Arab peace
initiative was proposed by Crown Prince Abdullah, and approved by
“all twenty-one other members of the Arab League”. The initiative is:
a plan making concessions that actually went beyond the

international consensus. In exchange for a full Israeli
withdrawal [from the territories occupied by force in
1967], it offered not only full recognition but ‘normal
relations with Israel’, and called not for the ‘Right of
Return’ of Palestinian refugees but rather only a ‘just
solution’ to the refugee problem […]. Were Israel truly
committed to a comprehensive withdrawal in exchange
for normalization with the Arab world, the Saudi plan and
its unanimous endorsement by the Arab League summit
ought to have been met with euphoria” (Finkelstein,
2003:xxi).
But again it was met by the Israeli hallmark noted above.

Besides such a hallmark - consistently supported by Israelispeak
(see analysis Chapter), particularly ‘Israel’’s discursive strategies of
positive ingroup presentation and negative outgroup presentation:
misrepresenting reality, polarising the situation, denying
responsibility or guilt, creating false impressions, evoking fear and
alarm, using non-committal or ambiguous statements, resorting to
ambiguity and vague formulations, presupposing and implicating,
purveying deceptive optimism, creating facts on the ground, making
apparent concessions, and blaming the victim (see analysis
Chapter) - making an Augean task Sisyphean - such a pan-Arab
offer, in light of the occupying Power’s insistence on dismembering
the occupied territories into “four separate cantons” - debated for a
Palestinian state - that are “entirely surrounded, and therefore
controlled, by Israel,” - becomes like many other proposals simply
impracticable.
174
3.5.8 Decay of the Two-State Solution
A majority of Israelis and Palestinians supported the idea

of a two-state solution, but the reality of ongoing
settlement growth in the occupied territories, especially
the West Bank, led many Palestinians to question the
goals of the peace process [see analysis chapter].
(Smith, 2007: 480)
In his recent study: The Lost Course of the Palestinian Statehood,

Saleh, General Manager of Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and
Consultations in Beirut, argues, according to AlJazeera Center for
Studies (4/1/2011):
[...] the two-state solution has entered- or shall be

entering in short - a stage of “clinical death”; thus leaving
the question of “will the one-state solution be the
alternative?” or “will the alternative be the return of armed
struggle?” or is it a combination of the two (2)?
The author bases his argumentation (critical evaluation) of the

“decay” of the current project for “the two states for two peoples”
solution, on seven socio-political, local and global factors, as
mentioned by AlJazeera Center for Studies (4/1/2011: 2):
-Arab and Islamic weakness and disunity, including the

absence of a common stance or vision towards the
Palestinian issue and a concrete strategy of support in
various political, financial and resources’ forms [see
Chapter 2]. The Palestinians thus have been standing
almost alone in facing the Occupation.
-Egypt's signing of Camp David peace treaty with the

Israeli Occupation, thus [diminishing] the possibility of
having a [...] war against Israel [...] for Egypt being the
largest Arab country adjacent to Palestine.
-The affection of some Palestinian decision makers with

Realist Pragmatism [de facto recognition of ‘Israel’].
- The dissolution of the Soviet Union, end of bipolarity,

and the American hegemony on the world, added to the
increasing influence of evangelists in the American
decision-making process.
175
- The Palestinian internal strife [Israel-instigated
communal tensions] and failure to arrange the internal
Palestinian house, in addition to the external interference
in the Palestinian decision-making.
- The catastrophic consequences of Oslo accords, which

mortgaged the Palestinian issue in the hands of the
Israeli Occupation and America [see subsections 5.2.6,
5.2.7, 5.2.8, 5.3.4 and 5.4.3 in the analysis chapter].
- The international dealing with Israel as a state above

law, especially from major powers.
3.5.9 The Improbable Solution: The State of Jerusalem
I referred in Chapter 2 to the many huge Israeli settler colonies

constructed on lands of the West Bank as a major obstacle to any
attempt at conflict resolution, particularly those based on partition or
the two-state solution. Presence of those townships on the West
Bank, with their “system of bypass roads, bridges, and tunnels,
linking the Jewish settlements to each other and to Israel makes it
almost impossible,” as seen from ‘Israel’s best and final offer’
(discussed above) and as suggested by Israeli architect Eyal
Weizman, “to detach the West Bank from Israel” (Gavron, 2004:
227). “It is therefore,” Gavron (2004: 227) concludes, “legitimate to
suggest that partition has become the “impossible solution””.
Hence, viewing partition or the two-state solution as “the impossible
solution,” Jerusalem Post feature writer, Daniel Gavron, has
advocated “the improbable solution:” the one-state or “multicultural
nation” he calls “State of Jerusalem”. He calls this as “the
improbable solution that remains after eliminating the impossible”
(2004: 229).
Gavron (2004: 229) states that “Having reached the conclusion that
the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River must
be shared but cannot be sensibly partitioned, we are left with only
one alternative: Israeli-Palestinian coexistence in one nation,” what
he proposes to designate as the “State of Jerusalem,” the
“improbable solution,” rather than “Israel” or “Palestine,” the
“impossible solution”.
Suggesting that “Israel and the Palestinian territories can be merged
into a dynamic, multiethnic, culturally rich nation, with new forms of
coexistence between its different constituents,” (Gavron, 2004: 240)
and pointing out the impracticality of the two-state settlement given
176
the inseparability of geography or the impossibility of geographical
partitioning, Gavron (2004) states:
If the state of Jerusalem is established, the Palestinians

will be required to give up their independent Palestinian
state, even before experiencing it. Paradoxically, they
might be the first to welcome the proposal, provided it
brings them genuine equality. Many Palestinians have
told me that they would prefer a single state but accept a
two-state solution because that is what the Jews want
(235).
When dealing with a central issue to the Palestine Question, the

Question of Refugees or the Right of Return, Gavron (2004)
observes that though the “Palestinians are still full of pain at what
they see as the gross injustice of Israel’s establishment and the
turning of so many of their people into refugees,” they, out of realism
and self-interest, should “accept a pragmatic solution to the problem
of refugees,” which “should involve a combination of reparation,
compensation, and resettlement outside the borders of the new
state”. Therefore, he suggests that “One of the first pieces of
legislation to be discussed should concern the Israeli Law of Return
and the Palestinian Right of Return,” and that though “various ideas
can be suggested,” “the simplest and most logical is to abolish both
the law and the right” (pp. 233-234). “Abrogation of the Law of
Return and the Right of Return,” Gavron continues, “coupled with
the fair and full application of democratic rules, should ensure a
secure and safe life for all of us” (p. 237).
Towards the end of his vision, and proposal, Gavron (2004) states,
despite the existential crises and difficulties:
The establishment of the state of Israel, despite all the

obstacles, was a miracle. The survival of the Palestinian
dream over the past five decades has been remarkable.
Let us now embark on another daring project. Both of us,
Israelis and Palestinians, must repudiate our phobias and
prejudices and make a quantum jump- a leap into a
different dimension-vaulting beyond despair to a new
time of hope (240).
177
3.6 REVIEW OF RELATED RESEARCH WORKS
In this section, I review some related research works, works that

critically analyse discourses (language-based analysis) on the
Palestine Question. Two related papers, namely: Accounts of
Violence from Arabs and Israelis on Nightline; and ‘Telling-it-like-it-
is’: the delegitimation of the second Palestinian Intifada in Thomas
Friedman’s discourse, are reviewed below, respectively.
Published in 2007 in Discourse & Society, Vol 18 (2): 139-161, the
paper, “Accounts of Violence from Arabs and Israelis on Nightline” is
the first piece of related research work I review here.
Seeing violence as discursive or as a discursive resource,
professors Richard Buttny of Syracuse University, USA, and Donald
G. Ellis of University of Hartford, USA, attempt, through careful and
systematic examination of “accounts of violence from Arab and
Israeli participants on the US news interview program, Nightline,”
“broadcast from Jerusalem on October 10 2000, to see how
“violence gets told, how versions get constructed or contested”
(139).
The interview discussion took place about two weeks after the
eruption of the second Palestinian intifada on September 28, 2000,
following Ariel Sharon’s march to al-Aqsa Mosque, which, as quoted
by the researchers, Buttny and Ellis (2007), has left until December
19, 2005, “3751 Palestinians and 992 Israelis killed” (p. 140). So the
data for this study “comes from [the viewings and transcripts of] a
televised ABC Nightline town hall meeting from Jerusalem, entitled
‘The Holy Land: Moment of Crisis’, aired [as noted] on October 10
2000” (141).
In light of this background, Buttny and Ellis (2007) state that “The
facts of violence - shootings, killings, the number of people dead or
wounded - are something that needs to be told (p. 140):
Telling of suffering, pain or trauma from the violence puts

these events into context to make them more concrete,
tangible. Even these horrible realities of violence require
interpretation; the events get further elaborated on,
discussed or contested. We examine the communicative
practices whereby participants tell violence and position
themselves and others with regard to moral or political
accountability. In particular, we focus on participants’
portrayal of events or discursive uses of affect/feeling in
positioning (140).
178
Here violence is seen as “a discursive resource which persons can
draw upon and tell to various audiences” (p. 158). “Both sides use
references to violence to portray in-group members as victims or
unjustified recipients, while out-group members are positioned as
the aggressor or perpetrators of atrocities” (p. 140). Therefore, the
“focus has been on the communicative practices in telling violence,
that is, on the portrayal of events and the use of affect/feeling in
positioning self and other (p. 156).
Using “discursive analysis (Buttny, 2004) and positioning theory
(Langenhove and Harré, 1999)” as the analytic method for their
study, Buttny and Ellis (2007) show “how violent events get
interactionally formulated or contested by interlocutors and how
participants position themselves in relation to these accounts” (p.
142) or “how these tellings can impact the positioning and
accountability of participants” (p. 158). In doing that, the authors
(2007), as noted, “examine the communicative practices
interlocutors use in formulating, ascribing and accounting for
problems” (2004).
Buttny and Ellis (2007) find out or conclude that these
communicative practices (i.e. the selection of membership
categories, action descriptions, avowals or ascriptions of
affect/feeling, and the positioning of self and other):
matter in how events get portrayed. For instance, violent

events are represented, not just as an isolated incident,
as happening only to the individual narrator, but as part of
a pattern, told as part of a list of atrocities […]” (156-158).
Therefore, Buttny and Ellis (2007) stress:
These practices in portraying violent events are

consequential in how persons or groups get positioned.
As we have seen, the Israeli military/police gets
positioned by Arab panelists and even an Israeli
audience member as being excessive, brutal or immoral
in their use of deadly force (157).
Now, I proceed to review the second paper, “‘Telling-it-like-it-is’: the

delegitimation of the second Palestinian Intifada in Thomas
Friedman’s discourse,” published in 2009 in Discourse & Society,
Vol 20 (1): 5-31.
In an endeavour to examine “the delegitimation of the second
Palestinian Intifada in the “discourse of the well-known American
journalist Thomas Friedman…” (p.6), doctoral candidate, M.
179
Mosheer Amer (2009) of the University of Melbourne, Australia,
critically analyses the discursive resources or linguistic or textual
properties deployed to delegitimise the second intifada “in a column
which Friedman contributed to the op-ed page of the New York
Times” (NYT) on October 13 2000, “two weeks into the Intifada”
(2009).
In this paper, Amer (2009) begins by limning a picture of the
September 28, 2000 Israeli event, then coinciding with “the fifth
anniversary of the signing of Oslo 2” (see Chapter 5) (Smith, 2007:
212); an event that ignited the flame of the second Palestinian
intifada, following the then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon’s
“‘right-of-ownership walk-about’” march to the compound of al-Aqsa
Mosque in Jerusalem - third of the two holiest sites in the world of
Islam after those in Mecca and Medina - while “accompanied by
nearly 1,000 police and media personnel” (Smith, 2007: 512); a
march perceived as absolutely provocative and outrageous by
Muslims. Amer (2009) then elaborates on the number of human
corpses, largely Palestinians, resulting from such an event. Getting
closer to his subject, Amer then proceeds to state that discourses “of
and about war and conflict are profoundly interconnected with
legitimation” (p. 6).
So, as the title of the study suggests and as noted above, Amer
(2009) examines the discursive resources or linguistic properties
deployed in the delegitimation of the second Palestinian Intifada in a
column by Thomas Friedman. He does that by:
examining the column’s argumentative structure and

moves employed in Friedman’s delegitimizing
construction of the Intifada and demonstrating throughout
how the legitimation and delegitimation of political actors,
including self-legitimation, is closely linked to Friedman’s
argumentation and his discursive representation of the
Intifada (7).
Using CDA or textual analysis as a framework, Amer (2009)

analyses a “combination of thematic contents, argumentative
moves, intertextual references and a range of linguistic properties”
that “reinforces Friedman’s argumentation and his dichotomous
representation of the situation” (p. 26). Besides his deployment-
within the strategy of “positive self-presentation and negative other
presentation” as “a powerful argumentative strategy”- of an
ensemble of techniques and strategies “in order to preclude the
possibility of being seen as biased, racist, or prejudiced” (p. 10),
Friedman, Amer (2009) adds also anchors his delegitimation of the
180
intifada through a self-legitimation, “whereby he positions himself as
more rational and objective, and as having better knowledge of the
situation than his assumed opponents” (p. 26).
Hence, in delegitimising the second Palestinian intifada and framing
it as “Arafat’s War,” Friedman, according to Amer (2009), does not
only depend discursively on his employment of a number of
discourse strategies, argumentative moves and certain “linguistic
properties of modality and style” (p. 22), but also draw meta-
discursively through a process of self-legitimation upon his own
“social status” and “social power” as an “authoritative voice on the
Middle East and his position in an influential media institution” (p.
26) such as the New York Times. Drawing on Bourdieu (1991: 111),
Amer (2009) writes in this connection:
In this way, the authority to perform acts of legitimation

and its symbolic efficacy…depend on the interdependent
relationship between ‘the properties of discourses, the
properties of the person who pronounces them and the
properties of the institution which authorizes him to
pronounce them’ (8).
Drawing on a number of CDA scholars such as Van Dijk (1999;

1993; 1995; 1998); Fairclough (2001; 2003); Hodge and Kress
(1993); Martin Rojo and Van Dijk (1997); Wodak, de Cillia, Reisigl,
and Liebhart (1999); Van Leeuwen (2007); Friel and Falk (2007),
and scholars writing on the Arab struggle against Israeli occupation
such as Reinhart (2002); Finkelstein (2003); Said (2004); Philo and
Berry (2004), Amer (2009) begins his CDA examination of
Friedman’s column by drawing readers’ attention to the “polarizing
characterization of the situation” found right in the title of Friedman’s
column: “Arafat’s War”. Here, Amer (2009) urges us to note “the
categorical assertion communicated in the title” where Friedman
signals his “delegitimation of Arafat from the very early days of the
Intifada” (p. 11). Amer (2009) further draws our attention to the fact
that “framing the violence between Palestinians and Israelis as
‘Arafat’s War’ has ideological implications in terms of causal agency,
responsibility and blame attribution” (2009). Thus, his observation:
Here Arafat and the Palestinians are cast in the negative

agent role of the ‘attacker’ and the ‘transgressor’, and
therefore are held responsible and blameworthy for the
events. By implication, this negative agency and
responsibility to the Palestinian side is likely to position
Israel in the semantic patient role of the ‘victim’, which is
181
facing Arafat’s transgression and war. The reader is
drawn to confirm this inference as the text unfolds (11).
Following this, Amer (2009) starts his critical analysis of the text
where he reveals the discursive and linguistic resources Friedman
employs in his delegitimation of the second Palestinian intifada. The
following, according to Amer (2009), are examples of some of the
Van Dijkian argumentative moves Friedman deploys in his
delegitimation of the second intifada: “delegitimation through
contrast,” “apparent concessions,” “blaming the victim,” “mitigation
and excuse,” “ridicule,” “polarized” or “dichotomous representation of
the situation,” “appeal to political authority,” “appeal to expert
authority,” “appeal to reasoning and rationality,” “amplification of the
‘others’ negative action,” and “empathizing with ingroup members”
(pp. 13-18), etc.
In the final section or “remainder of the paper” (p. 7), Amer (2009)
summarises the findings of another CDA study he conducted on “a
corpus of 20 columns written by Friedman…” and “published over a
six-month period between 2000 and 2003 in the NYT’s op-ed page”
(2009). Such findings, in the words of Amer (2009), “support the
analysis findings of the main text” (p. 5). Finally, in the coda of his
Critical Discourse Study, Amer (2009) states:
I demonstrated that an overall discourse strategy of

positive in-group presentation and negative out-group
presentation dominates the text and takes place within an
overall argumentative structure which delegitimizes the
Palestinians as violent, confused and irresponsible and
legitimizes Israeli actors as peaceable, rational and
flexible (26).
At the very end, Amer (2009) ends his study with an important note
about the crucial role discourse plays in times of war and conflict,
and the necessity of CDA as a way to increase readers’
consciousness of how language can be used or abused to (re)
produce, legitimate, and sustain power and domination, and thus
initiate “the first step towards emancipation,” as the following closing
paragraph asserts:
Underlying this analysis is a sensitized awareness of the

role of language in times of war and conflict…conflicts
and wars begin and end with words. Before guns are
fired and bombs start falling, words commit the first act of
war. It ultimately has serious material consequences on
182
individual lives and societies. The role of language is
something one cannot afford to neglect, and this could
not be more relevant than in subjecting the discourses of
those in positions of power to critical analysis with the
aim of sensitizing readers’ consciousness to the ways in
which language can be used to normalize and sustain
domination and control, since in Fairclough’s (1989: 1)
words: ‘consciousness is the first step towards
emancipation’ (26-27).
It is hence this consciousness and it is this prospect of emancipation

that have prompted the present study, a textual analysis - done in
light of Critical Discourse Studies - that aims, in relation to the
Palestine Question, to conduct a CDA of dominant UN and peace
discourses to discover what role they play in the perpetuation of the
status quo or this “social wrong”. Discourses, as shown, play a
formative role in the enactment, exercise and naturalisation of
domination. Meanings and semiotic systems or modes shape and
are shaped by relations of power and “social interests and
ideologies,” making the melioration or deterioration of the world
dependent on discourse or discursive practices; a reality that makes
CDA as “a democratic resource” a necessity if we are, as noted, to
strive to live in a better world or make us “profitably conceive the
world in some alternative way” (Fowler, 1981: 25; quoted in Jaworski
and Coupland, 1999: 33).
In this context, the study in particular has availed itself (see chapters
4 and 5) of the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), one of the
theoretical and analytical approaches within the framework of CDA,
which, according to Titscher and associates (2000) “seeks to
facilitate the analysis of implicitly prejudiced utterances and to assist
in the decoding of allusions typically concealed in such utterances
by referring to background knowledge (165)” to detect the intent and
meaning underlying such utterances and hence reveal whether such
discourse on Palestine is practical or impractical in achieving what it
articulates. The study makes use of this variant or theoretical
framework of CDA (discussed in the next chapter) so as to examine
UN resolutions on the Arab struggle against Israeli occupation on
the one hand, and peace discourse concerning the reconstruction of
historic Palestine and reconstitution of her natives on the other, as a
step towards consciousness-raising and ultimately emancipation.
183
CHAPTER FOUR
METHODOLOGY
4.1 OVERVIEW
THIS chapter describes the methodology and framework of the

study. It provides a concise account of the research methods and
CDA approach adopted in the conduct of this qualitative CDA
Study/document study/textual analysis. It discusses the CDA variant
and mechanisms or CDA tools used for the pronounced analysis of
the linguistic means and discourse strategies underlying the
discourse in question. The chapter thus discusses the research
methodology, theoretical framework, research design, data
collection and data analysis. It provides a table of the corpus of
study to be analysed critically, and of the sources of data collection
and a sample of data analysis. The final section mentions - as part
of the document analysis undertaken in this CDA research - some of
the documents or discourse fragments analysed in Chapter 2 as part
of the content of that chapter.
Grave, complex and multifaceted, the problem under investigation
does not belong to one distinct discourse or discipline. There is a
great deal of imbrication. Entangled with the politics and geopolitics
of today, the Palestine question is also related to past social and
political factors, and cultural and historical aspects. This inseparable
interrelatedness of the past and the present inherent in the Palestine
problem makes this Critical Discourse Study more of a qualitative
social research rather than a pure or applied research, and
simultaneously warrants a “methodological merging” or the
deployment of a number of approaches and research methods
necessary for developing a comprehensive picture of the object
under investigation.
Hence, in constructing the content of study and analysing data, the
study makes use of three research methods/approaches: the
descriptive method, the historical-analytical framework, and textual
analysis (CDA).
The descriptive method, a fact-finding approach related mainly to
the present (Ghosh, 2000), is used to describe the status quo, the
current status of the phenomenon under investigation. This is in
order to identify the causes of what is happening: ‘Israel’’s ongoing
oppression and occupation, and the Palestinians’ hopelessness in
the face of such wantonness.
The historical approach (historical document analysis), however,
through attention to chronology and the evolution of the problem, is
184
used to establish facts about the genesis and root causes of the
problem created in Palestine.
The analytical approach, along with CDA, is used to examine, in
relation to the Palestine Question, the linguistics of the UN
resolutions and peace discourse - aimed purportedly at ending
“decades of confrontation and conflict” through the discursive
construction of an independent Palestinian state.
While the historical approach is used in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 to
establish facts, the analytical approach is used, along with CDA in
some parts of Chapter 3 and throughout Chapter 5 to analyse the
data critically.
4.2 THEORETICAL/ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK
Major theorists and scholars of CDA/CDS, such as Fairclough

(2001), Reisigl and Wodak (2009) Van Dijk (1997; 1998), Van
Leeuwen (2009), etc. have provided us – within the framework of
CDA – with a number of approaches for the critical analysis of texts
and talks and other significant semiotic modes, systems, means,
events or meaning-making practices.
Fairclough’s view of CDA is that of a critical, interdisciplinary
problem-oriented approach that “subsumes a variety of [critical]
approaches towards the social analysis of discourse…which differ in
theory, methodology, and the type of research issues to which they
tend to give prominence” (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997: 1). So, as
noted in Chapter 3, those various “methods of text analysis” or CDA
analytical approaches or variants or methodologies “differ,” as stated
by Wodak, “in their theoretical underpinnings” (Kendall, 2007: 23).
While Fairclough, for example, draws in his discourse analytic
framework: the Dialectical-Relational Approach (DRA) on Halliday’s
tripartite model of language or Systemic Functional Linguistics,
Wodak, in her Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), uses cognition
theories, Theory of Text Planning, Critical Theory and
“argumentation theory and rhetoric when analysing texts and
discourses” (2007: 23).
However, for purposes of this discourse study that uses the
framework of CDA (where critical linguistic, textural and intertextual
analyses are incorporated), Ruth Wodak’s three-dimensional
approach, the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), is used as the
main discourse analytic framework. Graphically hence, the
methodology and framework employed in or by this study can be
represented as follows:
185
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dŚĞŽƌĞƚŝĐĂů&ƌĂŵĞǁŽƌŬ
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,
Figure 4.1: Methodology and Theoretical Framework
In addition, and in an attempt to optimise the “volitional” diversity of

CDA approaches in studying the social problem under investigation,
and benefit from this “eclectic” nature of the theories and
methodologies underlying such approaches (Wodak and Meyer,
2009: 31), the study, along with DHA, draws where useful on other
CDA variants such as the DRA (Dialectical-Relational Approach),
SCA (Sociocognitive Approach) or CLA (Corpus Linguistics
Approach) where resort to quantitative procedures and analysis at
times, for example, can be useful.
My adoption of Reisigl and Wodak’s (2009) “analytical apparatus” or
DHA, as a variant of CDA within the field of multidisciplinary
Discourse Studies, is warranted by the nature of the issue under
investigation, which involves history and present-day politics. For
though discoursing on the creation of a Palestinian state is a present
issue, the issue itself is not new; it is foregrounded in history; it is a
hundred years long (see Chapter 2); a fact that must be taken, given
how the problem in the first place started, into serious consideration
when proposing a “just, lasting and comprehensive peace
settlement” to the Palestine Question. This is in order to demarcate
the various aspects of the phenomenon at stake, put things in their
right historical perspective, and thus propose a “just” solution.
Now talking about DHA, Titscher, Meyer, Wodak and Vetter (2000)
state:
The discourse-historical approach seeks to facilitate the

analysis of implicitly prejudiced utterances and to assist
in the decoding of allusions typically concealed in such
utterances by referring to background knowledge (165).
Titscher and associates (2000: 158) state that within DHA or its
“analytical apparatus,” there are three “systematically and
recursively related” steps or levels of analysis - similar to or
186
evocative of Fairclough’s (1995; 2001) “descriptive, interpretive and
explanatory” dimensions or stages of CDA - where a “fundamental
distinction is made between contents, argumentation strategies, and
forms of linguistic implementation as analytical levels”.
So in DHA, critical analysis begins first with an establishment or
identification of contents and topics of a specific discourse (“the
main discourse topics of the text”); second, identification of
discourse or argumentation strategies employed; and third,
identification of the forms of linguistic implementation.
Wodak and associates (1999; 1996; quoted in Titscher et al., 2000:
158) mention that “The procedure of the discourse-historical
method” “is viewed as being hermeneutic and interpretive, with
some influence from cognitive science”:
It should therefore be understood not as a sequence of

separate operational steps but as a cycle in which the
three analytical dimensions are systematically and
recursively related to the totality of contextual knowledge”
(2000: 158).
Drawing probably on Van Dijk’s (Titscher, Meyer, Wodak & Vetter,

2000: 23) conception of discourse as “text in context,” Wodak and
Meyer (2009: 26), observe that DHA - which is critical,
“interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, and analyses changes in
discursive practices over time and in various genres” (Kendall, 2007:
4) - understands or views context and discourses “as mainly
historical”. Thus, according to them, “[…] all discourses are historical
and can therefore only be understood with reference to their context”
(p. 20). Therefore, reference, “in intricate ways,” has to be made “to
such extralinguistic factors as culture, society and ideology” (Wodak
and Meyer, 2009). “Hence,” Wodak and Meyer (2009: 21) state that
“the notion of context is crucial for CDA, since this explicitly includes
social-psychological, political and ideological components and
thereby postulates interdisciplinary procedures” (20-21).
DHA, as seen by Wodak and Meyer (2009: 26), “focuses on the field
of politics, where it develops conceptual frameworks for political
discourse”.
Now in analysing texts, attention (within the analytical apparatus of
DHA) is paid to the following aspects, summarised by Wodak and
associates (1990: 57; quoted in Titscher et al., 2000: 159-162):
• [“Setting and context”] Setting and context should be

recorded as accurately as possible, since discourses can
187
only be described, understood and interpreted in their
specific context.
• [“Theme and content, intertextuality”] The content of an
utterance must be confronted with historical events and
facts as well as presented reports [...].
• [“Confrontation with data and reported facts”] Texts must
be interpreted by other subject specialists (sociology,
history, psychology). All stages imply an interdisciplinary
approach as an important characteristic of the discourse-
historical method.
• [...precise description... of the text at all linguistic levels]
Texts must be described as precisely as possible at all
linguistic levels.
Wodak and associates (1999; 1996; quoted in Titscher et al., 2000:

158-159) maintain that “The exact description of individual texts and
the analysis of larger corpora of data allow statements to be made,
at both micro and macro levels, on the reconstruction of discourse
contexts”.
This indicates the significance of detailed description of texts, or the
level of textual analysis in Fairclough’s approach. According to
Fairclough, as mentioned in Chapter 3, “[…] social control and
power are exercised with increasing frequency by means of texts, so
text analysis becomes an important part of critical discourse
analysis” (Titscher et al., 2000: 152-153). Here, Fairclough clearly
“emphasizes the significance of the textual level in discourse
analysis and criticizes the inadequate attention given to text analysis
in the social sciences, despite the prominence of the supposed
‘linguistic turn’” (see Chapter 3) (2000: 152). Similarly, Titscher and
associates (2000: 160) stress with reference to the “general
principles of the discourse-historical method” that “Texts must be
described as precisely as possible at all linguistic levels”. Fairclough
(1995: 7) maintains that “Textual analysis demands diversity of
focus not only with respect to functions but also with respect to
levels of analysis”. Hence is the study’s focus on the analysis of both
the content of texts and the content of texture (see Chapter 3).
Within the analytical apparatus of DHA, Wodak and Meyer (2009:
29); and Reisigl and Wodak (2009: 93-94; 112-116) mention five
heuristic discursive strategies, which can be used as general
guidelines. Outlined below are these strategies, along with their
purposes presented next to them in round brackets:
188
• Nomination strategies (“discursive construction of social
actors, objects/phenomena/events, and processes and
actions”)
• Predication strategies (“discursive characterization/

qualification of social actors, objects, phenomena,
events, processes and actions (more or less positively or
negatively)” )
• Argumentation strategies (“persuading addressees of the

truth and normative rightness of claims”)
• Perspectivization, framing or discourse representation

Strategies (“positioning speaker’s or writer’s point of view
and expressing involvement or distance”)
• Mitigation and intensification strategies (“modifying the

illocutionary force of utterances in respect of their
epistemic or deontic status”)
Reisigl and Wodak (2009: 93) stress that those “five types of
discursive strategies,” which upon critical analysis reveal how “social
actors, objects, phenomena/events and processes” are being
nominated/constructed, qualified and positioned vis-à-vis the “other,”
“deserve special attention when analysing a specific discourse and
related texts”.
The study examines discourse strategies and argumentative moves
of “positive ingroup presentation and negative outgroup
presentation” (Van Dijk, 1991; cited in Amer, 2009: 10).
Examples of such strategies/moves are the following: “denial of
responsibility or guilt,” “victim-agent reversal”/blame the victim: “they
‘act in such a way that prejudice or unequal treatment is justified’,”
“devaluation or defamation by distortion” (Matouschek, et al., 1995:
60; quoted in Titscher et al., 2000: 159), “delegitimation through
contrast,” “evoking fear and alarm,” agency: negative/positive/agent
deletion, “apparent concessions: ‘most of them are law-abiding
citizens, but...’,” “contrast: ‘we are not intolerant, but they are’,”
“mitigation and excuse: ‘the police were forced to act in this harsh
way’,” “ridicule: using ridicule and sarcasm to discredit the
opponent’” (Van Dijk, 1991; quoted in Amer, 2009: 10), polarisation
or “polarized” or “dichotomous representation of the situation,”
“appeal to political authority,” “appeal to expert authority,” “appeal to
reasoning and rationality,” “amplification of the ‘others’ negative
189
action,” “empathizing with ingroup members,” “attacking the
rationality of the outgroup’s members” (2009: 13-18), presupposition
(e.g. “We want to set people free so that they have greater power
over their own lives”) (Thomas et al., 2004: 42), and implicature
(2004) as “two categories of implicit content” (Fairclough, 1995: 5),
heteroglossia or “intertextual traces of other voices and discourses”
(Amer, 2009: 24), “impression formation and credibility
enhancement,” temporisation, and what I have termed in Chapter 1
as deceptive purveyance of optimism, etc.
For further clarity, I reproduce these global discourse strategies and
argumentative moves that underlie an overall discourse strategy of
“positive ingroup presentation and negative outgroup presentation”
(Van Dijk, 1999) - culled and consolidated from various sources - in
the form of a table overleaf:
190
Table 4.1
Argumentation/discourse strategies/techniques/communicative
practices
No. Discourse strategies/argumentative moves/

(justification)
positive ingroup presentation and negative outgroup
1
presentation
2 assertion of ingroup allegiances and solidarity
3 empathising with ingroup members
4 denial of responsibility or guilt
perpetrator/victim dichotomy or victim-agent reversal/blame
5
the victim
devaluation or defamation by distortion/demonisation of the
6
other
7 delegitimation through contrast/self-legitimation
8 amplification of the ‘others’ negative action
9 agency: negative/positive; obscuring causal agency
10 apparent concessions
11 mitigation and excuse
12 ridicule: using ridicule and sarcasm to discredit the opponent
dichotomous representation of the situation/positioning of
13
self and other
14 appeal to political authority
15 appeal to expert authority
16 appeal to reasoning and rationality
17 generalisation
18 legitimation
19 heteroglossia
20 allusions, evocations
21 impression formation and credibility enhancement
22 evoking fear and alarm
23 attacking the rationality of the outgroup’s members
24 using non-committal or ambiguous statements
25 creating false impression
26 deceptive purveyance of optimism
27 obscurantism; resort to ambiguity and vague formulations
28 presupposition and implicature/implication
29 manipulation of facts/misrepresentation of reality
30 elasticity or empty signification
31 hedging and temporisation/creating facts on the ground
32 otherisation
191
Along with these aspects, five heuristic discursive strategies, global
discourse strategies and argumentative moves of “positive ingroup
presentation and negative outgroup presentation” mentioned above,
the study is also - in examining semiotic data - guided by and looks
for specific linguistic means deployed for the realisation of discourse
strategies.
Hence, uncovering specific linguistic techniques of persuasion;
noting calculated “grain-of-sand like means” such as the following is
attempted whenever detected: obscuring causal agency through de-
agentialisation/passivisation/passive agent deletion (e.g.
“Redundancies will be announced”) (Cook, 2003) or nominalisation
(e.g. “Genetic modification is a powerful technique.”), antithetical
dyadic constructions (e.g. “friendly fire,” “peaceful force,” “cold war,”
or “creative chaos”) (Misaddi, 2007), empty signifiers, manipulation
of articles, through addition or deletion (e.g. withdrawal from
territories instead of withdrawal from the territories), hedges or
linguistic devices that “‘dilute’ an assertion” (e.g. she lost it and I
think she lost it.) (Thomas et al., 2004: 214), modality and
categorical assertions, and use of the simple present tense to signal
factuality or as “a powerful form that reflects the author’s ‘certainty,
unquestionableness, continuity, and universality’” (Fowler and
Kress, 1979: 207; quoted in Amer, 2009: 22-23).
The study also looks into certain rhetorical devices “used [as
linguistic means] to influence [...] people’s political and ideological
views” (Thomas et al., 2004: 41) such as the following: metaphor,
euphemism, pronouns, the ‘rule of three’ or the three-part statement
and parallelism (2004: 45-53).
For further clarity, I reproduce or represent - using a different
semiotic form - these specific linguistic means used for the
realisation of discourse strategies – culled and consolidated from
various sources – in the form of a table overleaf:
192
Table 4.2
Specific linguistic means for the realisation of discourse strategies
No. Structures/grammatical systems/linguistic means/

techniques for the realisation of discourse strategies
transitivity selections and the characteristic use of certain
1
processes rather than others
lexicalisation/use of misnomers: use of certain lexical
2 selections (e.g. “voluntary exodus” or “transfer” or “Arab-
Israeli conflict” or “terrorists” in the ‘Israel’/Palestine context)
passivisation/de-agentialisation/passive agent deletion:
(“The favouring of passive constructions rather than active
3
ones, with the effect of disguising who is responsible for an
event”) (Cook, 2003, 130)
nominalisation:
(“The use of inanimate nouns to refer to actions and
4
process, thus omitting mention of who is responsible for
them”) (Cook, 2003: 130)
antithetical dyadic constructions (to mitigate the severity of
5
an event as in “peaceful force” or “friendly fire,” etc.
6 weasel words
manipulation of articles
7 (e.g. “withdrawal from territories” instead of withdrawal from
the territories)
use of empty or floating signifiers (e.g. “at the earliest
8
practicable date”)
modality and categorical assertions
(e.g. ‘It’s because even the participants can’t explain what
9
it’s about’ and ‘that is why this is Arafat’s war’) (Amer, 2009:
23)
10 use of the simple present tense
11 metaphors/metaphorical lexemes/use of imagery
12 euphemisms
13 Pronouns and deixis
14 ‘rule of three’ or the three-part statement
15 parallelism
16 quotations
17 rhetorical questions
18 hedges (to dilute an assertion or to temporise)
(over) use of the subjunctive mood (making “every assertion
19
hypothetical”)
20 reiterations/rhetorical repetitions
21 performatives
22 active clause structures/negative clause structures
193
All the foregoing discourse strategies/argumentative moves of
“positive ingroup presentation and negative outgroup presentation,”
and the specific linguistic means of their realisation are selectively
and consciously used by powerful social actors, all with the intent
and mala fides to dominate and control “less powerful social
groups,” enact and exercise power (Fairclough, 2001a), normalise
and naturalise domination, legitimate or delegitimate events or
conflicts or social players. They are deployed to make us “pat the
bomb” (Cohn, 1987), make an outlet for a preconceived political
event, cover up a certain one, mystify and manipulate, divert
attention and deaden senses (Misaddi, 2007), influence and control
cognition, manage the mind and shape thought, hedge and dilute,
“foreground or [...] obscure responsibility and agency” (Thomas et
al., 2004: 52), “naturalise us into accepting certain ideas” (33), affect
and alter people’s perception of things, “influence people’s political
and ideological views” (41), defend the indefensible, “make notions
which are in fact debatable seem like ‘givens’” (53), or “questionable
ideas or issues more palatable and ‘normal’” (48). They are used to
“make lies sound truthful and murder respectable,” to “give an
appearance of solidity to pure wind” (Orwell; quoted in Sant, 2008:
35), to “reinforce a particular perception of event or of whole
societies” (Thomas et al., 2004: 52). They are used to “normalize
and sustain domination and control” (Amer, 2009: 26-27), to
perpetuate “hegemonic relations or unequal relations of power”
(Simpson, 1993; Fairclough, 2001a); to enact, conceal, legitimate, or
reproduce hegemony and inequality (Van Dijk, 1993). They are
deployed to stabilise and intensify “unequal social arrangements”
(Cameron et al., 1999: 142), to “represent social realities in
determinate ways” (Montgomery et al., 1992: 74). They are
deployed to delegitimise the powerless as “violent, confused and
irresponsible” and legitimise the powerful as “peaceable, rational
and flexible” (Amer, 2009: 26)...
Furthermore, and as part of my account of DHA as the major
analytical apparatus used for this CDA analysis, it is important
before leaving this section that I draw special attention to one of the
main characteristics characterising all CDA approaches; indeed, it is
a feature or characteristic without which CDA ceases to be what it
claims to be. This characteristic is “critical;” CDA being critical;
critical not in the common sense usage of being negative, as noted
in Chapter Three, but “in the special sense of aiming to show up
connections which may be hidden from people - such as the
connections between language, power and ideology;” critical in the
sense of being “sceptical” and “not taking things for granted;” critical
in the sense of “opening up complexity,” of “challenging
194
reductionism, dogmatism and dichotomies,” of being self-reflective in
one’s research, thus making “opaque structures of power relations
and ideologies manifest” (17) (for a discussion of this aspect of
CDA, reference is to be made to Chapter Three).
In discussing critique, as one of three concepts (the others being
“power” and “ideology”) that indispensably, as noted, figure in all
variants of CDA, Reisigl and Wodak (2009: 88) mention three
related aspects of “critique,” to which DHA adheres: (I) text or
discourse-immanent critique (aimed “at discovering inconsistencies,
self-contradictions, paradoxes and dilemmas in the text-internal or
discourse-internal structures”), (II) socio-diagnostic critique
(“concerned with demystifying the – manifest or latent – persuasive
or ‘manipulative’ character of discursive practices”), and (III) future-
related prospective critique (meant to “contribute to the improvement
of communication (for example, by elaborating guidelines against
sexist language use or by reducing ‘language barriers’ in hospitals,
schools and so forth)”).
This is how CDA, in general, and DHA, in particular, understands
“critical,” and this is how this study, accordingly, understands and
applies it.
4.3 RESEARCH DESIGN
The methodology deployed for this Critical Discourse Study is

largely textual analysis. The sources of data are chiefly based on
“existing texts” such as “mass media communication,” documents
found in Charles D. Smith’s 2007 monograph: Palestine and the
Arab-Israeli Conflict: a History with Documents, and relevant UN
resolutions. Besides, the study makes use of certain Internet
sources or online existing data such as those concerning UN
resolutions, and The Palestine Papers, a “leak of confidential
documents related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” exposed by Al
Jazeera and The Guardian (Jan 23-26, 2011) and other sources
such as WikiLeaks.
Therefore, and as is the case with “Most of the approaches to CDA,”
explicit sampling is not recommended (Wodak and Meyer, 2009:
27). Already “existing texts” can do the job.
In addition to the ones analysed in Chapter 2 as part of constructing
the content of that chapter (vide Section 4.6 or Table 4.6 at the end
of this chapter for a list of these documents), and some others
interspersed here and there, the following texts form the main body
of data or corpus of study:
195
• Texts of UN resolutions (9 in number) (see Table 4.3)
concerning the Palestine Question and the termination of
hostilities between Arabs and Israelis
• Some negotiation and peace process discourses - conducted

“based on U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, as well as the Camp
David Accords of 1978:” the formula or framework7 established
originally by Menachem Begin (Shash, 1999) – drafted
pursuant to the December 1988 PLO de facto recognition of
‘Israel,’ and the ensuing October 30, 1991Middle East Peace
Conference in Madrid, co-sponsored by the US and the then
Soviet Union, with the apparent goal to put an end to “decades
of confrontation and conflict” between Arabs and Israelis:
So through the critical analysis of those discursive events, those

texts of UN resolutions and the peace process, the study
endeavours to find how practical and bona fide such UN and peace
discourse is in ending the status quo or “Israel’s oppression and
occupation,” in realising the Right of the Palestinian People to Self-
Determination, and in implementing the Palestinian Refugees Right
of Return, and thus paving the road to “just” and “lasting” peace in
the Middle East. The study seeks to linguistically investigate how
and why the Palestine Question - Palestinian homelessness and
sufferings following their forcible removal from their homeland in
1948 - has been discursively shaped.
Now overleaf is a table outlining these UN and peace discourses.
For the detailed critical analysis of these discursive resources in
Chapter 5, excerpts are quoted as part of the analytical and
hermeneutic process. However, the resolutions can all be found
appended unabridged in APPENDIX A at the end of this study.
7
This framework refers to the other agreement of the 1978 Camp David Accords, the
first being that between Israel and Egypt which led to the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty of
1979. The second agreement, which was not implemented at the time, created “a
framework for a broader peace in the region that included a plan for Palestinian self-
rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip” (Britannica Concise Encyclopedia 2010). It is
significant also to note here that those agreements or Accords (1978), which are used
as the framework for Oslo Accords (1993) were rejected at the time by the PLO and the
rest of Arab states, boycotting Egypt as a result of them (Shash, 1999) (see Chapter 5).
196
Table 4.3
Corpus of Study
(Documents Analysed in Chapter 5)
Ite
Source for No. of
m UN Discourse Document/Discourse Pages
No.
UN GA Resolution 212 Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies
1 of November 1948 and Consultations 3
(http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic)
2 of December 1948 and Consultations 3
3 of December 1949 and Consultations 4
UN SC Resolution 242 Charles D. Smith (2007) Palestine
4 of November 1967 and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: a 2
History with Documents (pp. 344-
145)
UN SC Resolution 338 Charles D. Smith (2007) Palestine
5 of October 1973 and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: a 1
History with Documents (p. 348)
UN GA Resolution Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies
6 3236 of November and Consultations 2
1974 (http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic)
UN SC Resolution Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies
7 1397 of March 2002 and Consultations 1
UN GA Resolution on Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies
8 Israeli Wall and Consultations 3
of October 21, 2003 (http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic)
UN SC Resolution Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies
9 1515 of November and Consultations 1
2003 (http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic)
‘Peace’ Discourse
Israel & PLO Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies

Exchange Letters of and Consultations
10 Recognition (http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic) 3
(September 9,1993)
Oslo I Accords: The Charles D. Smith (2007) Palestine
Israeli-PLO and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: a
Declaration of History with Documents (pp. 493-
11 Principles, 498)/Al-Zaytouna Centre for 12
Washington, D.C. Studies & Consultations
(September 13,1993) (http://www.alzaytouna.net/en/)
The Israeli-Palestinian Charles D. Smith (2007) Palestine
Interim Agreement and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: a
12 (Oslo 2) on the West History with Documents (pp. 493- 6
Bank and the Gaza 498)
Strip (Sept. 28, 1995)
George W. Bush, Charles D. Smith (2007) Palestine
Speech at the Aqaba and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: a
13 (Jordan) Summit, June History with Documents (pp. 550- 2
4, 2003 551)
197
4.4 DATA COLLECTION
There is no accepted canon of data collection, but many

CDA approaches work with existing data, i.e. texts not
specifically produced for the respective research projects.
For purposes of this Critical Discourse Study, critical textual

analyses of discourses pertinent to the Palestine Question, e.g.
existing texts of UN resolutions on the Arab struggle against Israeli
occupation and the discursive (re) construction of Palestine, along
with discourses on the peace process, i.e. the Oslo and post-Oslo
peace process are carried out. Such “data corpora” or discursive
resources represent the main body of data for the analysis of this
study.
However and “similar to Grounded Theory (Glaser and Strauss,
1967),” “data collection [in CDA] is not considered to be a specific
phase that must be completed before analysis begins” (Wodak and
Meyer, 2009: 27). Here, data collection is systematic and can be a
continuous process that begins when the research begins and ends
as the research ends. Hence, Wodak and Meyer’s (2009):
[…] it is a matter of finding indicators for particular

concepts, expanding concepts into categories and, on the
basis of these results, collecting further data (theoretical
sampling). In this procedure, data collection is never
completely excluded, and new questions always arise
which can only be dealt with if more data are collected or
earlier data are re-examined (Strauss, 1987; Strauss and
Corbin, 1990) (27).
Finally, in a study that deals with a present-day issue that is deeply

rooted in the past, identification of and reliance on both secondary
as well as primary source materials is significant. From such
sources, identified and collected during the “research trail” or
literature search (Galgano, Arndt, and Hyser, 2008), a list of major
reference sources and a bundle of primary documents have been
selected for use throughout the study.
198
4.5 DATA ANALYSIS
A first step in text analysis is to make certain

generalizations [assumptions] which are then classified
according to the analytical apparatus. This is then
followed by a renewed analysis of the text, and so on.
DHA unfolds a four-step strategy of analysis: after (1)

having established the specific contents or topics of a
specific discourse (e.g. with racist, anti-Semitic,
nationalist or ethnicist ingredients), (2) the discursive
strategies (including argumentation strategies) are
investigated. Then (3), the linguistic means (as types)
and the specific, context-dependent linguistic realizations
(as tokens) of the discriminatory stereotypes are
examined (4).
In this section, I provide two examples where textual analysis of the

language of discourse is informed by CDA. While the first example is
meant to illustrate the role of discourse in representing and
constructing, “the other,” in delegitimising it as part of an overall
discourse strategy of “positive ingroup presentation and negative
outgroup presentation” and hence our perception of it, the second
example stresses the importance of tracing “intertextual and
interdiscursive relationships between utterances, texts, genres and
discourses, as well as extra-linguistic [meta-discursive]
social/sociological variables, the history of an organization or
institution […]” (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009: 90), the “heteroglossia of
voices” embedded in a text and hence creating through (a process
of) de- and re-contextualisation a “new hybrid or nodal” discourse.
The purpose of the second example is not only to show how a
discourse is normally the imbrication or product of a number of other
past and present discourses, all being de- and then re-
contextualised to produce a new hybrid interdiscourse, but also the
importance of realising these intertextual, interdiscursive
relationships by invoking their historical context, digging deep in the
collective memory or code or jargon of a certain discourse type, i.e.
political discourse.
The first example or text was a response, by Israeli UN Ambassador
Yosef Tekoah, to Yasir Arafat’s Address to the UN General
Assembly, November 13, 1974. In making his case, Tekoah
employs a number of discourse strategies and delegitimising
199
argumentative moves meant to discursively construct and discredit
“the other,” primarily the PLO as “a murder organization” which
must, as a result, have “no place in international diplomatic efforts”.
Overleaf, I now provide a table that includes extracts from Tekoah’s
Address,8 along with his argumentation: his dichotomous
representation of the situation, his discursive delegitimation of the
PLO and by implication the Palestinians, his victim-agent reversal,
his defamation by distortion or demonisation of the “other” his
delegitimising argumentative moves dominant in his text that
underlies an overall discourse strategy of “positive ingroup
presentation and negative outgroup presentation,” associated with
‘peaceable,’ ‘victimised’ and ‘self-defending’ Israelis; and ‘bestial,’
‘terrorist,’ and ‘brutal’ Palestinians, respectively.
This is in an attempt to “facilitate the analysis of implicitly prejudiced
utterances and to assist in the decoding of allusions [and projected
images] typically concealed in such utterances” (Titscher and
associates, 2000: 165); and to patiently note “the linguistic means
used by the privileged (in this case Bush) to stabilize or even to
intensify inequalities in society” (Wodak and Meyer, 2009: 32).
8
Source: Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A HISTORY WITH
DOCUMENTS (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007), 351-353.
200
Table 4.4
Argumentative structure of Tekoah’s Address
No. Extracts Discourse strategies/

Argumentative moves
1 On 14 October 1974 the General Assembly defamation by distortion;
turned its back on the UN Charter, on law ridiculing and blaming;
and humanity, and virtually capitulated to
a murder organization which aims at the demonisation of the other;
destruction of a State Member of the UN.
On 14 October the UN hung out a sign victim-agent reversal;
reading “Murderers of children are implication that ‘Israel’ is law-
welcome here.” abiding
2 Today these murderers have come to the defamation by distortion;
General Assembly, certain that it would do
their bidding. Today this rostrum was defiled presupposition of the
by their chieftain, who proclaimed that the shedding of Jewish blood;
shedding of Jewish blood would end only
when the murderers’ demands had been victim-agent reversal
accepted….
3 Today bloodshed and bestiality have devaluation or
come here to collect the spoils of the UN defamation by distortion;
surrender… The victim of bloodshed and delegitimation of the other
bestiality should not even defend himself. through contrast
4 The United Nations is entrusted with the manipulation of facts;

responsibility to guide mankind away from implicating violence and
war, away from violence and oppression, oppression (as opposed to
toward peace… What remains of that legitimate resistance and
responsibility now that the UN has freedom-fighting) to the PLO;
prostrated itself before the PLO, which appeal to reasoning and
stands for premeditated, deliberate murder rationality;
of innocent civilians, denies to the Jewish appeal to political authority;
people its right to live, and seeks to
destroy the Jewish State by armed victim/perpetrator dichotomy
force?...
5 The United Nations, whose duty it is to manipulation of facts;
combat terrorism and barbarity, may implicating terrorism and
agree to consort with them. Israel will not. barbarity to Palestinians;
dichotomous representation
of the situation by
representing Ísrael’ in the
semantic patient role of the
mere self-defender;
victim/perpetrator framework
6 The murderers of athletes in the Olympic defamation by distortion;
Games of Munich, the butchers of amplification of the‘ others
children in Ma’alot, the assassins of negative actions;
diplomats in Khartoum do not belong in delegitimation through self-
the international community. They have legitimation;
no place in international diplomatic polarised representation;
efforts. Israel shall see it that they have victim-agent reversal
no place in them.
201
There are four social actors nominated or constructed discursively in
Tekoah’s delegitimising text. These are “the General Assembly,”
“the United Nations,” “Jews,” and “the PLO”. Table 4.5 below lists
the most salient predications relating to these actors.
Table 4.5
Main nominations (social actors) and predications in Tekoah’s
Address
No. Social Actors Predications
(discursive qualification of social actors)
1 The General • an organisation that turns its back on the
Assembly UN Charter, on law and humanity
• a body capitulating to a murder
organization
• hangs out signs reading:
“Murderers of children are welcome
here.”
2 The United Nations • responsible to guide mankind away from
war, violence and oppression
• a worker toward peace
• prostrating before the PLO
• fighter of terrorism and barbarity
3 Jews • victims of [Palestinian] bloodshed and

bestiality
4 The • a murder organization
PLO/Palestinians • murderers
• defiling the rostrum of the General
Assembly
• shedders of Jewish blood
• bestial
• collectors of the spoils of the UN surrender
• perpetrators of premeditated, deliberate
murder of innocent civilians
• deniers of the Jewish people the right to
live
• seekers to destroy the Jewish State by
armed force
• murderers of athletes
• butchers of children
• assassins of diplomats
• perpetrators of atrocities
• shedders of the blood of Jewish children
202
As Table 4.5 illustrates, Tekoah constructs the PLO/Palestinians
only by means of negative predications. As for the General
Assembly, it appears as a powerless dependent agent who is being
bullied by ‘a murder organisation’. While detailing through self-
legitimation the responsibilities of the United Nations, Tekoah
presupposes that the UN is prostrating to ‘a murder organisation’
and by implication implicating that the UN is failing to carry out such
responsibilities on the one hand, thus justifying past and future
Israeli military response against the Palestinians, and that ‘Israel’ is
law-abiding on the other.
Three of the predominant argumentative moves employed in the text
are victim-agent reversal, dichotomous representation of the
situation, and the consistent defamation by distortion or
demonisation of the other where members of the PLO are
consistently being constructed - and in so construction comes the
delegitimation of the other - as “murderers,” “butchers,” “assassins,”
perpetrators of “premeditated, deliberate murder of innocent
civilians,” shedders of “the blood of Jewish children,” etc. in a way
that implies that ‘Israel’ is innocent of all these crimes and that it is
only a ‘victim’ to “a murder organization,” and not a settler society
whose then nascent existence entailed the brutal elimination of a
whole peaceful nation (see Chapter 2).
The transitivity selections used as specific linguistic means to realise
linguistically such strategies, augment such aspects. So wherever
the PLO features as the agent/actor, then it is an agent/actor of
“murder” and assassination, of “violence and oppression,” of
“bloodshed and bestiality,” of “terrorism and barbarity,” acts of which
‘poor’ ‘Israel’ is the affected/goal. For instance, the PLO is
consistently being featured or represented in negative subject
positions or in semantic agents of negative processes such as “The
PLO… denies to the Jewish people its right to live, and seeks to
destroy the Jewish State by armed force” whereas ‘little’ ‘Israel’ is
being implicitly positioned in the semantic patient role of someone
who is defending him or herself against such “atrocities,” against “a
murder organization,” and the capitalisation of the General
Assembly to such an organisation, against “bloodshed and
bestiality,” against “butchers of children,” and “murderers of
athletes,” assassins of diplomats, and perpetrators of “premeditated,
deliberate murder of innocent civilians,” and not the other way
round, thus polarising the situation, which is tantamount to another
discourse strategy, victim-agent reversal, where the victim becomes
the ‘criminal’ and the criminal the ‘victim;’ a strategy employed within
an overall discourse strategy of positive ingroup presentation and
negative outgroup presentation.
203
My point from the above detailed critical analysis is to show the
powerful role of discourse in constructing the “other,” in creating a
certain image of the “other,” in delegitimating the “other”. Thus, my
goal has been to show how discourse structures and strategies can
be employed - within the discourse strategy of “positive self-
presentation and negative other presentation” - in the discursive
representation - actual construction and characterisation (rather than
mere or neutral description) and delegitimation of the “other” vis-à-
vis “we” or the self.
Let us now look at the second example where I examine the
importance of tracing or unraveling “intertextual and interdiscursive
relationships between utterances, texts, genres and discourses”
(Reisigl and Wodak, 2009: 90) in deciphering a discursive event.
As noted at the beginning of this section, the purpose of the second
example is not only to show how a discourse is normally the product
of a number of other past and present discourses, being de- and
then re-contextualised to produce a new hybrid interdiscourse, but
also the importance of realising these intertextual, interdiscursive
relationships by analysing, interpreting, consulting subject
specialists, and invoking their original historical context by digging
deep in the collective memory or code or jargon of a certain
discourse type.
To illustrate interdiscourse or interdiscursive relations, let us now
consider the following extract, taken from the preface to Ilan Pappe’s
(2006) monograph: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine:
…it is indeed my own J’Accuse against the politicians

who devised, and the generals who perpetrated, the
ethnic cleansing. Still, when I mention their names, I do
so not because I want to see them posthumously brought
to trial, but in order to humanise the victimisers as well as
the victims: I want to prevent the crimes Israel committed
from being attributed to such elusive factors as ‘the
circumstances’, ‘the army’ [or any other elusive discursive
label or justification] …and similar vague references that
let sovereign states off the hook and enable individuals to
escape justice (xvi).
Now, “…it is indeed my own J’Accuse,” what does this discursive

event, “J’Accuse,” used by Pappe, mean? Notice that I am not after
the literal meaning which is simply “I Accuse”. How are we to
understand what Pappe means by “it is indeed my own J’Accuse
204
against the politicians who devised, and the generals who
perpetrated, the ethnic cleansing”? Why “my own”?
Looking at the literal or lexical meaning of the phrase does not help,
nor does the present context alone seem to help, nor does the
grammatical construction help, despite its simplicity: “I Accuse”.
Meaning lies beyond the syntactical-grammatical, lexical-
lexicographical, and textual-contextual constituents of the discursive
event in question (Misaddi, 2007). So our question persists. Where
does meaning lie and where are we to find it? It is certainly beyond
the boundary of the sentence or the clause as I have indicated. It is
beyond the text. It is meta-textual. It is extra-linguistic. It is beyond
the text-internal factors of cohesion and coherence.
Here, in search of meaning, one has to go beyond words; “beyond”
and “over” grammatical or syntactic constructions; beyond their
“locutionary content with an aim to search their illocutionary forces”
(Grundy, 2000; quoted in Govindasamy and Khan, 2006: 158).
Therefore, traditional text or linguistic analysis where the focus and
scope of analysis is on the text-internal factors alone does not also
help.
We have to go in beyond the discursive to the meta-discursive
where meaning lies somewhere in one of the five criteria of text-
external factors (see below) which in discourse analysis “play an
essential role” (Titscher et al., 2000: 24). It lies in interdiscourse; in
the discourse strategy described as allusions or evocations; it lies in
“the historicity of discursive events” (Fairclough, 1995: preface); it
lies in a specific historical event shrouded in the interconnected
heteroglossia of voices or “Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1986) concept of
interdiscursivity and Julia Kristeva’s intertextuality (Moi 1986)”
(1995: 150, emphasis added) where “historical and social facts” are
incorporated; the notion that “every discourse is bound up with many
others and can only be understood on the basis of others” (Wodak
and Meyer, 2009: 26), on the unraveling of such intertextual,
interdiscursive (inter) connectedness.
This intertextual interpretation or interpretive analysis of the text is
equivalent to the second dimension or stage of analysis in
Fairclough’s DRA’s analytical apparatus, the discourse or discursive
practice, a stage preceded by the descriptive linguistic analysis (first
dimension/stage) of a discursive event, and proceeded by the
explanatory social or sociocultural practice analysis, as the third
stage in the DRA’s process of analysis as outlined by Fairclough
(1995; 2001).
Thus, as noted in the section on Critical Discourse Studies,
“language use per se” is not the focus of discourse analysis.
Besides its interest in the internal “textual-syntactic connectedness,”
205
known as cohesion, (critical) discourse analysis is also interested in
“textual semantics” or coherence (“the meaning of the text”), along
with the five criteria of text-external factors (see below) (Titscher et
al., 2000).
CDA researchers are interested in those implications that go beyond
the immediate context but that are shrouded in and signalled by the
immediate context, the “text in context”. They are interested, not
only in the “text-internal” factors of cohesion and coherence, but also
in the “text-external factors” of intentionality, acceptability,
informativity, situationality and intertextuality, as the seven text
criteria of de Beaugrande and Dressler (Titscher and Wodak, 2000:
pp. 21-24, and p. 227).
Therefore, according to Misaddi (2007), we have to stretch our
imagination beyond the immediate context and browse through the
layers of the collective political memory to find intertextual links. The
meaning might be shrouded in a tenuous, allusive and veiled
admixture of interdiscursivity, in “the centripetal-centrifugal
intertextuality of texts” (Fairclough, 1995: preface); in a discursive
hybrid collage that makes the text or discursive event an imbrication
of immediate linguistic ingenuity or creativity and a past disguised
allusion or intertextual reference.
Therefore, “discourses,” which are, according to Wodak (1996), by
definition “historical” as they “can only be understood in relation to
their context,” “are not only embedded in a particular culture,
ideology or history, but are also connected intertextually to other
discourses” (quoted in Titscher et al., 2000: 148). This is what
Christopher Candlin and Michel Foucault, I assume, mean by “the
historicity of discursive events” and “the archaeology of knowledge”
and experience, respectively (Fairclough, 1995).
So to unveil the implicit, the implication behind some discursive
events, the receiver or discourse analyst needs to infer by benefiting
but going beyond the immediate context and entailment or literal
wording, and digging, at times, into the past original context and
drawing, in an attempt to recover an explicature (“an enrichment of
an original utterance […] to a fully elaborated propositional form”
(Grundy, 2000:102)), and then the implicature (s), on the historical
political memory that makes up political convention or parlance.
As political discourse is like any discourse-type a cluster of semiotic
practices that are context dependent (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009),
without such sophistication and encyclopaedic or meta-contextual
knowledge – knowledge that goes beyond the immediate
syntactical-grammatical, lexical-lexicographical, and textual-
contextual constituents of the discursive event in question - of the
original context and the circumstances that gave rise to it, one may
206
never arrive, as stressed by Misaddi (2007) at the implicatures or
get the intended message behind certain discursive events as
certain propositions need first to be explicated or semantically
enriched (Grundy, 2000) based on such real-world knowledge and
then attempt our chance at deriving the implicatures or what is
implicated (recall our investigation of the meaning of and referent
behind “Fox” in Operation Desert Fox, the operational war code
given by the US military discourse orchestrators to dub an operation
against Iraq in 1998).
This is an assumption that makes CDA researchers and scholars of
great value as they deconstruct or decode the discursive event and
let us see – besides unearthing the linguistic resources - those
“grain-of-sand like means” or the linguistic “pin-sting” - that
legitimate the “other” and sustain domination (see example one) –
the veiled intertextual, interdiscursive links between the immediate
or present textual-context and the allusive meta-textual or meta-
discursive reference of a past discursive event.
That is why Reisigl and Wodak (2009: 90) state that “DHA,” as a
variant of CDA takes into account “intertextual and interdiscursive
relationships between utterances, texts, genres and discourses
[where meaning can be “de- and re-contextualized, i.e. newly
framed,” thus acquiring a partly new meaning], as well as extra-
linguistic social/sociological variables, the history of an organization
or institution, and situational frames".
Having said this, let us now get back to the event in question: “…it is
indeed my own J’Accuse”. According to Misaddi (2007: 99-100) and
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia 2010, in 1894, Alfred Dreyfus
(1859- 1935), a French army officer of Jewish extraction, “was
accused of selling military secrets to Germany”. Convicted, he was
court-martialed and as a result sentenced to life imprisonment.
However, it was found that the evidence was irregular and
insufficient, which caused a lot of unrest nationwide. The Dreyfus
Affair, consequently, turned into a national crisis. At this juncture,
Émile Zola (1840-1902), a French novelist and critic, rose up and
wrote a famous letter titled: “J’Accuse,” accusing the military of
covering up its errors in making the case,” thus bringing the affair
again into public attention; and eventually, based on the authority of
the word, acquitting Dreyfus of the false charge.
Now back to Pappe’s own version of “it is indeed my own J’Accuse,”
it is clear that without this intertextual meta-contextual historical
knowledge, rooted in (the archeology of) the collective political
memory, in the “intertextual traces of other voices and discourses”
(Amer, 2009: 24), no precise cognition can be made out of this
discursive event which encapsulates a hundred years of history.
207
It is also clear that this meta-knowledge (knowledge of the
knowledge) or historical background which makes up political
parlance or convention goes beyond, as noted, the immediate
syntactical-grammatical, lexical-lexicographical, and textual-
contextual knowledge of the uttered words, where meaning lies
beyond phraseology, beyond the immediate context, beyond the
boundaries of the clause; and indeed, “beyond the temporal and
spatial horizon of the immediate occasion of interaction” (Erickson,
2004; quoted in Young, 2009: 3).
4.6 HISTORICAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE PALESTINE

QUESTION
Document analysis - as part of the corpus of study analysed in this

study- formed an important part in data collection in order to write
Chapter 2: BACKGROUND: THE PALESTINE QUESTION (see
Table below). Data were collected and collated to construct the
Palestine Question - the issue under investigation - as a background
to the whole study. As mentioned in Chapter 2, such synthesized
data were meant to bring to light, inter alia, the major contributing
factors and formative events behind the development of the “Zionist
enterprise in Palestine” and the consequent pre-planned
“transformation of Palestine into a Jewish state”. In the process,
analysis was conducted on a number of primary historical
documents (some of which can be found appended at the end of
this study) as such contributing factors.
208
Table 4.6
Corpus of Study
(Documents Analysed in Chapter 2)
Discursive
Ite No.
Events/
m of
Documents/ Source for Document/Discourse
No Pa
Discourse
. ges
Fragments
The Jewish Herzl, T. ([1896]1988). The Jewish pp.
1 State (1896) State. New York: Dover 67-
Publications, Inc. 157
Husayn- Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and
McMahon Consultations
2 2
Correspondenc (http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic)
e (1915-1916)
Balfour http://www.mideastweb.org/mebalf
3 Declaration our.htm 1
(1917)
the Palestine http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/j
4 Mandate source/History/Palestine_Mandate. 5
(1922) html
British White http://www.mideastweb.org/1922w
5 Paper of p.htm 3
June1922
British White Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and
Paper of Consultations
6 6
November (http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic)
1939
Resolution 181 Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and
(Plan of Consultations
2
7 Partition) http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic
+23
(November 29,
1947).
Filastin wal- Sulaiman, Khalid A. (1984).
Isti’mar al- Palestine and Modern Arab Poetry.
Jadid London: Zed Books (pp. 8-9)
8 2
(Palestine and
the New
Colonization)
209
CHAPTER FIVE
DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
Thus, the activities of colonialism are regularly promoted

in more subtle and complicated ways to such an extent
that it becomes almost totally beyond our ability to
perceive their far-reaching implications. This is because
our mental status and attitudes prevent us from following
the intrigues and discerning the grain-of-sand like means
used by colonialism. In such a situation, it would suffice
that a single grain of sand enters the engine to put it out
of order. In other words, just as a ‘nothing’ would suffice
to paralyze the nervous system of a living being, so too
would a ‘pin sting’ in a sensitive area be sufficient to bring
paralysis into the social relations network of a colonized
country.
(Bennabi, 1998: 100)
5.1 OVERVIEW
This chapter concerns itself with a CDA of the discourse declared to

bring to an end “decades of confrontation and conflict” in the Middle
East through the reconstruction of Mandate Palestine so as to
establish a Palestinian state; a state that embodies the national
aspirations of the Palestinian people and their right to self-
determination. The chapter, following this overview, and a brief
section on discourse and political entities, starts with the first
Research Question, a CDA of UN resolutions and ‘peace’ discourse
on the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination; and next
moves on to the second Research Question concerning the
Palestinian Refugees Right of Return in such discourse. The chapter
in the process continues to provide critical insights into the ‘peace’
proposals (see Section 3.5) or “peace offensive:” the PLO’s implicit
then explicit abandonment of the 1968 Charter “that called for
the “open acceptance of Resolution 242,” the de facto recognition of
‘Israel’ in 1988, the 1993 Oslo Accords, and the Interim Agreement
(Oslo 2) in 1995, and certain discourse fragments of the Roadmap
discourse of the Quartet. Following a look into the change of the
official Arab and consequently Palestinian discourse and thus
stance regarding the Zionist entity as an “enemy,” the chapter closes
with an evaluation of the ‘peace process’.
210
Now, throughout this treatise, I have maintained that social control
and domination are being exercised “with increasing frequency by
means of texts” and that mystification of social events is conducted
by discursive and linguistic means, and that demystification,
enlightenment and social change can be achieved by means of
patiently noting those subtle “grain-of-sand like means;” by
“subjecting the discourses of those in positions of power to critical
analysis” (Amer, 2009: 26); by “careful systematic analysis, self-
reflection at every point of one’s research and distance from the
data which are being investigated” (Wodak and Meyer, 2009: 32).
So, if a nation or a powerless or disenfranchised social group is to
be disengaged from the trammels of discourse or abuse of those in
positions of power, then it is a prerequisite for such a nation or group
or ‘losers’ to become conscious of logos, of the double-edged
weapon of discourse. They have to become conscious since
“consciousness is the first step towards emancipation” (Fairclough,
2001a: 1).
Without this language consciousness or what Fairclough (2001a)
calls critical language awareness - this consciousness of discourse
as a mighty double-edged weapon - we are prone to enslavement
and manipulation by opportunists, colonialists or Machiavellians,
those “rodent-like agents” conscious of the power of the “grain-of-
sand like means” or the linguistic “pin-sting” induced by the linguistic
sign.
It is from this attempt at language consciousness raising, the
attempt to make us, rulers and ruled, far conscious of domination in
its linguistic forms that this study draws much of its significance (i.e.
first objective of study), where readers are being sensitised to
language as a vehicle for social action rather than (mere) thought; a
vehicle not only for the reflection of reality or as a method of
communication for the political event, but also the actual
construction or distortion of such reality and such a political event; a
vehicle for the perpetuation of a certain reality.
Given this, this work encourages CDA scholars and researchers in
particular to always remain - like a morally committed artist in pursuit
of liberty, equality and justice - engagé, not dégagé. It urges them to
always be driven by “emancipatory and democratic purposes”
(Reisigl and Wodak, 2009: 120). It emphasises the moral obligation
upon them to always be, as stressed by Van Dijk (2009: 63)
“sociopolitically committed to social equality and justice" – a goal of
this CDA study.
211
5.1.1 Discourse and Political Entities
While charisma can be a determinant in the future of a presidential

candidate, his or her powers of oratory, rhetoric or soundbite can
have the upper hand in such presidential races or electoral debates
(Misaddi, 2007). Similarly, while resistance and intifadas or popular
revolts play a role in irredentism and revanchism, or the restoration
of occupied territories, discourse, depending on the political
perspective, vested interests and ideological affiliations of its
producer can either enhance the efficacy of such struggle or
undermine it. Indeed, the way discourses project a certain people,
events or phenomena can greatly construct or adversely distort their
past, present and future.
Thus, depending on power-holders or discourse producers, political
discourse can result into certain peaceful modi vivendi among
nations, groups, or factions that are at war, or into warmongering
and the escalation of political fray and or even the outbreak of wars
among countries that are actually or ostensibly at peace. As noted in
Chapter 1, “conflicts and wars begin and end with words”.
Therefore, discourse as such and as being “socially constitutive” can
bring about far-reaching social consequences and political
transformations that are of momentous magnitude. It can be used,
again depending on the political perspective and vested interests of
its producer, as an instrument of conflict management and
resolution, or strife and revolution, confrontation or negotiation,
political repression or political emancipation, legitimation or
delegitimation. It can be used as a vehicle for construction or
destruction, obfuscation or elucidation, peaceful coexistence or
ideological confrontation, aggression or non-aggression, political
stability or political unrest, détente or impasse, bellicosity and
belligerence or entente and non-belligerence, amity or enmity,
power of logic or logic of power, peace or war, etc. In short,
discourse can generate momentum that tanks alone cannot; an
assumption that lends credit to the saying: “the pen is mightier than
the sword,” or “persuasion is better than force”.
Dialectically, it is now obvious that a certain political event is a
consequence of a certain discursive event and vice versa (see
Chapter 1). Hence, the emergence of new nation states, new
political entities and new national identities, and the collapse or
dissolution or indeed elimination or ‘cleansing’ of certain others can
all result from the struggles for power and power of the soundbite
where “the composition of cultural groups, the management of social
relations, the constitution of social institutions, the perpetuation of
social prejudices, and so on” (Jaworski and Coupland, 1999: 5) are
212
all induced or constituted (enacted and exercised) by discourse (see
Chapters 1 and 3).
A case in point is that of the politicide of Palestine and the
consequent creation of that of the settler colonialist Zionist entity. As
it is now, discourse was instrumental in the early years or
development of the settler Zionist enterprise. It was instrumental in
such politicide and such creation. It played a major role in the
diplomacy and propagation of israelese. It played a major role in the
fiction spun about the ‘historical right ‘or ‘historic connection’. It was
significant in the choice of Palestine over the Argentine as a more
profitable Zionist enterprise (see Chapter 2). It was central to
justification, (de)legitimation and domination. Discourse has also
been instrumental in perpetuating the status quo, following the
creation in 1948 of ‘Israel,’ a new nation state or settler society in the
heart of Palestine (see Chapter 2). So, discourse was not only
instrumental in bringing about the Jewish state but also in
maintaining, besides the biased involvement of certain Powers, its
survival despite its alien presence in a region that is different from it
in every aspect, and until the very moment.
In this context, it is apposite to draw attention to Der Judenstaat or
The Jewish State, the (nationalist identity) discourse the founder of
Zionism forged in 1896 - mentioned in Chapter 2 as one of the
factors or formative events behind the creation of the Jewish state
and the resultant homelessness and sufferings of the Palestinians.
This is the startling pamphlet in which Theodore Herzl (1860-1904) -
visionary and father of the ‘State of Israel’ - had proposed a “modern
solution for the Jewish question” and explained his vision and
“scheme” of a Jewish state.
This influential little pamphlet - this Herzlian discursive conception of
a Jewish state, this visionary work which conceptualised the Jewish
Question and made it an international problem - was a milestone in
the national construction of Zionist Jews and portentously the
national destruction of the Palestinians (see Subsection 2.3.2, and
p. 71 of 2.3.3).
It inaugurated the Zionist national movement and mobilised some of
the imperial powers of the day. It indicated the need to have a
sovereign right to conduct “organized emigration,” rather than
colonisation through “gradual infiltration of Jews,” which would be
“bound to end badly”.
It drew up a detailed plan as a solution to the Jewish Question and
pointed out the means and mechanisms to carry out such a
“scheme” and achieve such a solution. It started the settler Zionist
process of immigration and resettlement, and eventually the creation
213
of this Jewish state on the ‘cleansed’ Palestinian homes and
villages.
So, as noted, discourse was instrumental in carrying out the Zionist
enterprise in Palestine and (along with the use of force later on) the
ultimate creation of the ‘State of Israel’ 44 years after the death of
Herzl. Indeed, as captured succinctly by Lipsky (1988), (discourse
of) The Jewish State was “one of the chapters in the story” of Herzl
“to achieve in eight years [i.e. 1896 until his death in 1904] what his
people had not been able to achieve in two thousand years” (Herzl,
1896/1946/1988: 20).
So, it all starts and ends with discourse. Inner and political
emancipation start with discourse and are maintained via discourse.
Through discourse, not only did Herzl start to make an invented
piece of fiction a reality, but also created the piece of fiction which
eventually became a reality.
Indeed, not only did Herzl discursively - or through the power of
logos and the buildup of a “Zionist mythology” - accomplish self-
emancipation or liberation of the spirits of Jews from the ghettos, but
also in the process political emancipation, aided in the course of
development by force of arms.
So not only did Herzl indicate destiny in his discourse (s) on the
Jewish question and its solution instantiated in the establishment of
a Jewish state, but also galvanised Zionist Jews to political action
after he had inspired them discursively. In his words in The Jewish
State - published in a pamphlet in 1896 - Herzl writes:
It depends on the Jews themselves whether this political

pamphlet remains for the present a political romance. If
the present generation is too dull to understand it rightly,
a future, finer and a better generation will arise to
understand it. The Jews who wish for a State shall have
it, and they will deserve to have it (Herzl, 1988: Preface).
5.1.2 Research Questions and Assumptions
As stated in Chapter 1, the Research Questions centre on two

overarching major questions or inalienable rights essential to
Palestinian statehood and thus instrumental in bringing about any
settlement or modus vivendi to the Arab struggle against Israeli
occupation.
Cornerstones for Palestinian salvation and Israeli security, these are
(i) the Palestinian People Right to Self-Determination (supposedly
articulated in UN Resolution 3236 of November 1974), and (ii) the
214
Palestinian Refugees Right of Return (supposedly articulated in UN
Resolution 194 of December 1948). These are the questions on
whose answers the foundation stones of such a state and peace
depend.
Therefore, the Research Questions centre on the position of these
pillars or inalienable rights - pivotal to Palestinian survival and
statehood, termination of hostilities between Muslims and Zionists,
and a peaceful Middle East and hence any attempt at rehabilitation -
on the agenda of UN and peace discourse on the Palestine
Question. The study endeavours to find how practical and bona fide
those resolutions and subsequent ‘peace’ discourse (s) in
constructing those pillars or rights are.
Since Palestine has been colonised through Zionist discourse and
the force of arms, any discourse that does not tackle adequately
these issues or undo this injustice is bound, in my view, to be
impractical, and hence ineffective or at best impermanent. It remains
so as long as such discourse legitimates, whether de facto or de
jure, implicitly or explicitly, the Zionist annexation of more than 80%
of historic Palestine (Question of Occupation/Territory/Sovereignty
or Self-Determination), and as long as it denies the return of the
85% of Palestinians the Zionists expelled in 1948 and 1967
(Question of the Right of Return).
Now, before I begin dealing with the position of each of these two
inalienable rights in UN and peace discourse in detail, I reproduce
below the Research Questions, along with my assumptions towards
them:
1. How practical and bona fide are UN resolutions and ‘peace

talks’ in ending the status quo - “Israel’s oppression and
occupation” - in realising the Palestinian People Right to Self-
Determination, and thus paving the road to “peace” in the
Middle East? (I assume that they are neither practical nor
bona fide.)
2. To what extent has such UN and ‘peace’ discourse gone in

implementing the Palestinian Refugees Right of Return or the
reconstitution of the Palestinians - rendered since 1948
homeless - as a nation in their historic homeland? (I assume
that it has dodged the implementation of this right.)
215
5.2 RQ I: UN RESOLUTIONS AND ‘PEACE’ DISCOURSE, AND
RIGHT OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE TO SELF-
DETERMINATION (QUESTION OF OCCUPATION/
TERRITORY/ SOVEREIGNTY)
As a point of departure, I set out to deal with Research Question I

concerning the role of UN resolutions and ‘peace’ discourse in
ending the Israeli occupation and realising the right of the
Palestinian people to self-determination by aiding them reconstitute
themselves in their historic homeland, and thus paving the road to
“peace” in the Middle East. Hence, Research Question I centres on
the position of this inalienable right - the right of the Palestinian
people to self-determination through an end to the Israeli occupation
- in UN and ‘peace’ discourse. The Question can be divided into five
detailed heuristic sub-questions as follows:
• To what extent do UN resolutions and contemporary discourse

of the ‘peace process’ reshape and demarcate the geopolitical
map of former Palestine? What territory out of Mandate
Palestine does the discoursed-upon state have?
• How practical or dispositive and bona fide such resolutions

and discourses are in ending occupation and realising a
Palestinian state that is politically sovereign and economically
viable?
• What territorial integrity and contiguity does such state have in

light of Israeli settler colonies, those huge Jewish population
centres that rip Palestinian territories and families and mothers
and their parity apart?
• What is the status of al-Quds/Jerusalem in such discourses?

Can there be a Palestinian state without Jerusalem being its
capital, given its religious, historical and cultural significance,
not only to Palestinians, but also to Muslims and even
Christians worldwide?
• What sovereignty does the proposed state have over the

envisioned or negotiated territory?
In an attempt to provide an answer to these sub-questions posed

under Research Question I, critical analysis is conducted on six UN
resolutions, namely: 242 (1967), 338 (1973), 3236 (1974), 1397
216
(2002), 1515 (2003), and that related to the erection of the latest
Israeli segregation barrier on the West Bank (2003).
In addition, an attempt is also made to deconstruct the language of
three documents of the peace process/peace discourse, namely:
Oslo Accords (Sept 13, 1993), The Israeli-Palestinian Interim
Agreement (Oslo 2) on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (Sept 28,
1995), and George W. Bush, Speech at the Aqaba (Jordan) Summit,
June 4, 2003.
5.2.1 UN SC Resolution 242 and Right of the Palestinian People

to Self-Determination (Question of Occupation and
Territory)
After extensive consultations with Arab states, Israel, and

the Palestinians, the United Nations and the Soviet Union
believe that an historic opportunity exists to advance the
prospects for genuine peace throughout the region. The
United States and the Soviet Union are prepared to assist
the parties to achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive
peace settlement, through direct negotiations along two
tracks, between Israel and the Arab states, and between
Israel and the Palestinians, based on United Nations
Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. The objective
of this process is real peace.
(Letter of invitation to the Middle East Peace Conference
in Madrid, 19-10-1991)
Issued 20 years after the Partition Resolution (181 of November

1947), UN SC Resolution 242 (November 22, 1967) (vide Appendix
A (v)), has created a new reality in Palestine. Through this
Resolution, “the United States has laid down the foundation stone
for a new map for the Jewish state, commensurate with the role it
plays in the context of her strategy in the region” (Shash, 1999: 19).
Here, producers of this UN discourse have laid down the grounds for
an indefinite pro-Israeli reality.
Ironically, becoming one of the most commonly referred to in Middle
Eastern politics or the Israel/Palestine question, Resolution 242 has
thus been instrumental in granting or rather arrogating to the
European Zionist immigrant diaspora further land requisition or
annexation of Palestinian territory, while paradoxically depriving the
indigenes of further rights.
Drafted by Lord Caradon, the then Britain’s representative to the
UN, Resolution 242 - through deliberate linguistic ambiguity
217
reminiscent of that of McMahon, the British High Commissioner for
Egypt (1915-1917) (see Chapter 2) - has been a bone of contention
not only since the very moment of its adoption, but also its
interpretation.
In this subsection, I want to study whether this resolution - taken
along with 338 as noted in the above epigraph, as the basis for
“permanent status negotiations” and the construction of “a just,
lasting and comprehensive peace settlement” - genuinely and
practically works towards the “termination of hostilities” between
Arabs and Israelis through recognising and realising the Palestinian
people’s right to self-determination, or whether it is only a means to
temporise to create further “facts on the ground” to elicit more
concessions and thus “enable further consolidation of Israeli
power”. In other words, the study seeks to ascertain if this
Resolution is really geared towards and linguistically structured to
achieve “a just, lasting and comprehensive peace,” as foregrounded
in the invitation to the Middle East Peace Conference or whether it is
a linguistic means to protract the Arab struggle against Israeli
occupation and gain more time to create further “irreversible”
realities? The critical analysis is aimed to reveal this and to
ultimately find out if this resolution, taken - as noted - as the basis
“to advance the prospects for genuine peace throughout the region”
is bona fide and practical (in achieving its purported objectives).
As a background to its setting and context, Resolution 242 was
adopted in the aftermath of the Israeli Aggression of 5 June (1967)
(framed by Israelis as the Six-Day War) and the consequent
occupation of the remnant of historic Palestine, along with the
sovereign territories of the Sinai Peninsula (of Egypt) and the Golan
Heights (of Syria). Thus, the resolution was issued supposedly in
order to end “the state of belligerency then existing between Israel
and Egypt, Jordan and Syria,” following the 1948 implantation of
‘Israel’ in the heart of the Arab world, and then intensified following
this Aggression of 5 June - this full-scale blitzkrieg Israeli surprise
attack on 5 June 1967 that has resulted in the new state’s Anschluss
or annexation of the remnant 22% (Saleh, 2001) of historic
Palestine: the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip,
wiping Palestine off the map completely.
Proposed by the British, and supported by the British and the
Americans, text of Resolution 242 has, in violation of the UN
principle of “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war,”
not only authorised ‘Israel’’s existence within the 78% of Palestine it
annexed in the 1948 Zionist encroachments on the territory and
human geography of Palestine - formalised in 1949 Armistice
Agreements - but also provided for her the grounds or linguistic
218
means to dodge and debate the extent of withdrawal from the
remaining 22% of the territory of Mandate Palestine it occupied in
the aggression of 5 June the resolution is supposed to demand for
its immediate return.
Drafters of Resolution 242 begin by emphasising “the inadmissibility
of the acquisition of territory by war [...], which creates, given how
‘Israel’ was established on most of Mandate Palestine by means of
war (1948), a contradiction. The resolution next proceeds as to state
that “the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle
East” requires, amongst other things:
(i) Withdrawal of Israel [i] armed forces from territories

occupied in the recent conflict [and] (ii) Termination
of all claims or states of belligerency and respect
for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty,
territorial integrity and political independence of
every State in the area in their right to live in peace
within secure and recognized boundaries free from
threats or acts of force.
By making or restricting reference to “the recent conflict,” i.e. 1967,

the resolution first ignores 1948 as the year marking a new juncture
in the Palestinian struggle against Zionist immigration and
domination. Notwithstanding this disregard of this historical fact of
the annus horribilis of 1948 as the year of the creation of ‘Israel’ and
the consequent homelessness of the Palestinians, the resolution
has to do with, and was adopted as a development of such a
historical fact. It has to do with the UN principle of “the inadmissibility
of the acquisition of territory by war,” hence its call (i) for the
“withdrawal of Israel [i] armed forces from territories occupied in the
recent conflict” and (ii) “Termination of all claims or states of
belligerency”. However, in ignoring the then recent fact that ‘Israel,’
which was founded in 1948, was established through Zionist
terrorism or “the acquisition of territory by war,” the resolution
contradicts itself when it emphasises “the territorial inviolability” and
“the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” (see below
for another contradiction in the resolution concerning this point).
Furthermore, this rather ambiguous resolution gives the impression
that ‘Israel’ is to withdraw from the territories it occupied in that same
year (i.e. 1967). However, a critical analysis of the linguistics or
grain-of-sand like means used reveals, much to the manipulative
nature of the Israeli side, and frustration and naiveté of the
Palestinian side, something else. Let us first take a look at the
219
following extract taken from paragraph 1 (i) of the resolution with its
reconstructed or deconstructed version next to it:
Table 5.1
CDA of UN Resolution 242
and Right of the Palestinian People to Self-Determination
(Question of Occupation and Territory)
Original text Deconstructed
Withdrawal of Israel[i] armed “Withdrawal of Israel[i] armed forces

forces from territories occupied in from [the] territories occupied in the
the recent conflict recent conflict”
According to the phraseology or wording of the original text above,

‘Israel’ is to withdraw from territories it occupied in the recent
conflict; territories, any territories; five or ten percent of the area of
the occupied territories can, from the Israeli point of view or the
Machiavellian discourse producer, for example, fulfill the
“requirements”. The way discourse here is carefully worded with the
calculated omission of the definite article “the,” for instance, makes
or gives room for ‘Israel’ to withdraw from “some” or “certain”
territories rather than the territories, i.e., all the territories it occupied
in that invasion. The linguistics of the resolution do not specify the
extent of withdrawal, which must be; given “the inadmissibility of the
acquisition of territory by war,” full withdrawal.
So this creates another contradiction between the preambular
phrase, “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”
discussed above and this deliberate ambiguity in the extent of
withdrawal from territories occupied by force through “the acquisition
of territory by war”. In other words, if “the acquisition of territory by
war” or “force” is inadmissible, then full and immediate withdrawal
from all the territories occupied by aggression must take place, and
immediately and unconditionally.
Such self-contradictions embedded in the discourse-internal
structures, and vague formulations deployed as discursive strategies
- detected only upon careful critical patient analysis, “self-reflection
[…] and distance from the data […]” - give ‘Israel’ much wiggle room
to really indefinitely temporise, stonewall and hedge the principles of
the UN Charter and Geneva Conventions, disputing and denying the
interpretation of the Palestinian viewpoint of the resolution, which is
total and immediate Israeli withdrawal.
And it is this total and immediate Israeli withdrawal that is the logical
thing to do, if those power-holders are to be logical and appear to be
fair. Any other interpretation, such as the one dogmatically adopted
220
by ‘Israel’ and supported by the UK and USA, is a fallacy, carried out
or made possible discursively.
But if these powerful groups insist on such interpretations, then they
have also to say that some “Israel [i] armed forces” are to withdraw,
rather than all, since “Israel [i] armed forces” similarly lacks the
definite article (Shash, 1999). It is “Withdrawal of Israel[i] armed
forces [not the Israel[i] armed forces] from territories occupied in the
recent conflict”. Otherwise, this besides, being illogical or fallacious
will amount to another contradiction. I cannot totally, though, exclude
the possibility that this might have also been deliberate, for similar
purposes: withdrawal of some Israeli armed forces rather than the
or all forces; as a way of redeployment for example, however
paradoxical this may sound.
Further and in contrast to this omission of the definite article from
paragraph 1 (i) of the Resolution: “Withdrawal of Israel[i] armed
forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” we find that
“the” is used in paragraph 2 (c), in connection with the necessity
“For guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political
independence of every State in the area [...] (emphasis added)”. So
it appears that when it comes to territorial withdrawal where ‘Israel’
is the one to withdraw, it is “Withdrawal […] from territories,” “some”
territories without specification, but when it comes to guaranteeing
the inviolability of the territory where ‘Israel’ is particularly involved
and particularly concerned given its formation in the region by force
of arms, it is “the territorial inviolability,” with “the” being used:
specific and unambiguous. In other words, when it comes to the
Israelis, the phrasing of the resolution makes it less demanding,
while making it more demanding when it comes to the Arabs
Before leaving this point, I do not wish to pass over the use of
modality in the UN’s affirmation “that the fulfilment of Charter
principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in
the Middle East which should include the application of both the
following principles (emphasis added):” that of the “Withdrawal of
Israel[i] armed forces,” discussed above and that of the “Termination
of all claims or states of belligerency…” (see Table 2 below). So for
“just and lasting peace” to take place, the Security Council advises
(i.e. does not obligate: “should” rather than “must”) the invading
forces to apply the principle of “withdrawal”. They “should,” they are
advised in other words, if they wish, to withdraw. But they are not
obliged to do so.
Here the discourse producers make the withdrawal of Israeli armed
forces a matter of advisability, rather than an obligation: “should”.
This choice of modality will certainly be different and have a binding
221
rather than advising effect if “must,” for example, were used in lieu of
“should”.
An exhortatory wishy-washy word, “should” is not “must”. It does not
have the force or level of urgency and enforceability as the
obligatory “must” even if one is to argue that it is being used in a
legal sense. In such contexts, “should” has the capacity to be
manipulated. It can provide room for debate. Whatever the case, it is
my feeling that had “must” been used in place of “should” in the
above-mentioned apparent UN affirmation, reality could have been
different, or at least might have been different.
But for such change from “should” to “must” to take place, then a
change has to take place in the intent underlying such construction
of linguistics or calculated use of discourse.
Let us now consider another issue or pitfall in the resolution. As
shown in the following table, producers of this resolution speak of
“secure and recognized boundaries” – apparently an “innocent”
phrase that does not merit attention.
Table 5.2
The Security Council, Now, notice that the ‘little’ word

[....] “secure” is what CDA researchers
1. Affirms that the fulfilment of would call a floating or empty
Charter principles requires the signifier - “a signifier without a
establishment of a just and lasting signified” or a word without referent
peace in the Middle East which or at least a particular one.
should include the application of both In other words, what constitutes
the following principles: what is “secure” for one might not
be necessarily the same for
(i) Withdrawal of Israel [i] armed another. A word like this is open to
forces from territories occupied in the one’s resourceful imagination. How
recent conflict; would you define “secure”? The
elastic or floating (property of the)
(ii) Termination of all claims or states lexical selection “secure” - or its
of belligerency and respect for and derivatives such as “security” -
acknowledgment of the sovereignty, lacks any particular referent or
territorial integrity and political signified, hence, making it here all
independence of every State in the open to ‘Israel’’s unshackled
area and their right to live in peace resourceful and agile imagination to
within secure and recognized envisage and dictate – since it is
boundaries free from threats or acts the belligerent force – what is
of force (emphasis added). “secure;” to fill in this empty signifier
in accordance with her own
specifications and expedience.
222
Indeed, the ambiguity and elasticity of this locution or empty
signifier, “secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or
acts of force (emphasis added),” found in paragraph 1 (ii) of the
resolution, gives, in a manner similar to the omission of ‘the’ from
principle (i), much leeway to ‘Israel’ - whose problems with
boundaries and perception or complex of “security” differs from any
other state or perception given how it was founded - to decide what
boundaries it deems “secure” and in accordance with her own
unshackled robust imagination.
Given the mythological foundational stones and the blood path the
colonialist Zionist entity were built upon, it is always security-
conscious.
Indeed, given the blood path on which the colonialist Zionist entity
was created, it is always security-conscious. The fact that every
Israeli village or city was, as stated by Moshe Dayan (1915-1981) -
one of the Zionist entity’s former army commanders and defence
ministers - “built on its Palestinian counterpart” (Saleh, 2001: 46)
makes Israel to be beset with issues of security despite the present
imbalance of power. Given this asymmetry of power, this gives
‘Israel,’ the occupying Power, the upper hand to dictate, out of a
relatively “genuine fear” (Pappe, 2006), what is “secure” and
consequently needs to be “recognized”.
Clearly, “secure and recognized boundaries” go in tandem with
“Withdrawal [...] from territories”. The elasticity or floating
signification of “secure” complements or corroborates the ambiguity
of “Withdrawal [...] from territories”.
These are instances of the way language or linguistic means can be
used or rather abused as they are meant to be obscure or not
evident to the casual reader or certain participants, so as to achieve
certain hidden ends that sustain domination.
A further instance of such elastic linguistics or selections where a
sufficient wiggle room can be made for a rhino” can be found in
Principle (c) of Paragraph 2, where 242 affirms the necessity:
For guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political

independence of every State in the area, through
measures including the establishment of demilitarized
zones [...].
Here consider the locution “[...] through measures including the

establishment of demilitarized zones [...]. Demilitarised zones! Now
what could this mean, apart from giving ‘Israel,’ the occupying force,
carte blanche or further means to sustain its power and domination
over the region? What could it denote apart from further enacting
223
and reproducing unequal arrangements of power; apart from laying
to ‘Israel’ – and it must be ‘Israel’ since it is ‘Israel’ that is the alien
entity in the region – the ground to perpetuate hegemonic relations
or asymmetrical relations of power in the Middle East?
Notice also that the establishment of “demilitarized zones” is not
everything. It is one of a series of open-ended “measures,” “For
guaranteeing the territorial inviolability [...] “through measures,” one
of which is demilitarisation. So “measures including” have to be
noted and underlined. It deserves much self-reflection for what other
potential “measures” might be is open to ‘Israel’’s unshackled
imagination and what it would again deem “secure”.
Further, Resolution 242 also, as quoted at the beginning of this
subsection, states in paragraph 1that “the establishment of a just
and lasting peace in the Middle East” requires (i) “Withdrawal of
Israel [i] armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict”
and (ii) “Termination of all claims or states of belligerency [...]”. So,
242 calls for “the establishment of a just and lasting peace”. Here I
wish to underline “a just and lasting peace,” peace in the Middle
East as being qualified with “just” and “lasting”.
Now recall that Chapter 1 states that this is a Critical Discourse
Study on the uprooted and occupied Palestinians whose eagerness
to find a solution to their uprootedness and occupation makes them
inclined to accept even unjust solutions; and a study on occupying
Israelis whose eagerness to temporise and create more obstacles,
to annex the rest of Palestine, makes them ready to reject even just
solutions.
This reminds us that Palestine has been taken by force of arms, a
fact that renders 242, however ‘just’ it might appear to certain
stakeholders, to remain unjust; it remains so as long as the
belligerent Israeli occupation still exists on more than 80% of historic
Palestine, or as long as it legitimises the Israeli seizure of more than
80% of former Palestine. Actually it remains so as long as ‘Israel’
itself exists (in the heart or at the expense of another nation) or at
least as long as the bulk of the Palestinian people is still homeless
and stateless.
Therefore and in connection with the question of practicality, talking
about “the establishment of a just and lasting peace” can never be
the case. Calling it “just” and “lasting” when it is nothing but a
travesty of justice and a gross distortion of inexorable historical facts
is an illusion calculated to divert one’s attention; a discourse strategy
designed to titillate one’s feelings and in the process deaden one’s
senses. Indeed, how can it ever be “just” and “lasting” when the
same resolution gives the occupying Power much leeway to even
debate the extent of withdrawal from territories whose totality, if
224
returned in toto, would still only constitute 22% of Mandate
Palestine? How can it be “just” and “lasting” when this occupying
Power has been for 44 years so far debating withdrawal and is still
debating, refusing to withdraw from those territories it occupied by
force of arms in 1967, and desperately needed by the homeless and
stateless Palestinians for a state to bring to an end such national
trauma, prolonged homelessness, burning nostalgia and continued
sufferings?
Nothing but a myth, ‘peace’ can neither be “just” in this case nor
“lasting,” unless the words “just” and “lasting” denote or connote
something else in the English language or to the drafters of the
resolution or those adopting it. In fact, the total withdrawal of the
Israeli armed forces from the “territories occupied in the recent
conflict” would still be unjust as this would constitute only 22% of
former Palestine as noted. Indeed, the whole notion of partitioning
Palestine (UN Resolution 181 of November 1947) was unjust, let
alone the reality created following 1948 and then the 1967 Israeli
occupation of the remnant 22 percent left off Palestine which
Resolution 242, as analysed, makes it - contrary to what it might
seem on the surface of it - possible for ‘Israel’ to even keep of such
vestige what it judges convenient to her, i.e. “Withdrawal [...] from
territories” rather than “the” or “all” “territories occupied in the recent
conflict,” and to the extent it deems “secure” as revealed.
In this context, I quote Article 19 of the PLO Charter (also known as
the Palestinian National Charter (1968):
The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment

of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the
passage of time, because they were [and still are]
contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and to their
natural right in their homeland, and inconsistent with the
principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations,
particularly the right to self-determination [and the
Principle of “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of
territory by war”].
Further, it should be stressed that the way 242 is constructed leaves

it open as to when exactly or even approximately this “withdrawal” -
regardless of its disputable extent - is to take place as there is
nothing in the resolution that specifies immediacy or stipulates a
certain deadline for withdrawal, which must be immediate given the
resolution’s apparent emphasis on the “inadmissibility of the
acquisition of territory by war,” and its affirmation that “the fulfilment
of [UN] Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and
225
lasting peace in the Middle East”. It is ambiguous, nebulous,
indefinite; it only says “withdrawal of Israel [i] armed forces from
territories occupied in the recent conflict,” which, in practice, may
take effect in a day or on the Judgement Day. Recall that 242 was
adopted in 1967, and we are so far in 2013, and 'Israel’ is still
stonewalling debating withdrawal: from “territories” or “the
territories”.
The ambiguous and elastic linguistics of the resolution have
provided the settler state with the subtle means to sustain its
domination over the 78% of Palestine it occupied in 1948, and
further debate withdrawal from the rest 22% of it, it annexed in 1967
- the remnant of Palestine needed by the Palestinians for a state to
mitigate the angst and agony of their First Massive Wave of Mass
Expulsion, which was to be exacerbated rather than reversed by a
Second Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing.
The belligerent Israeli occupation has therefore continued, and “the
inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” has been nothing
but discourse, and “the need to work for a just and lasting peace”
has been nothing but mirage, and the perpetuation rather than
termination of hostilities has been nothing but the case.
Therefore - and based on (1) the inherent contradiction embedded in
the preambular phrase of the resolution: “the inadmissibility of the
acquisition of territory by war” and how ‘Israel’ was established, and
the deliberate commission or calculated omission of the article “the”
contradicting this supposed “inadmissibility,” (2) the elasticity of
“secure and recognized boundaries,” (3) the lack of enforceability as
represented by the calculated use of modality: “should include”
rather than “must” or has to,” (4) the sustainment of Israeli
domination “through measures” that include “the establishment [in
neighbouring countries and any potential future Palestinian “entity”]
of demilitarized zones,” to ensure Israeli hegemony in the region (5)
the deceptive purveyance of optimism as a discourse strategy found
in paragraph 1: “the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the
Middle East,” (6) the contradiction between “the need to work for a
just and lasting peace” and the much leeway or deliberate ambiguity
in “withdrawal […] from territories,” and (7) the intentional lack of a
timeframe for withdrawal of the occupying Power - the paper
concludes that UN SC Resolution 242 of November 1967 is flawed,
contradictory and biased, and is thus neither practical nor bona fide
in putting an end to Israeli occupation and domination.
In view of all this, the study further concludes that if ‘peace’ is to be
achieved based on this resolution; it is bound to be precarious and
temporary.
226
Using a different semiotic form - as a way of making use of what I
called in Chapter 3 the multisemioticity of texts - the table overleaf
sums up those text-internal linguistic mechanisms used in
Resolution 242 to sustain and reproduce domination:
Table 5.3
Resolution/original text Text-internal self-contradictions and

inconsistencies, discourse strategies and
linguistic means used in Resolution 242 to
sustain and reproduce domination
[Emphasises] the (1) - Hasn’t ‘Israel’ been established on
inadmissibility of the most of Mandate Palestine by means of war
acquisition of territory by (1948)?
war [...].
- “demilitarized zones” and other “measures” –
Affirms further the this provides ‘Israel’ with means to sustain its
necessity power and domination over the region
(c) For guaranteeing the
territorial inviolability [...] - “Withdrawal of Israel[i] armed forces from
through measures including territories [rather than the territories]
the establishment of occupied in the recent conflict [1967]”. This
demilitarized zones [...]. calculated manipulation of articles can
ensure infinite hedging and temporisation.
Withdrawal of Israel[i]
armed forces from (2) - lack of a timeframe for withdrawal of
territories occupied in the the occupying Power
recent conflict.
Affirms that the fulfilment - deceptive purveyance of optimism:
of Charter principles Calling it “just” and “lasting” peace is a
requires the establishment misrepresentation of reality and a gross
of a just and lasting peace distortion of and disregard for inexorable facts;
in the Middle East [...]. an illusion or a call calculated to divert one’s
attention, titillate one’s feelings and in the
process deaden one’s senses.
Affirms [...] every State - resort to deliberate ambiguity and vague
[’s...] right to live in peace formulations
within secure and - use of elasticity or empty signification
recognized boundaries [...].
[Emphasizes] the need to - “withdrawal […] from territories”
work for a just and lasting
peace
Now, in addition to all the above-mentioned problems inherent in

Resolution 242, the resolution ignores a number of important
historical facts. It treats the Palestine Question as though it was the
product of 1967 and not, for example, 1948 (see Table 5.4 below).
227
The fact is that the Palestine Question is that of a nation rendered
since 1948 by Zionist terrorism homeless - a nation distinguished
from the rest by a common history, descent, language, culture,
religion, physical characteristics, historical continuity, national
homogeneity, common political present, and primordial territorial
attachment to the land (Amer, 2012), etc. The Palestine Question is
that of a homeland stolen, and a people downtrodden; it is the
question of a people who have been denied by successive Israeli
leadership their right to national independence and self-
determination; it is the mass deportations or “mass forcible removal”
of a people from their roots; it is the 1948 Zionist encroachments on
the human geography and demography of Palestine, resulting in the
First Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing (i.e. refugees of 1948); and
exacerbated by the 1967 Israeli occupation of the rest of historic
Palestine and the resultant Second Massive Wave of Ethnic
Cleansing (i.e. refugees of 1967)9:
Table 5.4
Original Deconstructed
text
Withdrawal Resolution 242 simply ignores all the above-mentioned
of Israel[i] inexorable historical facts created by Zionist terrorism; it
armed disregards the heart of the problem: the problem as a “national
forces cause;” the problem as a people whom Zionists (later
from constructed as Israelis) have uprooted from their place of
territories origin and made to languish in different places of the world;
occupied the problem of a people whom Zionists have “expelled from
in the their homes at gunpoint” and then denied return; the problem
recent of a nation that existed in Palestine from time immemorial
conflict before Zionists (i.e. the Hagana, Stern Gangs, and Irgun) have
[1967]. ‘gang-raped’ it, pillaged it, and plundered it; it is the sociocide
and politicide of Palestine as a nation and then the systematic
mnemocide or “memoricide” or perpetuation of such politicide
through the continued Hebraisation and green-washing of
Palestine’s geography and ongoing Israelispeak and
resolutions of this kind.
9
“In fact, within 10 days of the [1967 Israeli Aggression or] war, more than 125,000
Palestinians were expelled by the Israelis from their land, mainly East Jerusalem,
Ramallah, and Jericho, and became DPs [Displaced Persons], while after this date
Israel continued to brutally expel an average of 500 Palestinians everyday from their
land. The majority of these were from the districts of Hebron, Bethlehem, Nablus, Jenin
and Qalkiliya” (Zakariah, 2008: 192).
228
Resolution 242 ignores all those facts as though the Palestine
Question finds its roots only in 1967; and as though it was an act of
God, and not the result of Zionist machination and years of plotting
and premeditation, contributing to a warped or distorted perception.
The resolution does not deal with those issues or with the Palestine
Question as such, which can obscure and obliterate the cause and
give ‘Israel’ more leeway to again debate, temporise and stonewall,
effecting in the process the total “memoricide of the Nakba,” of the
Palestine Question as a “national cause;” and despite all this, the
resolution is taken as the basis for settlement and peace. This
contributes to a perception that reality is not what it is; that the
Palestinians have been uprooted from their roots, and that the
Israelis are the perpetrators of such uprootedness and continued
dispossession.
Resolution 242 deals with the Palestine Question as a refugee
problem,” thus treating the Palestine Question “as one of resolving
the refugee issue” and not that of a national cause.
By dealing with such a Question as nothing but a “refugee problem,”
Resolution 242 or the politically powerful group behind its drafting
does not only dilute and dissolve the Palestine Question and thus
the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination,
but also disregard the axis or pivot around which much of the world’s
peace and stability revolves, hence directly contributing to global
‘terrorism’. By reducing the Palestine Question from being a
national cause, from being the cause of a homeland stolen, and a
people downtrodden to a mere refugee problem, Resolution 242
not only fails to be practical and bona fide, but also helps obfuscate
and obliterate “the patriotic and national rights” of the Palestinian
people and hence perpetuate the status quo.
5.2.2 UN SC Resolution 338 and Right of the Palestinian People

to Self-Determination (Question of Occupation and
Territory)
Issued on October 22, 1973 during the Ramadan/October War, SC

Resolution 338 “sought to end hostilities in the 1973 war and to
resume negotiations based on Resolution 242” (Smith, 2007: 348)
discussed above. The war was initiated by Egypt and Syria in an
attempt to recover the territories ‘Israel’ occupied in the aggression
of 5 June or the 1967 War.
In its call for “the implementation of Security Council Resolution 242
(1967) in all of its parts,” Resolution 338 does not therefore differ in
essence regarding the question of the practicality and that of good
229
intent as to end belligerent occupation and realise a viable and
sovereign Palestinian state from Resolution 242 as shown in the
table below:
Table 5.5

The Security Council, In its call to implement 242 “in all of its
Calls upon all parties concerned parts,” Resolution 338 endorses the
to start immediately after the same problems rife in resolution 242,
cease-fire the implementation of thus perpetuating rather than ending
Security Council Resolution 242 “fighting” as far as the Palestine
(1967) in all of its parts... Question is concerned.
Therefore, the study concludes that Resolution 338 (1973) is neither

practical nor bona fide in ending the occupation and reconstituting
Mandate Palestine.
5.2.3 UN Resolution 3236 and Right of the Palestinian People to

Self-Determination (Question of Sovereignty)
Adopted on November 22, 1974, UN GA Resolution 3236

recognises and reaffirms the rights of the Palestinian people to “self-
determination without external interference” (paragraph 1/a) and
“national independence and sovereignty” (paragraph 1/b) (see Table
5.6 overleaf).
230
Table 5.6
(Question of Occupation)

The General Assembly, So, as far as recognition, reaffirmation, and emphasis
[...] Expressing its grave are concerned, they are there in the Resolution. The
concern that the Resolution, however, lacks the language that turns
Palestinian people has such words from being mere rhetoric to reality, from
been prevented from acting as a discursive drug of gradualism and
enjoying its inalienable deceptive optimism to action and “facts on the
rights, in particular its right ground”.
to self-determination [...],
Palestinians are not in need of ones to tell them about
Recalling its relevant their inalienable rights but rather resolute actions or
resolutions which affirm decisive measures that can put those inalienable
the right of the Palestinian rights into reality.
people to self-
determination, In addition, a fact that characterises this Resolution
and the UN discourse on the Question of Palestine in
1. Reaffirms the general is the systematic use of verbal processes (i.e.
inalienable rights of the recognises, emphasises, affirms and reaffirms) where
Palestinian people in what the UN says remain in the sphere of rhetoric;
Palestine, including: there is nothing material here. No material processes,
for instance, are used.
(a) The right to self-
determination without Attention has also to be given to the fact that the
external interference; actions of which the Israelis are agent have passive
agent deletion (“have been displaced and uprooted” or
(b) The right to national “the Palestinian people has been prevented from
independence and enjoying its inalienable rights,” thus obscuring rather
sovereignty; than foregrounding who is responsible for such
displacement and uprootedness and the impediment
2. Reaffirms also the behind the Palestinian people exercising their
inalienable right of the inalienable rights.
Palestinians to return to
their homes and property This UN de-agentialisation of the event as being the
from which they have been product of a calamity or natural disaster to be
displaced and uprooted, saddened at, rather than the product of human agency
and calls for their return; (i.e. Zionists) to be deplored, condemned and
reversed helps perpetuate injustice. Such calculated
3. Emphasizes that full use of agentless passives obscures causal agency
respect for and the and hence obviates the need for blame attribution,
realization of these responsibility and accountability and hence
inalienable rights of the rehabilitation.
Palestinian people are
indispensable for the As such, the Resolution, while it may be bona fide, it is
solution of the question of impractical. It is impractical in the sense that it does
Palestine... not – through its verbal process, de-agentialisation
and rhetoric put those rights it recognises,
emphasises, affirms and reaffirms into reality, as
noted, where the Palestinians can actually exercise
their (a) right to self-determination without external
interference; [and] (b) The right to national
independence and sovereignty”.
231
5.2.4 UN SC Resolutions 1397 (2002) and 1515 (2003), and Right
of the Palestinian People to Self-Determination (Question
of Occupation and Territory)
Adopted “in the face of mounting violence and failure to obtain a

ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian Authority,” both UN SC
Resolution 1397 of March 12 2002 and 1515 (Endorsing the
Roadmap) of November 19 2003 almost echo each other (see table
below). Both Resolutions recall, express, affirm or reaffirm, and
welcome the same issues. Both Resolutions, for example, recall all
previous relevant SC Resolutions, “in particular resolutions 242
(1967) and 338 (1973),” demand for an “immediate cessation of all
acts of violence [...] and affirm the Security Council’s “vision of a
region where two States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side
within secure and recognized borders” (see Table 5.7 overleaf).
While Resolution 1397 (2002), however, “Calls upon the Israeli and
Palestinian sides and their leaders to cooperate in the
implementation of the Tenet work plan and Mitchell Report
recommendations [recommendations of The Sharm al-Sheikh Fact-
Finding (Mitchell) Committee formed “at the request of former
President Clinton in November 2000 and chaired by former senator
George Mitchell” to “investigate causes of the intifada and to
recommend “a path back to the peace process”” (Smith, 2007: 521)]
with the aim of resuming negotiations on a political settlement” and
“Expresses support for the efforts of the Secretary-General and
others to assist the parties to halt the violence and to resume the
peace process,” Resolution 1515 (2003) “Endorses the [then recent]
Quartet Performance-based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State
Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” and “Calls on the parties
to fulfil their obligations under the Roadmap in cooperation with the
Quartet; and to achieve the vision of two States living side by side in
peace and security”.
232
Table 5.7
CDA of UN Resolutions 1397 and 1515
Resolution 1397 Resolution 1515 Deconstruction

(March 2002) (November 2003)
The Security Council, The Security Council, Having provided the setting and context,
and theme and content of 1397 and
Recalling all its previous Recalling all its previous 1515 - as stipulated by DHA, the
relevant resolutions, in relevant resolutions, in analytical apparatus used in this study -
particular resolutions particular resolutions we can see that when it comes to the
242 (1967) and 338 242 (1967), 338 (1973), issue of withdrawal (ending occupation)
(1973), 1397 (2002) and the apparently or supposedly stipulated in
Madrid principles, Resolution 242; these two resolutions
still do not stipulate immediate and full
Affirming a vision of a Reaffirming its vision of withdrawal. They do not stipulate “a full
region where two States, a region where two and complete return to the 1949
Israel and Palestine, live States, Israel and armistice lines,” which if done would
side by side within secure Palestine, live side by immediately make the “vision of a region
and recognized borders, side within secure and where two States, Israel and Palestine,
recognized borders, [living] side by side within secure and
[...] recognized borders” a reality.
Expressing its grave Expressing its grave Recall that the whole “Peace offensive,”
concern at the concern at the from the PLO’s perspective, is based on
continuation of the tragic continuation of the tragic the reconstruction of Palestine within the
and violent events that and violent events in the pre-June 5 lines or the June 4, 1967
have taken place since Middle East, borders which in their totality constitute
September 2000, as noted only 22% of the total area of
especially the recent Mandate Palestine, which is even less
attacks and the increased than half of what the UN in its (Partition)
number of casualties, [...] Resolution 181 of 1947 allocated to the
Arab state, which again, from a practical
1. Demands immediate Reiterating the demand viewpoint, makes such resolutions
cessation of all acts of for an immediate means to sustain the Arab struggle
violence, including all acts cessation of all acts of against Israeli occupation through
of terror, provocation, violence, including all further temporisation and negotiations
incitement and acts of terrorism, and until, and only until the question of
destruction; provocation, incitement “secure and recognized borders” is
and destruction, answered, and which will never, given
the harboured intent to deceive, be
1. Endorses the answered. Recall that this debate has
Quartet been going on since 1967/1988.
Performance-based
Roadmap to a Notice also this UN consistency in
Permanent Two-State deliberately de-agentialising the events in
Solution to the Israeli- question (Expressing its grave concern at
Palestinian Conflict the continuation of the tragic and violent
(S/2003/529); events that have taken place since
2. Calls upon the Israeli 2. Calls on the parties to September 2000, especially the recent
and Palestinian sides and fulfil their obligations attacks and the increased number of
their leaders to cooperate under the Roadmap in casualties), thus again obscuring who is
in the implementation of cooperation with the responsible for such “tragic and violent
the Tenet work plan and Quartet and to achieve events” and the “recent attacks and
Mitchell Report the vision of two States increased number of casualties”.
recommendations with living side by side in
the aim of resuming peace and security...
negotiations on a political (emphasis added).
settlement...
233
Neither Resolution 242 as noted - with its ambiguous, contradictory,
and tendentious and thus impractical nature - and 338, used along
with 242 as the basis for a settlement, nor now 1397 and 1515, used
as echoes or reiterations of 242 and 338 (see table below), is
structured to make it for the two-state solution. All four resolutions,
given their lack of practicality and the harboured intent - as can be
revealed from such critical discourse analysis - to drag the Arab
struggle against Israeli occupation or this unequal conflict to
perpetuate Zionist hegemony in the region, fail - unsurprisingly - to
bring an end to the protracted problem by establishing a Palestinian
state (even) within the pre-June 5 lines.
Table 5.8

The Security In its call for the implementation of 242 (1967) and
Council, 338 (1973) in particular, Resolution 1515 (2003)
Recalling all its again endorses the same problems inherent in
previous relevant those resolutions, thus perpetuating rather than
resolutions, in ending the status quo, a reality beneficial only to
particular resolutions ‘Israel’ as it gives her more and more time to annex
242 (1967), 338 further Palestinian lands through the creation of
(1973), 1397 (2002)... further “facts on the ground” and further “new
realities” that help ‘Israel’ “consolidate its hold over
land it intended to retain and then declare its
willingness to negotiate peace”.
As noted, there is also the ongoing semantic stratagem ploy of

“secure and recognized borders” or boundaries reiterated in all
those resolutions. As analysed in Subsection 5.2.1, the floating
signification or ambiguity and elasticity of the locution, “secure and
recognized borders” or “boundaries” as mentioned in 242, gives
wide latitude for disagreement and much leeway to ‘Israel’- as the
sole Power in the region - to decide what boundaries it deems
“secure” at its own convenience and thus further temporisation,
further creation of “facts on the ground,” extraction of concessions
and thus “further consolidation of Israeli power” (Smith, 2007: 425),
“fundamental objectives” and “annexationist ambitions” (see table
below).
234
Table 5.9
Resolution Resolution Deconstruction

1397 1515
(Mar 2002) (Nov 2003)
The The Reiterations of Resolutions 242 and 338; hence

Security Security the use of empty signifiers that still give ‘Israel
Council, Council, ‘the upper hand to decide what borders it deems
Affirming a Reaffirming “secure” and consequently need to be
vision of a its vision of “recognized” and hence continuing temporisation.
region a region
where two where two We must not grow tired of repeating that the way
States, States, Resolution 242 (and its almost duplicate 338) is
Israel and Israel and structured, harbours bad faith and avoids
Palestine, Palestine, practicality.
live side by live side by
side within side within Why don’t those resolutions say, for example, “a
secure secure vision of a region where two States, Israel and
and and Palestine, live side by side within” the borders
recognized recognized drawn by the Partition Resolution (181 of
borders... borders... November 1947), or at least demands -
(emphasis (emphasis unambiguously - Israeli withdrawal from all the
added). added). territories occupied by force by ‘Israel’ in the
aggression of 1967 first and then talk about
‘secure’ and ‘recognized’ borders?
Logically (though still of course unfairly), this how

it must be, given the fact that this territory was
occupied by force of arms, and the supposed UN
Charter principles make such “acquisition of
territory by war” inadmissible. Why does it
become admissible when it comes to the
powerless?
To show some good intents and make it practical, discourse

producers of the UN SC resolutions in question could have at least
demanded complete and immediate withdrawal of Israeli armed
forces from all the territories ‘Israel’ occupied by force in 1967, or an
immediate return to the 1949 Armistice Agreements/the pre-June 5
lines, instead of the ambiguous and mala fide “Withdrawal of Israel[i]
armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” and the
elastic/floating “secure and recognized borders,” reiterated in 338
(1973), 1397 (2002) and 1515 (2003), and therefore keeping
revolving in the same vicious circle where further Israeli “facts” are
being daily created “on the ground,” and toll of the victims of this
235
discursive injustice on the other side of the equation goes up from a
crescendo to another, also daily.
Elucidated through continuous self-reflection and systematic
analysis, these are calculated lexicogrammatical structures that
render 242, along with its almost duplicates: 338, 1397 and 1515
mala fide and impractical, hence perpetuating the status quo.
5.2.5 UN GA Resolution on Israeli Wall, and the Question of

Occupation and Territory
Adopted on October 21, 2003, UN GA Resolution on Israeli Wall

came as a result of a massive expansionist segregation barrier
‘Israel’ began constructing in 2002 on 1967 occupied Palestinian
lands on the West Bank - site, along with the Gaza Strip, of a future
Palestinian state - and was completed in 2010 despite international
opposition to the construction of such wall, described by some as
“Wall of Disgrace” and which, according to this Resolution, makes
the long-debated “two-state solution physically impossible,” hence
bringing the two-state solution to a “stage of “clinical death”” (see
Chapter 3), and hence corroborating our CDA analyses that those
discourses of the powerful have always been forged to sustain
domination and the Zionist Anglo-American trinity of hegemony and
interests in the region.
The resolution begins by “Recalling” all relevant UN resolutions,
“Reaffirming the principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of
territory by war,” the “vision of a region where two States [...] live
side by side within secure and recognized borders,” “condemning all
acts of violence, terrorism and destruction” and “in particular the
suicide bombings [...],” “Deploring the extrajudicial killings and their
recent intensification, in particular [...] in Gaza,” “Stressing the need
to end the occupation that began in 1967, and the need to achieve
peace based on the vision of two States mentioned above,”
“Reiterating its call upon Israel, the occupying Power, to fully and
effectively respect the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 [“relative
to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War”], and
“Reiterating its opposition to settlement activities in the Occupied
Territories and to any activities involving the confiscation of land,
disruption of the livelihood of protected persons and the de facto
annexation of land,” and therefore, (1):
Demands that Israel stop and reverse the construction of

the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including
in and around East Jerusalem, which is in departure of
236
the Armistice Line of 1949 and is in contradiction to
relevant provisions of international law; [and (2)] Calls on
both parties to fulfil their obligations under relevant
provisions of the Road Map; the Palestinian Authority to
undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt,
and restrain individuals and groups conducting and
planning violent attacks; the Government of Israel to take
no actions undermining trust including deportations and
attacks on civilians and extrajudicial killings.
Now, apart from blaming and vilifying the victim by “condemning in

particular the suicide bombings” - the only means left for the
occupied desperate victim to get his voice heard - the Resolution -
which as noted reaffirms “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of
territory by war,” deplores “extrajudicial killings,” stresses “the need
to end the occupation that began in 1967,” and reiterates “its call
upon Israel, the occupying Power, to fully and effectively respect the
Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949” - does not take any practical
measure, i.e., sanctions as to enforce or practically ensure the end
of Israeli occupation - the source of all evils - or to ensure that this
reaffirming, deploring, stressing and reiterating become a reality;
and not just lip-service and thus more time for the occupying Power
to temporise while annexing more and more Palestinian lands and
creating more and more “irreversible” “facts on the ground”.
The construction of the wall has now, after all, been completed
without any physical interruption – apart of course from the victims’
stone-throwing, tyre-burning and ‘suicide bombing’ against this
systematic daylight robbery of their lands and livelihood – despite
all this reaffirming, deploring, stressing and reiterating. And this
construction of the wall, now deplored, tomorrow constitutes a new
starting point for new concessions to be imposed on the helpless
‘suicide bombers,’ victims of this ongoing discursive injustice.
This is in line with an established and systematic Israeli policy of
realpolitik, of creating “facts on the ground” that given the impunity
exercised by ‘Israel,’ makes such rigmarole of the usual “recalling,”
“condemning,” “deploring,” “stressing,” “expressing,” “reaffirming”
and again “reaffirming” and again “reaffirming” indeed nothing but
discourse or linguistic means that gradually provide the occupying
Power with the time necessary to create or present the international
community with further faits accomplis or further requisition and de
facto annexation of Palestinian lands that as time passes, become
the normal new point of reference for ongoing purported future
settlement. And this seems to go on like that ad infinitum or at least
as long as there are still Palestinians in the territories and ‘stones’ -
237
as their primary means of defence against armed Israeli troops, the
Israeli Merkava and Apache helicopter, against “the strongest
country in a thousand miles,” to use Ehud Barak’s words, one of the
Israeli figures to be added to the Zionist pantheon of Israeli heroism.
Therefore, due to this lack of practical measures – whose absence
underlies the intent to deceive – to ensure enforceability and
accountability in the resolution, the study concludes that this
resolution of October 2003 is no different from its predecessors, is
no different in being or acting as a discursive drug of gradualism and
deceptive optimism in the face of facts created daily on the ground;
and hence does not serve to end occupation, but on the contrary
works indirectly to perpetuate the status quo.
5.2.6 Oslo Accords (I) (Sept 1993)

and the Question of Palestinian Self-Determination
The Israeli-Palestinian pact of 1993 was fraught with

obstacles, with each side holding radically different
conceptions of what its terms signified. Many of the
accord’s provisos were never implemented, requiring a
second agreement, Oslo 2 or “The Interim Agreement,” of
September 1995.
(Smith, 2007: 450)
Based on Camp David Accords of 1978 – previously rejected by the

PLO – and negotiated “from December 1992 to August 1993” in
Oslo and “independently of the Madrid talks and without American
involvement” (Smith, 2007: 250), but signed officially at the White
House on September 13 1993, and considered a framework “for the
future relations” and all “subsequent agreements” “between ‘Israel’
and the PLO,” Oslo Accords - formally known as Declaration of
Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements - had in
essence “provided for the creation of a Palestinian Authority” (Oslo
Accords, Wikipedia, accessed 26 December, 2007: 1) or, according
to Annex II/2 of the Declaration of Principles (DOP):
the right of Palestinians to self-government over parts of

the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, areas to be
administered by a Palestinian Authority, following
immediately and beginning with “an accelerated and
scheduled withdrawal of Israeli military forces from the
Gaza Strip and the Jericho Area”.
238
Structurally, the DOP is composed of 17 Articles (Principles), 4
Annexes (Protocols), and the Agreed minutes to the Declaration of
Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements.
Starting on the date of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and Jericho,10
pursuant to the PLO and ‘Israel’’s signing of the Agreement on the
Gaza Strip and the Jericho Area (May 4 1994), “It was anticipated
that this arrangement would last for a five year interim period during
which a permanent agreement [the Interim Agreement] would be
negotiated (beginning no later than [“the beginning of the third year
of the interim period”] May 4 1996),” and ending on May 4 1999
where a final agreement would be concluded (Shash, 1999; Oslo
Accords, Wikipedia, accessed 26 December, 2007: 1; Smith, 2007).
The DOP stipulates that “Interim self-government was to be granted
in phases” (2007: 1). The “five-year "transitional period would
commence with the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and Jericho
area” (2007: 4) and a “redeployment of Israeli military forces in the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip would take place” (2007: 5). “The
Declaration of Principles would enter into force one month after its
signing” (2007).
Rejected by significant sections of Arabs and Palestinians such as
Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, and the Israeli right (Shash, 1999),
the PLO-Israel Letters of Recognition (September 9, 1993) and the
ensuing Declaration of Principles (DOP) (September 13, 1993),
together constitute Oslo Accords, finalised in Oslo, Norway, in
August 1993, and signed in Washington D.C. on September 13,
1993 (Smith, 2007).
Now, permanent issues - heart and organs of the Palestine Question
- were postponed; they were not dealt with upon or as part of the
signing of the Accords or the Declaration of Principles in September
1993. Disposition or even mere discussion of core “permanent
issues” such as “Jerusalem, [Palestinian] refugees, settlements [or
Israeli settler colonies], security arrangements, borders, relations
and cooperation with other neighbours, and other issues of common
interest” (Article V, paragraph 3) - questions on whose answers the
foundation stones or viability of Palestinian statehood would depend
- were “left to be decided at a later stage” as part of “permanent
status negotiations” (Oslo Accords, Wikipedia, accessed 26
December, 2007: 1).
It should be noticed at the start of my analysis of the DOP that in
Article V of paragraph 3, it is stated that “It is understood that these
negotiations shall cover remaining issues” such as the ones
10
Originally, this commencement was supposed to take place as specified in the DOP
from the election of the council, which was scheduled for nine months after the DOP
went into force.
239
mentioned above, “and other issues of common interest,” but
without specifying these issues exclusively. Thus, the phrase, “and
other issues of common interest,” though sounds useful, leaves it
open, which - given ‘Israel’’s bad faith (see below) - may prove to be
problematic or significant one day.
The aim of the ‘peace process’ or the track of “Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations” was, as noted, “to establish a Palestinian Interim Self-
Government Authority” (2007: 4) based on Resolutions 242 and 338.
Now, the fact that the DOP or generally the ‘peace process’ is based
on UN Resolutions 242 and 338 makes the process impractical (see
table below):
Table 5.10
CDA of Oslo Accords (I)
(Question of Palestinian Self-Determination)

The aim of the Israeli-Palestinian Basing the ‘peace process’
negotiations within the current Middle East on UN Resolution 242 and its
peace process is [...] to establish a duplicate 338 makes the
Palestinian Interim Self-Government process anything but
Authority [...] for the Palestinian people in practical, bona fide or just
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip [...] given the problems inherent
leading to a permanent settlement based in them (see analysis of
on Security Council resolutions 242 Resolutions 242 and 338
(1967) and 338 (1973) (emphasis added). above)
In addition to the many problems with which resolutions 242 and 338
are fraught and the way they are linguistically designed to sustain
domination rather than construct a solution, just or unjust, as
analysed earlier, they make no mention of 1948 as though the
problem created in Palestine was the product of 1967 and not 1948,
ignoring a number of historical facts that underlie the to drag the
Arab struggle against Israeli occupation or this unequal conflict to
perpetuate Zionist hegemony in the region. This is a fact that makes
the basis of the ‘peace process’ not only problematic, and lacks
good faith, but also simply impractical. In this connection and under
the heading: THE EXCLUSION OF 1948 FROM THE PEACE
PROCESS, the Israeli New Historian, Ilan Pappe (2006) mentions in
his book: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine the following:
The first of Israel’s three guidelines - or rather, axioms -

was that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had its origin in
1967: to solve it, all one needed was an agreement that
would determine the future status of the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip. In other words, as these areas constitute
240
only twenty two per cent of [historic/Mandate] Palestine,
Israel at one stroke reduced any peace solution to only a
small part of the original Palestinian homeland. Not only
that, it demanded - and continues to demand today -
further territorial compromises, either consonant with the
business-like approach the US favoured or as dictated by
the map agreed upon by the two political camps in Israel
(239).
Further, it is significant to notice that there is no explicit mention

whatsoever in the Accords of a sovereign Palestinian state but
rather Palestinian self-rule and within (parts of) the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip (see table below).
Table 5.11

The aim of the Israeli- There is no mention of a viable and sovereign
Palestinian negotiations Palestinian state but rather Palestinian self-rule
within the current Middle and within (parts of) the West Bank and the
East peace process is [...] Gaza Strip, leading, following a transitional
to establish a Palestinian period of five years, to a permanent settlement
Interim Self-Government - a permanent settlement, not a Palestinian
Authority [...] for the state; not necessarily a viable and sovereign
Palestinian people in the Palestinian state where a group of
West Bank and the Gaza disconnected Bantustans may - from the Israeli
Strip, for a transitional or Zionist perspective - do the job.
period not exceeding five The lack of explicit mention of an independent
years, leading to a sovereign Palestinian state is problematic
permanent settlement [...] and lacks good faith.
(emphasis added).
While the PLO has recognised the colonialist Zionist entity as a state
(see Section 5.4 below), no such recognition was made in Oslo
Accords to the Palestinian people whom the Zionists have forcibly
removed from their homeland (see Chapter 2), and who are still
being denied their right to self-determination (Resolution 3236) and
national independence, and are still made stateless. This is despite
inexorable historical facts and the fact that the Palestinians are
being a nation, “distinguished from the rest by common descent,
language,” culture, religion, history and physical characteristics, etc.
Arafat (1929-2004) “recognized Israel’s existence without gaining
mutual acknowledgement of a Palestinian right to self-determination”
(Smith, 2007: 451). So, Oslo Accords or the DOP does not speak of
the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination despite what
241
international covenants state that “All peoples have a right to self-
determination”. It rather speaks, as stated in the preambular
paragraph to the DOP, of “political rights”. Obviously, the difference
between the two is not a bagatelle; it cannot be insignificant.
Recognising the political rights of the Palestinian people is not
recognition of their right to self-determination. While self-
determination means a Palestinian state; political rights is a
stratagem that opens the door in front of Machiavellians to foist upon
the beleaguered other modes for a ‘final’ “permanent settlement”
(Shash, 1999).
Therefore, the aim of the ‘peace process,’ which is based on
Resolutions 242 and 338 - and the framework established by
Menachem Begin in Camp David Accords (1978) between ‘Israel’
and Egypt (see Chapter 4) - is clear right from the start: the
establishment within parts of an area constituting 22% of historic
Palestine, of “a Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority”. So it
is a Palestinian Authority, not a Palestinian State; it is “political
rights,” not the de jure recognition of the right of the Palestinian
people to self-determination, it is a Palestinian Authority, not a
disposition of the Palestine Question as the question of a homeland
stolen and a people downtrodden.
I am not blind to the word “Interim,” but the word “Interim” is
problematic and harbours a great deal of bad faith (see table
below):
Table 5.12

The aim of the The word “interim” could and has actually been used
Israeli-Palestinian as an expedient to give ‘Israel’ time to expropriate
negotiations within more Palestinian ands and construct on them Israeli
the current Middle settler colonies as a mechanism to create further
East peace process “facts on the ground” and hence elicit deeper
is [...] to establish a concessions before reaching a ‘final’ or the ‘final’
Palestinian Interim settlement, and thus further and “further
Self-Government consolidation of Israeli power”.
Authority [...] for the
Palestinian people in The word “Interim” is a subterfuge typical of ‘Israel’’s
the West Bank and discursive strategy of creating “facts on the ground”
the Gaza Strip, for a that would later become irrevocable and the starting
transitional period point for a fresh round of mala fide negotiations,
not exceeding five leading eventually, not to a “permanent settlement” -
years [...] (emphasis regardless of what this settlement may be - as we
added). are discursively made to believe, but to Palestinian
annihilation or at best cantonisation.
242
Therefore, this self-rule or “Interim Self-Government Authority”
(Article I of DOP) which, though supposed to be “interim,” might -
given ‘Israel’’s bad faith and systematic policy of creating “facts on
the ground” through politics of expansion or the ongoing
construction of Israeli settler colonies on Palestinian lands (see
Chapter 2), along with the unlikelihood of reaching an agreement in
the “five-year transitional period” (Article I) - end up to be the case:
self-rule, and not self-determination and national independence, as
the ‘final’ “permanent settlement” (Shash, 1999), as was originally
conceived by Begin.
And if the five-year “transitional” or “interim” period proves to be
insufficient for ‘Israel’ to create through continued construction of
colonies further cantonisation and dismemberment of the Palestinian
territories meant for a Palestinian ‘state,’ then the commitments or
rather restrictions imposed on the PLO in Oslo - such as the
renunciation and fighting of ‘terror’ - would be employed (as has
actually been the case) as being unfulfilled as a pretext for ‘Israel’ to
shirk from fulfilling her own commitments, and keep dodging to
extend the period to consolidate control of the territory. After all, the
“permanent settlement” and hence Palestinian independence was
supposed to be reached by May 4 1999 - the date marking the end
of the Interim period. But this has never taken place or been the
case, recalling that we are in 2013 now.
Thus, more than 19 years so far - not just five - have passed since
signing the Declaration of Principles in September 1993, with Israeli
domination in the ascendant and the Palestinians reaching the
slough of despond. In other words, the status quo or the continuous
annexation of Palestinian lands, extortion or extraction of deeper
concessions through creating more “facts on the ground” has not
changed. What has changed is the number of Palestinian deaths in
the 1967 Occupied Territories, and Jewish Zionist colonies
constructed on expropriated Palestinian lands.
Obviously, this would also remain like that until ‘Israel’ comes to a
point (which may or may never come) where it would ‘now’ feel
‘secure’ with the reality or the group of disconnected enclaves it
would have created by then for the beleaguered Palestinians, and
offered as another “fact on the ground,” irrevocable and irreversible,
and not only that but also as an offer or a concession that no one
would have ever dreamed “Israel would volunteer,” as typical
Israelispeak and compliant media would then fancy representing
(see Subsection 3.5.6).
This is perhaps part of what I was driving at by stating that language
or linguistic means could be deployed as a “tranquillising drug of
243
gradualism,” indefinite temporisation, and the deceptive purveyance
of optimism.
So apparently, it is a mere word, which might even in most cases go
unnoticed but as I have analysed, it opens the door wide in front of
‘Israel’ to be dilatory and desultory, and to temporise and for as long
as it deems enough for the creation of a new tailor-made geopolitical
reality. The word “Interim” shows actually how mala fide ‘Israel’ and
the US - or those Machiavellian political groups abetting ‘Israel’ - are
in their intent and pursuit of the ‘peace process:’ a means to achieve
their hidden ends in the (new) Middle East; a means to sustain
domination. Full stop!
Now away from the preamble and Article I of the DOP, Article IV:
JURISDICTION, states that “Jurisdiction of the Council will cover
West Bank and Gaza Strip territory, except for issues that will be
negotiated in the permanent status negotiations”.
An apparent concession, we need to pause here awhile and
underline the ‘little’ word “except,” which might otherwise go
unnoticed or be deemed inappreciable or far from misleading.
Ironically, those “except” issues, obfuscated and deflated or played
down by the surrounding discourse, are in fact the vital organs of the
Palestine Question, the “critical constants” or - to use Pappe’s
(2006: 242) terminology - “the essentials of the conflict” (see Table
5.13 below).
Table 5.13

Jurisdiction of the Inducing a false impression, those issues played
Council will cover down as “issues that will be negotiated in the
West Bank and permanent status negotiations” are issues such as
Gaza Strip territory, territory, Palestinian refugees, Jerusalem,
except for issues sovereignty, territorial boundaries, security and
that will be borders, military locations, water, Jewish colonies or
negotiated in the those huge townships in the West Bank that rip
permanent status Palestinian territories, families and mothers and their
negotiations parity apart – etc., clearly all central to a resolution of
(emphasis added). the Palestinian national trauma or Palestinian
dispossession and sufferings. Now when such pivotal
issues, vital to Palestinian self-determination or an
end to their century-long sufferings are treated as
“issues that will be negotiated” later, what is there
then left to be negotiated at present? What the
Palestine Question is apart from these issues?
244
Indeed, it is this little “except” – “Jurisdiction of the Council will cover
West Bank and Gaza Strip territory except for issues that will be
negotiated in the permanent status negotiations” - that made Arafat
claim that “Oslo 2 guaranteed the return of 80 percent of the West
Bank to the Arabs while Rabin assured the Knesset that the pact left
70 percent of the same land, or all of Area C, in Israel’s hands”
(Smith, 2007: 462).
When people talk of ‘exceptions,’ normally such exceptions are
really ‘exceptions’. They are so in the sense that they are just
‘someone’ or ‘something’ (not with everyone or everything in mind)
that is not included. But here it is actually the obverse. What is being
treated as an exception is actually the heart of the matter; it is
everything, and what is being offered on the other hand is the
‘exception’.
As noted, when those vital issues, vital to the exercise of the
Palestinians to their right of self-determination or to any resolution of
the problem of occupation - conceivable or inconceivable - are
treated as ‘exceptions’ or “issues that will be negotiated” later, what
is there then left to be negotiated about? What is, in this case, not
an ‘exception’? Dealing with such issues as ‘exceptions’ or issues to
be “negotiated” (still to be “negotiated,” with what this could mean)
as part of the permanent status talks, and given Israel’s intent to
deceive, would only enable Israel to continue rather than freeze
“building and natural growth” of the settlements, meaning that
existing settlements would continue expanding to absorb more
Palestinian land, making room for more territory to be “under
permanent Israeli control”. And this would go on like that until, and
only until a final agreement would be concluded, which again, as
noted, given Israel’s bad faith, may never be reached; not as long as
the “Zionist ideology and praxis” are still in force or the current
imbalance of power remains the same (see Chapter 6: Section 6.3).
Away from this and related to the context of sovereignty, I now move
on to examine certain aspects of paragraph 1 of Article VI of the
Agreed Minutes to the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-
Government Arrangements, stated in Table 5.14 below:
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Table 5.14
It is agreed that [...] The Palestinian side will inform Is this sovereign?
the Israeli side of the names of the authorized
Palestinians who [...] will assume the powers,
authorities and responsibilities that will be transferred
to the Palestinians according to the Declaration of
Principles in the following fields: education and culture,
health, social welfare, direct taxation, tourism and any
other authorities agreed upon.
In addition to another article: namely, Article VII/paragraph 5, which

stipulates that “The withdrawal of the military government will not
prevent Israel from exercising the powers and responsibilities not
transferred to the Council [i.e. the Palestinian Authority]” and apart
from the fact that those authorities transferred to the PLO are unlike
those of “external security, control over airspace,” foreign affairs, for
example, my question here is the demeaning and interventionist
stipulation that “the names of the authorized Palestinians who [...]
will assume the powers, authorities and responsibilities that will be
transferred to the Palestinians” will have to be reported to and
approved by the occupation authorities. So if ‘Israel’ rejects certain
or all of the nominees, then they have to be changed to ones ‘liked’
by her. They have to be replaced by ones who, for example, might
frame legitimate acts of Palestinian resistance to illegitimate
occupation as ‘terrorism,’ and freedom-fighting as ‘violence,’ and
Zionist colonies built on confiscated Palestinian land as
“settlements” or “outposts,” to use the little Sharonian lexical item,
etc.
Such dictates, played down by discourse, deprive any future
Palestinian state of real sovereignty. They emasculate any state.
The ‘State of Israel’ does not, for example, submit to the PA the
names of her cabinet or Knesset members in advance for approval
or disapproval, verification or refusal. In this context, I also wish to
quote ANNEX II under the Agreed Minutes to the Declaration of
Principles (see table below):
246
Table 5.15

It is understood that, subsequent to the Israeli My question remains
withdrawal, Israel will continue to be responsible for the same: is this part
external security, and for internal security and of what we know as
public order of settlements and Israelis. Israeli sovereignty? Does
military forces and civilians may continue to use this empower or
roads freely within the Gaza Strip and the Jericho emasculate
area. Palestinians?
According to Article VI/paragraph 2 or paragraph 1 of Article VI of

the Agreed Minutes as noted: “authority will be transferred to the
Palestinians in the following spheres: education and culture, health,
social welfare, direct taxation and tourism”. ANNEX II (3/b) states
that “Structure, powers and responsibilities of the Palestinian
authority [will be limited to] such areas, leaving sovereign authorities
under the sole control of ‘Israel’. This does not aid the Palestinian
nation achieve her dream of statehood, aspiration to national
independence and right to self-determination. It does not help end
Israeli hegemony over the Palestinians, and as such does not
contribute to putting “an end to decades of confrontation and
conflict” as stated in the Middle East Peace Conference in Madrid. It
does not help achieve “a just, lasting and comprehensive peace
settlement and historic reconciliation” as we are nudged to believe
by the discourse of such Accords. In a word, such terms emasculate
any potential Palestinian state of real statehood as this state of
affairs deprives such state of the elementary attributes or authorities
such as external security, control over airspace, sea space and
security responsibility at all border crossings and terminals.
Furthermore, recalling resolutions 242 and 338, which as mentioned
constitute the basis for the ‘peace process’ or for a “just, lasting and
comprehensive peace settlement” as indicated in the Letter of
invitation to the Middle East Peace Conference in Madrid (19-10-
1991) (see Subsection 5.2.1 above or Section 5.4 below), now I
move on to examine Article XIII of the DOP: REDEPLOYMENT OF
ISRAELI FORCES.
Since the adoption of Resolution 242 in 1967 and the 24-year-later
inception of the ‘peace process’ following the Middle East Peace
Conference convened in Madrid on October 30, 1991, ‘Israel’ has
not yet withdrawn from most of the territories it has occupied in the
aggression of that year; areas whose totality as stated a number of
times earlier does not exceed 22% of the whole territory of former
Palestine. This, as explained in Subsection 5.2.1, has always been
247
the case because of the deliberate ambiguity and much leeway the
carefully-worded resolution has provided for ‘Israel’. It has given
‘Israel’ the linguistic means to indefinitely hedge and debate the
extent of withdrawal; and now language, through the conscious
employment of the term “redeployment” instead of actual
“withdrawal” along with other subtle linguistic means is being
resorted to again to continue the process of obfuscation,
temporisation; and in the interim create new “facts on the ground”
that would consequently be the starting point for a novel trajectory in
the world of dictates and diktats, and for a new geopolitical ‘reality’
on the ongoing slippery slope to Palestinian elimination, where at
that point, “far in the future,” Israel would, given her intent to
deceive, have pre-empted “issues to be discussed in permanent
status talks” and rendered them nonnegotiable, or as observed by
Smith (2007: 455), “there might be nothing [actually] to negotiate
because an Israeli fait accompli would have occurred”. It should also
be noted in this context that there is no mention of withdrawal in the
permanent status issues, which signifies that whatever form of
redeployment takes place in the West Bank is going to remain the
case.
Now I come to a very obscure and ambiguous term in Article VIII:
PUBLIC ORDER AND SECURITY, selected by the discourse
producers precisely for its obscurity and ambiguity - “overall
security”.
Table 5.16

In order to guarantee public order and internal Use of empty/floating
security for the Palestinians of the West Bank signifiers to allow for
and the Gaza Strip, the Council will establish a creating further “facts on
strong police force, while Israel will continue to the ground,”
carry the responsibility for defending against manipulating,
external threats, as well as the responsibility for temporising, retracting
overall security of Israelis for the purpose of and the like, and thus
safeguarding their internal security and public further and “further
order (emphasis added). consolidation of Israeli
power”.
Another instance of ‘Israel’’s mala fides or intent to deceive, the term

“overall security” demands some self-reflection. An empty signifier,
can anyone clarify what this general and manipulative term “overall
security” denotes or could connote? Can anyone predict the
interpretations and dimensions this elastic term could have when it
248
comes to ‘Israel’’s view of “security” and what is “secure”? Clearly,
“overall security” is prone to various interpretations, not to an
exegesis. Everything could be or become, at least from the Israeli
perspective, part of the “overall security”.
The ambiguity and elasticity of this term is intertextually remindful of
that of the locution “secure and recognized boundaries,” found in
Resolution 242 and other resolutions, dissected in previous
subsections. It gives ‘Israel’ - the occupying Power - the upper hand
to dictate what is “secure” (see Subsection 5.2.7 below).
Finally, I conclude this subsection on Oslo Accords (I) or Declaration
of Principles and the Question of Palestinian Self-Determination with
a critical analysis of Article XV: RESOLUTION OF DISPUTES.
According to Article X, “a Joint Israeli-Palestinian Liaison Committee
will be established in order to deal with […] disputes”. Therefore,
Article XV, paragraph 1, stipulates:
Disputes arising out of the application or interpretation of

this Declaration of Principles, or any subsequent
agreements pertaining to the interim period, shall be
resolved by negotiations through [this] Joint Israeli-
Palestinian Liaison Committee.
Further, paragraph 2 of Article XV states that “Disputes which cannot

be settled by negotiations [through the Joint Israeli-Palestinian
Liaison Committee] may be resolved by a mechanism of conciliation
to be agreed upon by the parties”. As shown in Table 5.17 below,
Paragraph 3 of this Article further indicates the following:
Table 5.17

The parties may agree to submit to The parties “may,” not “shall”. The
arbitration disputes relating to the parties may/and may not agree…
interim period, which cannot be Use of the subjunctive/use of a
settled through conciliation. To this weasel word- may; a word elastic
end, upon the agreement of both enough as to “create enough wiggle
parties, the parties will establish an room for a rhino” - since it can well
Arbitration Committee” (emphasis be taken to mean the exact
added). opposite - may not.
So, “disputes arising out of the application or interpretation” of the

DOP “or any subsequent agreements pertaining to the interim
period” are to be resolved only by the two parties, ‘Israel’ and the
PLO, without external interference or arbitration. However, if a
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dispute proves to be intractable, then “a mechanism of conciliation
to be agreed upon by the parties” may be considered. So it remains
that resolution of disputes must remain an internal affair. No third
parties - who might do justice - are allowed; a fact that gives ‘Israel,’
since it is the more powerful party in this unequal conflict, the upper
hand to dictate what it deems a resolution, however inequitable it
might be to the other party, the weaker side in this inequitable
equation.
Now, one might argue, however, that paragraph 3 of Article XV
provides a way for arbitration, hence the introduction of a third party.
Here I wish to draw attention to a key word I consciously wrote in
bold in paragraph 3 of this Article in Table 5.17 above.
This key word is may, found in the phrase, may agree to submit to
arbitration disputes. A weasel word, “may” is a modal. In other
words, “may” could well; as well mean “may not” and thus the exact
opposite. Therefore, “may” as a weasel word expressed in the
subjunctive mood - which makes “every assertion hypothetical” - has
the elasticity to “create enough wiggle room for a rhino” as would be
described by Sant (2008). This means that if ‘Israel,’ for example, or
one of the parties involved decides for some reason to decline the
resort to arbitration, then the modalised phrase may agree to submit
[...], this modality expressed by “may” can create enough room for
this declination since the semantic function of this modal is only that
of advisability, and since the subjunctive as an irrealis mood
expresses only possibilities or hypothetical, imagined or wished
situations, not facts.
Can we feel the conscious sadism of employing words with the
intent to deceive? Can we sense the brutalisation of language,
language as a means of brutalisation and language as an object of
brutalisation; language as brutalising and language as being
brutalised?
While the PLO might have been unconscious of such conscious
linguistic brutalisation and manipulation of structural and sign
choices, it is very unlikely that ‘Israel’ - a master of discourse - could
have been unaware of such lexicogrammatical selections and their
far-reaching implications.
Hence is again my assertion of ‘Israel’’s lack of good faith, and thus
the conclusion that the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-
Government Arrangements - taken as the “framework “for the future
relations” and all “subsequent agreements” “between Israel and the
PLO” - not only does not do justice to the Palestinians and unjustly
obviate their right to self-determination, but also create the
conditions conducive to the occupying Power to ever remain in
control of affairs and to always have the upper hand in this national
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trauma or tragic reality, constructed through discourse and the force
of arms, and perpetuated or prolonged chiefly through discourse or
the power of discourse.
5.2.7 Oslo Accords (II) (1995) and the Question of Palestinian

Self-Determination:
The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement (Oslo 2) on the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip (September 28, 1995)
The West Bank was to be divided into three areas

labeled “A,” “B,” and “C.” [...] But it was Area C, and its
link to issues to be decided only in the permanent status
talks, that suggested how misleading certain clauses of
the accord could be. Arafat claimed that Oslo 2
guaranteed the return of 80 percent of the West Bank to
the Arabs while Rabin assured the Knesset that the pact
left 70 percent of the same land, or all of Area C, in
Israel’s hands (emphasis added).
(Smith, 2007: 462)
I shall deal in this subsection with Article XII of The Israeli-

Palestinian Interim Agreement (Oslo 2) on the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip (September 28, 1995). But as a point of departure, I want
to start with a pithy statement as a background to the agreement.
Hence, and in brief, this “agreement was 307 pages long; 284 of
them consisted of annexes and appendices” (Smith, 2007: 493). It
“called for implementation of arrangements and Israeli withdrawal
originally foreseen under the 1993 DOP,” analysed above (2007:
493).
Similar to Article VIII of the DOP (Oslo 1), Article XII of the Interim
Agreement (Oslo 2): ARRANGEMENTS FOR SECURITY AND
PUBLIC ORDER, states that the Council or Palestinian Authority
“shall establish a strong police force,” ostensibly “to guarantee public
order and internal security for the Palestinians of the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip” (see Table 5.16 above) and that “Israel shall
continue to carry the responsibility for defending against external
threats, including the responsibility for overall security of Israelis
and Settlements [...] (emphasis added)”.
Now apart from using “shall” instead of “will”, and “including” instead
of “as well as” (cf Table 5.16 above with Table 5.18 below), this
Article of the Interim Agreement, unlike Article VIII of Oslo I, adds
the apparently ‘innocuous’ phrase: “and [Israel] will have all the
powers to take the steps necessary to meet this responsibility...”
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(emphasis added) - all the powers without any limit whatsoever,
even if all the Palestinians have to be decimated one after another,
for ‘Israel’ “will have all the powers to take the steps necessary...”
(see below Table 5.18):
Table 5.18
CDA of the Interim Agreement (Oslo 2) (Sept 28 1995)

In order to guarantee public order Besides the ambiguous elastic
and internal security for the expression or floating signifier “overall
Palestinians of the West Bank and security,” dissected in the previous
the Gaza Strip, the Council shall subsection, I have already highlighted
establish a strong police force [... the ‘little’ word all in the phrase all the
to crush the Palestinian resistance powers to draw attention to the
the occupation forces failed to magnitude and latitude such an
quell]. Israel shall continue to unsuspecting word would or could
carry the responsibility for defense provide for ‘Israel’ in her then ‘rightful’
against external threats, including suppression of the Palestinians –
the responsibility for overall Israel shall continue [...] and will
security of Israelis and have all the powers to take the
Settlements [...] and will have all steps necessary– and for her claims
the powers to take the steps to security and what entails security-
necessary to meet this “overall security”.
responsibility...
The insidious locutions “overall security” and “all the powers to take
the steps necessary,” reinforced by the use of “shall” which means
nothing but “must” are indefinitely open to ‘Israel’’s robust and
unshackled imagination.
Thus, whatever, absolutely whatever, ‘Israel’ deems “necessary” “to
meet this responsibility,” then it is necessary. Given her bad faith
and politics of creating “facts on the ground” to “enable further
consolidation of Israeli power,” I shall leave what ‘Israel’ might
enforce as “necessary” and “secure” to readers’ imagination.
Israel’s entrenched intent to deceive to create “facts on the ground”
to bring under her permanent control more territory seems - besides
the systematic attempts to ‘cleanse’ the Palestinians remaining in
Palestine - to be the only ‘genuine’ agendum it is pursuing, and with
vengeance. Otherwise, why would the Palestinians whose bulk was
expelled at gunpoint from their homes more than 6 decades ago,
remain until now, homeless and stateless?
While such intent to deceive has always underlain the misleading
terms of the negotiation process, Israel’s discursive ability to dictate
such terms has also shaped the implementation of the process - in
this context the Interim Agreement. As stated in this agreement
252
(Oslo 2), several clauses declared that “the integrity and status [of
the territories] will be preserved during the interim period” and that
“neither side shall initiate or take any steps that will change the
status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip pending the outcome of
permanent status negotiations”. Now without tergiversation,
equivocation or linguistic manipulation - the intent to deceive -, the
logical interpretation of such clauses as has actually been
interpreted by “Palestinian and most other observers” would be
understood to denote that “expansion of settlements violated the
accord,” an interpretation to which ‘Israel’ argues that “the terms
referred to political status only,” “a reservation not mentioned in the
documents” (Smith, 2007: 464).
Smith (2007) further adds:
In Israel’s view, Arafat could not declare a state because

that would alter the political status of the territories, but as
Rabin noted to the Knesset, Israel reserved “total
freedom of action in order to fulfil those security and
political aims that touch on the permanent solution
[Recall “all the powers to take the steps necessary”].”
These aims included consolidating the settlement blocs
so as to argue that uprooting them would be too
disruptive [a fact on the ground], and because, as Peres
had noted, “to force [settlers] to leave... [would] risk a civil
war.” [a fait accompli] (464).
In the long run, this would mean or have already meant, as stressed
by Smith (2007), that “to evade a civil war within Israel, Palestinian
expectations regarding the Oslo process would be denied, with the
apparent compliance of American negotiators, while the Palestinians
would be blamed for any rupture in that process” (464).
5.2.8 George W. Bush, Speech at the Aqaba (Jordan) Summit,

and the ‘Palestinian State’
Taking place within the context of interminable “peace talks,” at the

Aqaba Summit in Jordan, on June 4 2003, this is a speech in which
after ‘referring to a U.S. victory in Iraq, Bush calls for a two-state
solution and refers to the Road Map [April 2003] and the “tangible
immediate steps” each side should take toward this goal’ (Smith,
2007, p. 550):
253
As the road map accepted by the parties makes clear,
both must make tangible immediate steps toward this
two-state vision.
However, in his lopsided or partisan speech, “Bush alters the sense

of mutual obligations in the Road Map. He refers specifically to the
Palestinian need to halt terror, end the violence, and commit to
peaceful negotiations with Israel […]” (Smith, 2007, p. 550) as
though it is the Palestinians - and not the Israelis - who are the
occupying force and thus the obstacle to peace efforts:
Prime Minister Abbas recognizes that terrorist crimes are

a dangerous obstacle to the independent state his people
seek. He argues that the process for achieving that state
is through peaceful negotiations…. He has promised…to
end the armed intifada. He has promised to work without a
compromise for a complete end of violence and terror….
Conversely, Bush projects or constructs Sharon, this veteran known

for having no peace strategy, “no roadmap beyond his iron fist” as
described by Thomas Friedman (Amer, 2009, p. 25), as a peaceful
peace-loving Santa Claus, a good Samaritan par excellence:
I welcome Prime Minister Sharon’s pledge to improve the

humanitarian situation in the Palestinian areas and to
begin removing unauthorized outposts immediately. I
appreciate his gestures of reconciliation on behalf of
prisoners and their families, and his frank statements
about the need for territorial contiguity.
An exemplar of discourse, this talk misrepresents reality and

polarises the situation in a manner simply discursive, in a manner
topsy-turvy, turning the occupied or powerless into a monster and
the occupying force into a good Samaritan, making the dove a hawk
and making the hawk a dove. Such polarised or dichotomous
(mis)representation of the situation misrepresents reality; making
‘Israel,’ the occupying Power to seem ‘praiseworthy,’ ‘humanitarian’
and ‘peace-loving,’ while conceptualising the Palestinians, the
powerless in this unequal equation, as ‘blameworthy,’ ‘terrorist,’ and
‘a dangerous obstacle to peace,’ respectively.
Now away from this polarised (mis) representation, Smith (2007)
says that “because Israel lobbied him to change the wording for
Israel’s commitments, Bush makes no mention here [in his speech]
of a settlement freeze and calls for the removal only of
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“unauthorized outposts,” an ambiguous, misleading term suggested
by the Sharon government” (p. 550). Smith notes that this term
suggests that ‘government-authorized outposts/settlements could
stay. And he reworded his description of a Palestinian State to omit
references to it as “independent […] and sovereign.” Here, Bush’s
agenda, and that of the United States, appears to be that demanded
by Sharon’.
Now having outlined the “setting and context” and confronted the
“theme and content,” I move on to confront in detail Bush’s speech
by identifying in the text the deployed discourse strategies and
argumentative moves, of which the polarised or dichotomous (mis)
representation of the situation mentioned above is one.
Accordingly, I now provide below two tables, with the first (Table
5:19) reproducing the text of Bush’s speech, along with (an
identification of) the argumentation strategies or argumentative
moves advanced in the column opposite; and the second (Table
5:20) mentioning the nomination strategies (“discursive construction
of social actors”) or the main actors in the speech, along with the
predication strategies (“discursive characterization/qualification of
social actors”) attributed to these actors next to them.
Here, as noted, I examine Bush’s speech, unearthing his discourse
strategies or argumentation: his misrepresentation of reality, his
dichotomous representation of the situation, his empathising with
ingroup members, his insidious, indirect characterisation of the
powerless as ‘violent’ and ‘terrorist,’ his victim-agent reversal, his
apparent concessions, his deceptive purveyance of optimism; this is
along with other argumentative moves dominant in his text that
underlie an overall discourse strategy described by Van Dijk (1999)
as “positive ingroup presentation and negative outgroup
presentation,” associated in this context with ‘peaceable,’ ‘rational’
and ‘flexible’ Israelis, and ‘violent,’ ‘terrorist,’ and ‘a dangerous
obstacle to peace’ Palestinians, respectively.
This is in an attempt to “facilitate the analysis of implicitly prejudiced
utterances and to assist in the decoding of allusions [and projected
images and discriminatory stereotypes] typically concealed in such
utterances” (Titscher et al., 2000, p. 165); and to detect or unearth
“the linguistic means used by the privileged (in this case ‘Israel’ and
the USA) to stabilize or even to intensify inequalities in society”
(Wodak & Meyer, 2009, p. 32).
255
Table 5.19
Argumentative structure of Bush’s Speech
No. Extract Discourse strategies/

Argumentative moves
1 It is fitting that we gather today in Jordan…. empathising with ingroup
I’m pleased to be here with Prime Minister members;
Sharon. The friendship between our countries asserting ingroup
began at the time of Israel’s creation. Today allegiances and solidarity
America is strongly committed to Israel’s
security as a vibrant Jewish state.
2 I’m also pleased to be with Prime Minister deceptive purveyance of
Abbas. He represents the cause of freedom optimism; appeal to
and statehood for the Palestinian people […]. reasoning and rationality
3 Great and hopeful change is coming to the deceptive purveyance of

Middle East. In Iraq, a dictator who founded optimism appeal to political
terror… has been removed. Prime Minister Abbas authority; implicating terror
now leads the Palestinian cabinet. to the victim or Palestinians
By his strong leadership […] and by rejecting
terror, he is serving the deepest hopes of his
people.
4 All here today now share a goal: false clarity; manipulation of
The Holy Land must be shared between the reality
State of Palestine and the state of Israel […].
5 All sides will benefit from this achievement… deceptive purveyance of
I welcome Prime Minister Sharon’s pledge to optimism;
improve the humanitarian situation in the misrepresentation of reality;
Palestinian areas and to begin removing apparent concession
unauthorized outposts immediately. I
appreciate his gestures of reconciliation […], and
his frank statements about the need for territorial
contiguity
6 As I said yesterday, the issue of settlements apparent concession;
must be addressed for peace to be deceptive purveyance of
achieved…. optimism
These are meaningful signs of respect for the
rights of the Palestinians and their hopes for a
viable, democratic, peaceful Palestinian state.
7 Prime Minister Abbas recognizes that terrorist appeal to reasoning and
crimes are a dangerous obstacle to the rationality;
independent state his people seek. He argues appeal to political authority;
that the process for achieving that state is implicating violence and
through peaceful negotiations…. He has terror on the part of the
promised…to end the armed intifada. He has Palestinians;
promised to work without a compromise for a victim-agent reversal
complete end of violence and terror […].
8 The journey we’re taking is difficult, but there evoking fear and alarm
is no other choice […].
9 The United States is committed to that cause. deceptive purveyance of
If all sides fulfill their obligation, I know that optimism
peace can finally come.
256
Discursively, there are three main social actors constructed in
Bush’s speech. These are “I,” “Prime Minister Sharon,” and “Prime
Minister Abbas”. Table 5.20 below lists the most salient predications
attributed to these actors.
Table 20
Main nominations (social actors) and predications in Bush’s Speech
No. Social Actors Predications

(discursive qualification of social actors)
1 I • someone who is pleased to be with Prime
Ministers Sharon and Abbas
• strongly committed to Israel’s security
• concerned with the issue of settlements
• strongly support the cause of freedom and
statehood for the Palestinian people
• welcomes Sharon’s pledge to improve…
• appreciates (Sharon’s) gestures…
2 Prime Minister • someone who pledges to improve the
Sharon humanitarian situation in the Palestinian areas
• someone who pledges to remove
unauthorized outposts immediately
• expresses frank statements about the need
for territorial contiguity
• recognizes that it is in Israel’s own interest for
Palestinians to govern themselves in their
own State
• a champion of reconciliation and human rights
3 Prime Minister • someone who represents the cause of
Abbas freedom and statehood for the Palestinian
people
• leader of the Palestinian cabinet
• server of the deepest hopes of his people
• rejecter of terror
• someone who recognizes that terrorist crimes
are a dangerous obstacle to the independent
state his people seek
• agrees that the process for achieving that state
is through peaceful negotiations
• promises his full efforts …to end the …intifada
• promises to work without compromise for a
complete end of violence and terror
As illustrated in Table 5.20 above, Mr Bush constructs both Sharon

and Abbas in positive terms. However, the way he constructs Abbas
makes it as though it is the Palestinians who are the “obstacle” to
peace, and not the converse. This is understood or implied from the
257
way he characterises and qualifies Abbas as someone who rejects
“terror;” someone who “recognizes that terrorist crimes are a
dangerous obstacle to the independent state his [‘terrorist’] people
seek;” someone who promises “full efforts and resources to end the
armed intifada;” someone who promises to “work without
compromise for a complete end of violence and terror,” etc.
This barrage of the rejection of terror, recognition of the danger of
“terrorist crimes,” and the promises to “work without compromise” to
end such ‘violence and terror’ on the part of Abbas implicates
insidiously on the one hand that it is the Palestinians who are the
obstacle rather than the Israelis to peace, and indirectly obliges
Abbas to take a tougher stance against what he calls as ‘terror,’
which could also - as has actually always been the case - be
employed again and again as a pretext that the Palestinian Authority
(PA) has not fulfilled her ‘promises’ and commitments towards
fighting ‘terror,’ and so why should ‘Israel’.
The way Mr Bush constructs Abbas subtly nudges the addressee or
discourse consumer, whether a listener or reader to conceptualise
the Palestinian people as being aggressive, recalcitrant and
uncouth, as being the ‘terrorist’ ones - since their leader rejects,
recognises, agrees and promises - and thus the cause behind every
breakdown or logjam in the so-called ‘peace process,’ every
stumbling block or obstacle to peace...to which Mr Sharon - this war
veteran - in contrast, is committed since he expresses “frank
statements about the need for territorial contiguity,” [Israeli or
Palestinian by the way?] and pledges to improve…and remove…
Such predications can subconsciously nudge discourse consumers -
who might not be well-versed in the realities of the Palestinian
struggle against Israeli occupation, in the image and reality due to
such barrage of Zionist deceptive discourse and misrepresentation
of reality- to even sympathise with the Israelis as being – ironically –
the victim to implicated Palestinian ‘terror’.
Can we see how the perpetrator/victim dichotomy (Amer, 2012) or
the discourse strategy of victim-agent reversal - part of an overall
discourse strategy of “positive ingroup presentation and negative
outgroup presentation” - works? Who is the occupied and who is the
occupying force? Who is the one whose means of ‘terror’ are
stones, Molotov bottles, protest demonstrations “in support of an
independent Palestine” and recently out of despair, self-immolation
operations; and who is the one whose means of fighting such ‘terror’
and primitive arms are “live ammunition,” gunships and armed
troops that shoot to kill, “Apache helicopters, tanks and bulldozers”
(Pappe, 2006, p. 243), “depleted uranium, white phosphorous,
D.I.M.E. and other nuclear-based illegal weapons, not to mention F-
258
16’s and other sophisticated weaponry supplied by the USA [by Mr
Bush]”? Who?
Victim-agent reversal is a discourse strategy that ‘Israel’ and the
country whose comradeship with it “began at the time of Israel’s
creation” - as stated in the discourse under question - often resort to
in an attempt to not only juggle or distort facts, misrepresent and
manipulate reality and discursively masquerade their evil workings,
but also to sustain the status quo to elicit deeper concessions and
further consolidate Israeli control of the territories.
So even though the transitivity selections used here – deployed to
realise the discourse strategies – feature Abbas in a positive light,
they are crippling: “leads,” “rejecting,” “is serving,” “recognizes,”
“argues,” “agrees” and “has promised”. They are meant in a way to
provide more pretexts for the occupying Power to carry on its politics
of expansion, of creating “facts on the ground” to enable further
“consolidation of its “fundamental objectives” and “annexationist
ambitions”.
Now in contrast to this constructed image of Abbas and by
implication the Palestinians by Bush, the way Mr Bush constructs
Sharon discursively makes Sharon, this veteran warrior, “architect of
settlement expansion,” seem a man of ‘peace’ and ‘good intentions’.
Mr Bush makes the man – described by Friedman (a generally pro-
Israeli journalist) as a leader noted for his militancy, lack of
“pragmatic wisdom” and for having no peace strategy, “no roadmap
beyond his iron fist” (Amer, 2009, p. 25) – as someone whose
“gestures of “reconciliation” are to be appreciated, as someone who
pledges to “improve the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian
areas” and to “remove unauthorized outposts immediately” – note,
“unauthorized,” not authorised “outposts” and “immediately,” - and
as someone who expresses “frank statements about the need for
territorial contiguity”…
Apart from perpetuating rather than really ending Israeli occupation,
such representation or indeed misrepresentation and polarisation of
the situation makes one, despite his or her convictions about the
realities of the conflict, wonder at least for a while about who the
occupying force is and who the occupied are; who the subject of
domination is and who is the object; who is the victim and who is the
victimiser...
As constructed here, Sharon is a man of peace exuding humanity,
and thus are his sacred pledges to improve and remove…. The
Palestinians, on the other hand are, as constructed, an embodiment
of ‘terrorism’ and barbarity, and thus are Abbas’s constructed
promises of “full efforts and resources to end the armed intifada;” of
259
his rejection and then implicit assignment to fight such implicated
constructed ‘terror’.
He is constructed, as noted, as someone who “recognizes that
terrorist crimes are a dangerous obstacle to the independent state
his people seek” and thus promises “to work without compromise for
a complete end of violence and terror”. This is also a mechanism
consistently used as a pretext that the Palestinians have failed to
stem ‘violence’ and hence a ‘cause’ to temporise to protract the
status quo: the Israeli annexation or requisition of further lands
through creating more “new realities on the ground” where it would
become one day - as it is always the case - “unrealistic to expect” -
as uttered in another context by Mr Bush himself by the way - a
reversal:
in light of new realities on the ground [...], it is unrealistic to

expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be
a full and complete return to the 1949 armistice lines
(Bush in response to a letter to Sharon on April 14, 2004,
following the latter’s outlining of the Disengagement Plan;
as cited in Smith (2007, p. 527)).
It is “reality,” not justice that governs power relations. It is in light of

“new realities,” not in light of equality and the dispensation of justice.
It is the powerful, not justice; it is the right of the mighty to rule; it is
might, not right; it is the polarising fascist dictatorial dogma of “Either
you are with us or you are with the terrorists” (George W. Bush –
Address to Congress & American people – 09.20.01; cited in James,
2004, 30); it is the autocratic policy of: après moi le déluge.
5.2.9 Summary of Research Question I:

Findings Related to the Right of the Palestinian People to
Self-Determination
Is it not time to create an independent Palestinian state

with Jerusalem as its capital [...]?
(Abbas while addressing the UN GA on Sept 29, 2007)
Research Question I concerns itself with the role of UN resolutions

and ‘peace’ discourse in ending “Israel’s oppression and
occupation,” in realising the right of the Palestinian people to self-
determination by aiding them reconstitute themselves in their historic
homeland, and thus paving the road to peace in the Middle East.
260
Hence, Research Question I centres on the position of this
inalienable right - the right of the Palestinian people to self-
determination through an end to Israeli occupation - in UN and
‘peace’ discourse.
Accordingly, the study has endeavoured to find out about the intent
and accordingly practicality of those UN resolutions and subsequent
‘peace’ discourse in constructing this pillar or implementing this
inalienable right; pivotal, along with the Right of Return, to
Palestinian salvation and Israeli security, to and end of hostilities
and hence any attempt at reconstitution, rehabilitation and peace.
Now, reproduced in the table overleaf is RQ I, along with its five sub-
questions and a synopsis of their findings:
261
Table 5.21
Summary of Research Question I:
Findings Related to the Right of the Palestinian People to Self-Determination
Item Questions Findings

No.
How practical and Structured subtly to provide the occupying Power with the time
bona fide are UN and cover necessary to create “facts on the ground” and hence
resolutions and enable further consolidation of Israeli control of territory, the study
‘peace talks’ in has contributed to highlighting the discursive intricacies involved
ending the status in the temporisation of the Palestine problem, and concluded that
quo - “Israel’s neither UN resolutions, nor the protracted ‘peace process’
oppression and discourse in all its guises - pursuant to the 1988 PLO recognition
occupation” - in of ‘Israel’ and the ensuing Middle East Peace Conference in
realising the 1991, with the declared goal to end “decades of confrontation and
Palestinian conflict” - is found to be bona fide or practical in ending “Israel’s
People Right to oppression and occupation,” in implementing the Right of Return
Self- (see Section 5.3.5 below) or reconstituting the Palestinian
Determination, refugees in their historic homeland, and realising a Palestinian
and thus paving state or the Palestinians’ Right to Self-Determination.
the road to That those UN resolutions and ‘peace talks’ are about justice and
“peace” in the fairness found to be a myth, the study has shown that those
Middle East? discourses are responsible for reproducing domination rather
than trying to genuinely work out a “just, lasting and
comprehensive” solution to the Palestine State problem.
The study has detailed that the whole basis for the ‘peace
process’ - UN Resolutions 242 and 338 - is flawed, mala fide and
impractical.
The way these resolutions and ‘peace’ discourses is structured
does not lay the ground for justice and peace, but rather indefinite
protraction of the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation
where, given the current imbalance of power, the Palestinians
would continuously remain the main “losers” within this form of
RQ I social life.
The study has shown that those discursive practices as they are
have given the powerful the mechanisms for further
expansionism. They have arrogated to Israelis further de facto
annexation of Palestinian lands and deprived Palestinians of
further de jure rights.
The study has shown that while many of those UN resolutions
and ‘peace talks’ concerning the Arab struggle against Israeli
occupation act to dilute and defuse indignation and agitation at
the systematic encroachments committed by ‘Israel’ while giving
it more time to create more “facts on the ground,” they are
designed or constructed to purvey a sense of optimism while the
underlying intent is to sustain the status quo to create “facts on
the grounds;” “facts” that will continuously make it “unrealistic to
expect”...
Consequently, the study has found that temporisation and
protraction of the issue, of finding an amicable solution to the
Palestine State problem was an indirect result of the bad faith
and linguistic manipulation of the powerful forces.
As such, such UN and ‘peace’ discourse - found to be little more
than Zionist war against the powerless by other means - is meant
in light of the bad faith underlying those discursive practices to
sustain, rather than end the status quo, to wage war rather than
peace, for the powerful to be able to further consolidate their
“fundamental objectives” and “annexationist ambitions”. In this
context, the study has stressed that the apparent pursuit of
‘peace’ as an American-Israeli means to sustain war (the status
quo) need not be a paradox.
262
To what extent do The whole “Peace offensive” is based on Resolutions 242 and
UN resolutions and 338, i.e. on the reconstruction of Palestine within the pre-June 5
contemporary lines or the June 4, 1967 borders, which in their totality
discourse of the constitute only 22% of the total area of former Palestine, less
‘peace process’ than half of what the United Nations in its (Partition) Resolution
reshape and 181 of November 1947 allocated to the Arab state.
demarcate the But what is more tragic and problematic is the fact that those
geopolitical map of UN resolutions and ‘peace talks’ are structured linguistically in a
former Palestine? way so as to always give the occupying Power much leeway to
What territory out of even debate the extent of withdrawal from territories whose
Mandate Palestine totality - as noted - if returned in toto, would still only constitute
does the 22% of Mandate or former Palestine?
Sub-
discoursed-upon Neither Resolution 242 - with its ambiguous, contradictory, and
Q1
state have? biased nature - and Resolution 338, used along with 242 as the
basis for a settlement, nor Resolution 1397 and Resolution
1515, used as echoes or reiterations of 242 and 338, nor the
Oslo discourse is structured (practically and bona fide) to end
“Israel’s oppression and occupation” and make it for the two-
state solution.
The way such UN resolutions and ‘peace talks’ are structured
has made ‘Israel’ so far for 44 years (i.e. since 1967) to debate
withdrawal and is still debating, refusing to fully withdraw from
those territories it occupied by force in 1967, and needed by the
Palestinians for a state to bring to an end their homelessness
and sufferings.
The study has linguistically detailed that the whole basis for the
‘peace process,’UN Resolutions 242 and 338, is faulty and
flawed, mala fide and impractical. The subtle and ambiguous
How practical or way Resolution 242 and its duplicate 338 is structured has
dispositive and revealed, upon careful systematic analysis, bad faith and
bona fide such impracticality. They do not demand - unambiguously - Israeli
resolutions and withdrawal from all the territories occupied by force in 1967.
discourses are in 1397 and 1515, these two resolutions still do not stipulate
Sub- ending occupation immediate and full withdrawal. They do not stipulate “a full and
Q2 and realising a complete return to the 1949 armistice lines” or the June 4 1967
Palestinian state borders.
that is politically 3236, as far as recognition, reaffirmation, and emphasis are
sovereign and concerned, they are there in this Resolution. The Resolution,
economically however, lacks the language that turns such words from being
viable? mere rhetoric to reality, from acting as a discursive drug of
gradualism and deceptive optimism to action and “facts on the
ground”.
What territorial In light of Israeli intransigence, manipulation and bad faith,

integrity and discourse of the ‘peace’ process has in reality meant little more
contiguity does than the maintenance of Israeli control of the life and livelihood
such state have in of the beleaguered Palestinians, and the bantustanisation or
light of Jewish dismemberment of the Palestinian territories through the
Zionist colonies, creation of disconnected cantons, a group of “disconnected
Sub-
those huge Jewish islands in an Israeli-controlled sea,” “a fragmented and
Q3
population centres emasculated Palestinian state,” surrounded by checkpoints
that rip Palestinian allowing no freedom of movement, “a truncated and divided
territories and Palestinian state in the West Bank,” a ‘state’ “separated into
families and [four] enclaves, with Israelis manning checkpoints and barriers
mothers and their at Palestinian enclave boundaries,” thus making the ‘Palestinian
parity apart? state’ nothing more than a group of enclaves that lack economic
viability, territorial or geographical contiguity, territorial integrity
and sovereignty and thus viability and independence.
263
What is the status Though treated according to the November 29 1947 UN
of al-Quds/ Resolution 181 (Plan of Partition) as a corpus separatum to be
Jerusalem in such “administered by the United Nations,” independently of either
discourses? Can the Arab state or Jewish state to be created in accordance with
there be a such resolution, Israel, upon its forcible creation in 1948
Palestinian state declared (West) Jerusalem since January 1950 as its capital.
without Jerusalem And 17 years later, upon its forcible acquisition or occupation of
being its capital, the rest of former Palestine in 1967, ‘Israel’ “claimed all of
Sub- given its religious, Jerusalem as its capital,” annexing in 1980 East Jerusalem (the
Q4 historical and part of Jerusalem falling in the territories occupied since 1967)
cultural and claiming it as part of Jerusalem proper, unifying East and
significance, not West Jerusalem, and calling them since 1980 Israel’s unified
only to capital, “a united Jerusalem under its sovereignty,” creating the
Palestinians, but impression it was part of the original city”.
also to Muslims and So with Jerusalem made “a red line” or “non-negotiable,” with
even Christians this in mind, ‘Israel,’ the occupying Power ‘talks’ about ‘peace’.
worldwide?
What sovereignty With the previous facts in mind, the question of sovereignty
does the proposed needs not any further elaboration.
state have over the
Sub-
envisioned or
Q5
negotiated
territory?
5.3 RQ II: UN RESOLUTIONS AND ‘PEACE’ DISCOURSE AND

THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEES RIGHT OF RETURN
(QUESTION OF THE RIGHT OF RETURN)
It is estimated that there were more than 7 million

Palestinian refugees and displaced persons at the
beginning of 2003.
(Badil Resource Centre: Facts and Figures)
Enshrined in the heart and memory of every Palestinian and free

citizen of this world, and in The Universal Declaration of Human
Rights - adopted in the same year the Palestinians got uprooted by
Zionist Jews from their homeland - the Palestinian Refugees Right
of Return is the focus of Research Question II, raised and
investigated in/by this CDA study: To what extent has UN and
‘peace’ discourse gone in implementing the Palestinian Refugees
Right of Return or the reconstitution of the Palestinians - rendered
since 1948 homeless - as a nation in their historic homeland?
As I did with Research Question I, Research Question II on the
Right of Return or the reconstitution or repatriation of the
Palestinians – made since 1948 (and 1967) by force of arms to flee
their homes and to live ever since in diasporic communities in
neighbouring countries under grim conditions - can be divided into
two detailed heuristic sub-questions as follows:
264
• Can any serious solution or discourse on the Palestine
Question exclude or ignore this inalienable right despite its
obsolescence: return of those refugees whom the Zionists
have uprooted and forced to live in diaspora in miserable and
squalid refugee camps? In other words, can any attempt at
achieving peace in the Middle East be “just, lasting and
comprehensive” - as claimed by such discourse - without
undoing this gross injustice?
• So what is the status of those refugees - who constitute more

than half of the torn Palestinian social cohesion - in such UN
resolutions and ‘peace talks’?
In an answer to RQ II and its two sub-questions, critical analysis is

conducted on five UN resolutions, to wit: 212 (1948), 194 (1948),
302 (1949), 242 (1967) and 338 (1973), and on a document of the
peace process: Oslo Accords (I).
5.3.1 UN GA Resolutions 212, 194, 302,

and the Question of the Right of Return
[The conflict is] not just about the future of the Occupied
Territories, but that at its heart are the refugees Israel
had cleansed from Palestine in 1948.
(Pappe, 2006: 244)
Adopted on December 11, 1948, UN GA Resolution 194, known as

Palestinian Refugees 1948, calls for the return of the refugees
“wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their
neighbours”. The Resolution was issued a few months after the
establishment of ‘Israel’ by force of arms and the resultant
homelessness of “about 80%” (Finkelstein, 2003) of Palestinians.
Now, while it may be bona fide, Resolution 194 is not practical. The
words chosen are not forceful and precise enough to make the
undoing of this “social wrong” or through the immediate restoration
of the status quo ante or the voluntary “repatriation, resettlement
and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the
payment of compensation” a reality. Paragraph 11, for instance,
states that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at
peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the
earliest practicable date”. Here the Resolution again makes the
repatriation of the Palestinian refugees a matter of advisability,
rather than an obligation: “should be permitted”. This choice of
265
modality will certainly be different and have a binding rather than
advising effect if “must,” for example, were used in lieu of “should”
as shown in the following table where the original version of the text
is being contrasted with the reconstructed or deconstructed version
next to it:
Table 5.22
and the Palestinian Refugees Right of Return
(Question of the Right of Return)

The General Assembly, that the refugees
Having considered further the situation in wishing to return to their
Palestine, Resolves that the refugees wishing to former homes and live
return to their homes and live at peace with their at peace with their
neighbours should be permitted to do so at the neighbours must/have
earliest practicable date [...] (emphasis added). to/are to be permitted to
do so [...].
This gets further clear when we know that the selection of “must”
rather than “should” is being used in UN resolutions but where
deemed expedient. For example, in the preamble to Resolution 212
(November 1948) about assisting those refugees, we see the
following:
Whereas the problem of the relief of Palestine refugees

of all communities is one of immediate urgency and the
United Nations Mediator on Palestine in his progress
report of 18 September 1948, part three, states that
"action must be taken to determine the necessary
measures [of relief]... (emphasis added).
Here, “must” rather than “should” is being used: “action must be

taken [...],” which clearly shows that “should” and “must” are not
synonymous or interchangeable.
Furthermore, in the second paragraph of the preamble to the same
Resolution, we see the following:
Whereas the Acting Mediator, in his supplemental report

of 18 October 1948, declares that "the situation of the
refugees is now critical"3/ and that "aid must not only be
continued but very greatly increased if disaster is to be
averted" [...] (emphasis added).
266
Would the use of “should” instead of “must” in the above two
examples be the same? Can they be semantically equated? Can
“must” be changed with “should” without affecting the sense of
urgency called for or implored by the Mediator - and that aid should
not only be continued but...?
An exhortatory wishy-washy word, “should” is not “must”. It does not
have the force or level of urgency and enforceability as the
obligatory “must” even if one is to argue that it is being used in a
legal sense. In such contexts, “should” has the capacity to be
manipulated. It can provide room for debate. Whatever the case, it is
my feeling that had “must” been used in place of “should” in the
locution “the refugees wishing to return to their homes [...] should be
permitted to do so,” reality could have been different, or at least
might have been different.
But for such change from “should” to “must” to take place, then a
change has to take place in the intent underlying such calculated
use of language.
Finally, the lack of a clear and definite timeframe for the return of the
refugees makes the resolution to lack practicality. 194 speaks of “the
earliest practicable date,” and now we have gone past the 65th
anniversary (i.e. 1948-2013) of this “forcible removal” - in which the
“architect of the Jewish state” and the Zionist entity’s first Prime
Minister sees “nothing immoral” - and the refugees are still awaiting
“the earliest practicable date”.
To clarify this point further, let us look at Table 5.23 below where the
original and deconstructed texts are being contrasted:
Table 5.23

“the refugees wishing to return to the refugees wishing to return to their
their homes and live at peace with homes and live at peace with their
their neighbours should be neighbours must/are to be permitted
permitted to do so at the earliest to do so not later than 31 December
practicable date ... (emphasis 1950 (for example or any other
added)” specified date)
I need to draw attention also here, before leaving this subsection,

that UN GA Resolution 212 (1948) of Nov 19, preceding 194, and
GA Resolution 302 (1949) of Dec 8, proceeding 194, have nothing
to do with the question of the Right of Return.
Aiding Palestinian Refugees and establishing the United Nations
Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees in the
267
Near East, they were both concerned with “assistance for the relief
of the Palestine refugees [...] to prevent conditions of starvation and
distress among them” (Resolution 302, Paragraph 5) (vide
APPENDIX A (ii) and (iv).
Therefore, the study concludes that due to such lack of stipulation or
at least mention of the Right of Return in 212 (1948) and 302 (1949),
and the lack of a timeframe in 194 for the repatriation of refugees,
along with the framing of repatriation in the modal form of
advisability, resolutions 212 and 302 are irrelevant to the question of
the Right of Return, while Resolution 194 lacks the necessary
enforceability to make it practical; an assumption that given the
scale of the tragedy brings the intent of the discourse drafters or
those behind the resolution into question.
5.3.2 UN SC Resolution 242 and the Question of the Right of

Return and Self-Determination
With support from imperialist and colonialist Powers,

[Israel] managed to get itself accepted as a United
Nations Member. It further succeeded in getting the
Palestine Question deleted from the agenda of the United
Nations and in deceiving world public opinion by
presenting our cause as a problem of refugees in need of
charity from do-gooders or settlement in a land not
theirs….
November 13,1974; cited in Smith, 2007: 348)
For background information about the setting and context, other

themes and content of this Resolution of November 1967, reference
is to be made to Subsection 5.2.1 above.
Rejected “categorically” by the PLO for 21 years (i.e. 1967-1988),
Resolution 242 advocates a “just settlement of the refugee problem”
(see Subsection 5.2.1 above, and Table 5.24 below).
268
Table 5.24

The Security By boiling down the Palestine Question from being a
Council, “national cause” to a mere “refugee problem,” and by
[...] not specifying the Right of Return as the just
2. Affirms further solution/settlement - for any other settlement, however
the necessity just it may sound to certain stakeholders, it is unjust -
[...] Resolution 242 not only harbours mala fides regarding
(b) For achieving a implementing the Right of Return or reconstituting the
just settlement of Palestinians - rendered homeless by Zionist terrorist
the refugee gangs - as a nation in their historic homeland, but also
problem helps obfuscate and obliterate “the patriotic and
(emphasis added); national rights” of the Palestinians, their right to self-
determination (see Subsection 5.2.1 above).
Further, it must be noted that producers of the resolution make no

explicit mention of the agent behind the “refugee problem,” which
takes attention away from and obfuscates the perpetrator (the
Zionists in collaboration with the British) of this crime against
humanity, played down as a “refugee problem”.
Qualifying the crimes of mass expulsion Zionists committed against
the native people of Palestine (Palestinian Arabs) in 1948 as a
“refugee problem” along with the omission of the actor can
contribute to a perception that this premeditated crime of ethnic
cleansing might have been the result of a natural disaster such as a
flood or earthquake to be saddened at, rather than the work of
human agency (i.e. Zionists) to be deplored, condemned and
reversed.
This UN de-agentialisation or the deliberate omission of the agent of
the event helps perpetuate injustice. Such calculated use of agent
deletion obscures causal agency, thus obviating the need for blame
attribution, responsibility and accountability. We are told that there is
a “problem;” but we are not told about what or who has caused the
‘problem”.
5.3.3 UN SC Resolution 338 and the Question of the Right of

Return
For background information on the setting and context, theme and

content of this Resolution of October 22, 1973, reference is to be
made to Subsection 5.2.2. As stated in that Subsection, Resolution
338 (1973) is in essence, a reiteration or call to implement
269
Resolution 242 (1967). A concise three-paragraph Resolution, 338
“Calls upon the parties concerned to start immediately after the
cease-fire the implementation of Security Council Resolution 242
(1967) in all of its parts”.
Thus, 338 does not add anything new as to the Right of Return.
Hence, the study concludes that Resolution 338 does not differ in
any way from Resolution 242 (see Subsection 5.3.2 and 5.2.1
above) as to implementing the Right of Return or reconstituting the
Palestinians, rendered homeless in 1948, back into their homeland.
5.3.4 Oslo Accords (I) and the Question of the Right of Return
Oslo Accords (I) or the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-

Government Arrangements (DOP) taken as the basis or framework
“for the future relations” and all “subsequent agreements” “between
Israel and the PLO (see Subsection 5.2.6) - does not make any
mention of the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees of 1948,
refugees of what I previously called as the First Massive Wave of
Ethnic Cleansing.
The DOP speaks only of “displaced Palestinians” (Annex I,
paragraph 3); the “persons displaced from the West Bank and Gaza
Strip in 1967” (Article XII). These are the refugees of 1967 who were
made homeless during the 1967 Israeli Aggression of 5 June. They
were made to wander, along with those of 1948 as refugees in
diaspora. In other words, the DOP makes mention only of the
Second Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing. This is a fact that
confirms ‘Israel’’s “continuing denial of the Nakba” - largely the result
of the “still alive” “Zionist ideology of ethnic supremacy,” the ideology
underlying ‘Israel’’s entrenched intent to deceive, which is, as stated
by Pappe (2006: 234), one of “two obstacles that perpetuate the
refugee problem,” the other being the so-called ‘peace process’”:
The Nakba and the refugee issues have been

consistently excluded from the peace agenda, and to
understand this we must assess how deep the level of
denial of the crimes committed in 1948 remains today in
Israel and associate it with the existence of a genuinely
felt fear on the one hand, and a deeply rooted form of
anti-Arab racism on the other, both heavily manipulated
(236-237).
Emphasised also by Shash (1999), ‘Israel’’s denial of its

responsibility for the Palestinian homelessness and thus its stance
270
against their return is largely due to undisguised ideological reasons:
the establishment of a pure Jewish state.
Historically, Zionist leaders were unanimous in their intent and goal
to transfer the Palestinians or rather “cleanse” Palestine or to use
the words of the founder of Zionism - as entered in his diary in 1895
- “to expel the poor population across the border unnoticed”. Hence,
the embryo Jewish state had “regretfully” failed in 1948 to totally
“transfer” or “expel” the remaining 20% of natives.
Now, according to Article XII: LIASON AND COOPERATION WITH
JORDAN AND EGYPT of the DOP:
[The] two parties [‘Israel’ and the PLO] will invite the
Governments of Jordan and Egypt to participate in
establishing further liaison and cooperation arrangements
between the Government of Israel and the Palestinian
representatives, on the one hand, and the Governments
of Jordan and Egypt, on the other hand (see Table 5.25
below).
Table 5.25

These arrangements will include Besides obscuring – through passive
the constitution of a Continuing agent deletion - who is responsible for
Committee that will decide by the displacement of those persons from
agreement on the modalities of their homeland, what about those
admission of persons displaced Palestinians made refugees since
from the West Bank and Gaza 1948?
Strip in 1967, together with
necessary measures to prevent A central issue, one of the “essentials
disruption and disorder of the conflict,” the “critical constants,”
(emphasis added). the Right of Return or the right to
repatriate and rehabilitate the
Palestinian refugees the Zionists have
rendered homeless since 1948 is not
mentioned.
According to the Article above, ‘Israel’ differentiates between those

Refugees of 1948 (on whose depopulated and razed villages ‘Israel’
was founded - 78% of Palestine) and those of 1967 (on whose
occupied and partly depopulated villages the Israelis have
constructed colonies- parts of the vestigial 22% of Palestine).
While the first category - those made refugees as a result of the First
Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing - is postponed or supposedly
postponed among “permanent status issues” (Article V) to be
271
worked out through “direct bilateral negotiations” (i.e. ‘Israel’ and the
PA only), mention is made of the second category - those made
refugees as a result of the Second Massive Wave of Ethnic
Cleansing - where a resolution of the issue would be approached
through multi-lateral negotiations (i.e. the PA, Jordan, Egypt and
‘Israel’).
Dealing only with those Palestinians displaced in 1967 from the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip (Second Massive Wave of Ethnic
Cleansing), while ignoring or (giving us the semblance of) deferring
the Question of the Right of Return of the 1948 refugees (First
Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing) who constitute more than half of
the torn Palestinian fabric proves - based on ‘Israel’’s bad faith - to
be nothing more than further temporisation or a delaying tactic until
the creation of further ‘irreversible’ “facts on the ground” that would
allow ‘Israel’ to further consolidate her power; a policy of which
‘Israel’ - indeed since its pre-embryonic stage - is typical.
Deferment of the Right of Return or the issue of the refugees of the
First Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing until the date of “Permanent
status negotiations” might thus, as shown in Subsection 5.2.6, never
be realised, especially as the founding Zionist ideology of keeping
‘Israel’ as a “Jewish” state is not only “still alive” but also pursued
with vengeance (Morris, 1988; Shash, 1999; Pappe, 2006).
So, the DOP, as noted, speaks only of the refugees of 1967, of
“modalities of admission of persons displaced from the West Bank
and Gaza Strip in 1967” [which are to be decided on by a Continuing
Committee to be set up during the interim period]. This quartet
Continuing Committee was to be later made up of the PA, ‘Israel,’
Egypt and Jordan. The first of the committee’s meetings took place
in March 1995 in Jordan but lack of agreement on who constitutes a
“displaced person” took place (Shash, 1999); hence creating an
obstacle towards the repatriation of even those expelled in 1967,
which shows ‘Israel’’s entrenched intent to always manipulate and
deceive or until the “facts on the ground” make it, as usual
“unrealistic to expect” not even the return of the refugees of the
second wave but the return of any, bearing in mind that the refugees
of the first wave are not mentioned at all.
To further prove ‘Israel’’s lack of good faith, I wish to draw attention
to the phrase in Table 5.26 below:
272
Table 5.26

These arrangements will include the This again, given ‘Israel’’s lack of
constitution of a Continuing good faith, could be employed
Committee that will decide by cunningly by ‘Israel’ to evade,
agreement on the modalities of temporise and impede the whole
admission of persons displaced from process of the “admission of
the West Bank and Gaza Strip in persons displaced from the West
1967, together with necessary Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967” on
measures to prevent disruption the grounds of preventing
and disorder (Article XII) (emphasis “disruption and disorder”.
added).
Finally I would like to add the following as a further proof of ‘Israel’’s

entrenched mala fides or lack of good faith negotiations regarding
the Palestinian refugees Right of Return, this essential supposedly
deferred as a permanent status issue. A year after the supposed
end in May 4, 1999 of the “Interim period,” and just before July 2000
Camp David Summit, ‘Israel’ had passed a law prohibiting any
Israeli negotiator from even discussing “the Right of Return of the
Palestinian refugees to the homes that had been theirs before 1948
[...] with Barak publically committing himself to upholding it as he
climbed the steps of the plane that was taking him to Camp David”
(Pappe, 2006: 244) (see Subsection 3.5.6 below).
5.3.5 Summary of Research Question II:

Findings Related to the Right of Return
Is it not time to [...] find a just solution...to the problem of

refugees to put an end to the suffering that they have
endured for six decades?
(Abbas while addressing the UN GA on Sept 29, 2007)
Research Question II concerns itself with the Palestinian Refugees

Right of Return in UN and ‘peace’ discourse. So as was done with
Research Question I, Research Question II on the Right of Return or
the repatriation or reconstitution of the Palestinians - who in 1948
(the First Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing) and 1967 (the Second
Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing) were made by force of arms to
flee their homes and to live ever since in diasporic communities in
neighbouring countries under grim conditions - was divided into two
sub-questions or areas of doubt (see Table 5.27 overleaf):
273
Table 5.27
Summary of Research Question II:
Findings Related to the Right of Return
Ite Questions Findings

m
No.
To what extent Given the “still alive” “transfer” Zionist ideology, the
has UN and dogma underlying ‘Israel’’s entrenched intent to
‘peace’ discourse deceive; the dogma that “Only Transfer Will Bring
gone in Peace,” the dogma that prohibits “the Right of
implementing the Return of the Palestinian refugees to the homes
Palestinian that had been theirs before 1948” from even being
Refugees Right discussed,” the dogma or Revisionist Zionist belief
of Return or the that “between the sea and Jordan there will only be
reconstitution of Israeli sovereignty,” the study has concluded that
the Palestinians - neither UN resolutions, nor the protracted ‘peace
rendered in 1948 process’ discourse in all its guises has been found
homeless - as a to be bona fide or practical in implementing the
nation in their Right of Return or reconstituting the Palestinian
historic refugees in their historic homeland as more than
homeland? half of the Palestinians (estimated by Badil
Resource Centre to be 7 million persons at the
beginning of 2003) are languishing in diaspora.
This has always been the case despite decades of
resolutions and ‘talks’.
Still denying its responsibility for the affluent
Palestinian diaspora, ‘Israel’ has never changed its
RQ entrenched intent towards the refugees; a visible
II fact that makes those resolutions and discourses
nothing but means of further domination and
consolidation of power on the part of ‘Israel’.
274
Can any serious In simple English words, talking about a “just,”
solution or “lasting,” and “comprehensive” peace settlement as
discourse on the all those UN resolutions and ‘peace talks’ claim
Palestine their goal to be, entails the return of those
Question exclude defenceless refugees who were “expelled from their
or ignore this homes at gunpoint” and then denied return.
inalienable right ‘Israel’ until now denies its responsibility for the
despite its collective Palestinian dispossession and
obsolescence: homelessness, the crimes that made it possible for
return of those her to exist. All ongoing ‘peace’ discourse has until
refugees whom now failed to draw a “legal and moral recognition of
the Zionists have the ethnic cleansing Israel had perpetrated in
uprooted and 1948”.
forced to live in The study has emphasised that those UN
diaspora in resolutions taken as the basis for the ‘peace
miserable and process’ and hence a settlement of the problem of
squalid refugee Israeli occupation conflict as such can never lead to
camps? In other a “just, lasting and comprehensive peace
words, can any settlement” as the dominant Zionist discourse would
attempt at always like to advertise it.
achieving peace They might one day - though still also unlikely given
in the Middle East the fact that the process has entered its third
be “just, lasting decade without improving the grim conditions of
and Palestinians, both occupied and in diaspora- lead to
Sub comprehensive” - a certain modus vivendi of some kind if ‘Israel’
-Q as claimed by decides to go to the negotiating table without the
1 such discourse - symptomatic intent to dodge and deceive, and to
without undoing really want to coexist with the Palestinians.
this gross Nonetheless, still to call such modus vivendi - if it
injustice? ever takes place - “just,” “lasting,” and
“comprehensive” is misrepresentation of and
disregard for inexorable facts; indeed not as long as
this modus vivendi is being based on resolution 242
and its duplicate 338.
Continued...
So even if current dilatory discourse ends up with a
modus vivendi which is very doubtful as noted,
given the basis for such a modus vivendi, with its
underlying entrenched intent to deceive, it is unjust
to call “just” or “lasting” or “comprehensive” as this
is nothing but discourse, hence is my insistence on
calling it modus vivendi rather than settlement to
connote that such a way of resolving this unequal
conflict is temporary, not permanent.
Having a “just,” “lasting,” and “comprehensive”
peace settlement would require that the whole
basis, as a first step, just, which as noted means
that the entire basis used currently for a resolution
of this unequal conflict has to be changed. But
given Israel’s bad faith - the stronger stakeholder in
this unequal conflict - apparently neither a just nor
unjust settlement seems to be in the offing.
275
As for UN resolutions, by boiling down the Palestine
Question from being a national cause, to a mere
“refugee problem,” and by not specifying the Right
of Return as the just solution, Resolution 242 not
only harbours mala fides regarding this Right or the
reconstitution of the Palestinians as a nation in their
historic homeland, but also helps obliterate “the
patriotic and national rights” of the Palestinians,
their right to self-determination.
In its call for “the implementation of Security Council
Resolution 242 (1967) in all of its parts,” Resolution
338 does not add anything new as to the
Palestinian Refugees Right of Return. Hence, the
study concludes that Resolution 338 does not differ
in any way from 242 as to implementing the Right of
Return.
The study has concluded that due to the lack of
stipulation or at least mention of the Right of Return
in resolutions 212 (1948) and 302 (1949), and the
lack of a timeframe in 194 for the repatriation of
refugees, along with the framing of repatriation in
What is the status the modal form of advisability, resolutions 212 and
of those refugees 302 are irrelevant to the question of the Right of
- who constitute Return, while Resolution 194 lacks the necessary
Sub more than half of enforceability to make it practical; an assumption
-Q the torn that given the scale of the tragedy or crime brings
2 Palestinian social the intent of the discourse drafters or those behind
cohesion - in the resolution into question.
such UN Dealing only with those Palestinians displaced in
resolutions and the aggression of 1967 from the West Bank and the
‘peace talks’? Gaza Strip (Second Massive Wave of Ethnic
Cleansing), and in a manner that makes it possible
to debate indefinitely who constitutes “a displaced
person,” while ignoring or (giving us the semblance
of) deferring the Question of the Right of Return of
the 1948 refugees (First Massive Wave of Ethnic
Cleansing) proves - based on ‘Israel’’s bad faith - to
be little more than further temporisation, a delaying
tactic until the creation of further ‘irreversible’ “facts
on the ground;” where it would later become
“unrealistic to expect” a (complete) reversal to the
status quo ante, and hence more concessions, and
thus further and “further consolidation of Israeli
power,” a policy of which ‘Israel’ is typical.
As such, such UN and protracted ‘peace’ discourse
- found to be little more than Zionist war against the
Palestinians by other means - is meant, in light of
Israeli intransigence, manipulation and the
underlying entrenched intent to deceive, to sustain,
rather than end the status quo for Israel to be able
to further consolidate her “fundamental objectives”
and “annexationist ambitions”.
276
5.4 CHANGE OF PLO DISCOURSE, AND ONSET OF THE
SLIPPERY SLOPE: DECLINE OF THE PLO IN THE MID-
1980s
Let me highlight my views before you. [...] We are bent to

[having] peace [...]. Our statehood provides salvation to
the Palestinians and peace to both Palestinians and
Israelis. Self-determination means survival for the
Palestinians. And our survival does not destroy the
survival of the Israelis as their rulers claim [...] In my
speech also yesterday it was clear that we mean our
peoples’ right to freedom and national independence
according to resolution 181and the right of all parties [...]
to exist in peace [...] including the state of Palestine and
Israel [...] according to resolutions 242 and 338.
(Statement by Arafat, Geneva, December 14, 1988; cited
in Smith, 2007: 448)
The Palestine Liberation Organization today issued a

statement in which it accepted U.N. Security Council
Resolutions 242 and 338 [Notice the speaker’s disregard
of Arafat’s mention of Resolution 181], recognized
Israel’s right to exist [...]. As a result, the United States is
prepared for a substantive dialogue with PLO
representatives. [...] Nothing here may be taken to imply
an acceptance or recognition by the United States of an
independent Palestinian state [Notice his disregard of
Arafat’s mention of “the state of Palestine”]. The position
of the United States is that the status of the West Bank
and Gaza cannot be determined by unilateral acts of
either side, but only through a process of negotiations
[this is the pretext the US often uses to shrug off or veto
certain UN resolutions]. The United States does not
recognize the declaration of an independent Palestinian
state.
(Response to Arafat’s statement by George Shultz,
Washington, D.C, December 14, 1988; cited in Smith,
2007: 449)
This final section looks at (the repercussions of) the change of

discursive practices occurring over time. It shows the change of the
official Arab and Palestinian stance regarding the Israeli occupation
or the status of the Zionist entity as an “enemy”.
277
The first epigraph mentioned above shows Arafat or the PLO as
recognising, on December 14, 1988 in Geneva [since Arafat was
denied a visa to Washington], “the right of all parties [...] to exist in
peace [...] including the state of Palestine and Israel”. The other
epigraph by Shultz, the US Secretary of State, however, shows his
statement as noting Arafat’s recognition of “Israel’s right to exist,” on
the one hand, but disregarding Arafat’s equal mention of the right of
the Palestinian people to self-determination or the “state of
Palestine” “to exist.” Not only that, but Shultz’s statement also,
arrogantly and unambiguously, even rejects that possibility.
Thus, lopsided or one-sided, those grossly unequal statements,
have - while extracting recognition from the PLO of “Israel’s right to
exist” - not secured an equivalent right as to the existence of a
Palestinian state, or “the right of all parties,” as stated in Arafat’s
statement, “to exist”. Arafat’s statement, further, while recognising
‘Israel,’ has failed to draw a “legal and moral recognition of the
ethnic cleansing Israel had perpetrated in 1948” and which until now
it still denies. Israel still denies its responsibility for the crimes that
made it possible for her to exist.
Leading to the Madrid talks and simultaneously but secretly to talks
in Oslo, Norway where the Oslo Accords (14/9/1993) pre-empted
and were concluded, Arafat and Shultz’s statements were unjustly
weighted where no recognition of a Palestinian state was
acknowledged.
Arafat did not also secure on 9/9/1993 upon an exchange of letters
of recognition between him and Rabin recognition of a Palestinian
state. Therefore, in Rabin’s own words, “There is nothing [in the
accord] about a Palestinian state or a capital in part of Jerusalem....
Jerusalem must remain united under Israeli sovereignty and be our
capital forever.... (Smith, 2007: 455). For him, he does not “believe
there is room for an additional state between Israel and Jordan”
(2007: 455).
Nonetheless, those historic statements (of 1988 and 1993) - unjustly
weighted in favour of the powerful- had first precipitated a historic
conference (the Middle East Peace Conference), convened in
Madrid on October 30, 1991, and touted by the co-sponsors: the US
and the (then) Soviet Union Secretaries of State as “an historic
opportunity [...] to advance the prospects for genuine peace
throughout the region,” and second the Oslo Accords (13/9/1993),
respectively.
This PLO de facto recognition of ‘Israel’ in December 1988 and the
putative “mutual recognition” in September 9 1993, the day Arafat
and Rabin exchanged Letters of Recognition: the PLO recognising
“the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security” and
278
Israel’s decision to “recognize the PLO as the representative of the
Palestinian people” (Israel & PLO Exchange Letters of Recognition
(1993), <http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic> (accessed 21 April,
2010): 1-3) - was a major transformation, indeed a drastic change in
the historic stance of the PLO or PLO discourse, which meant that
the PLO was explicitly and openly now abandoning “the 1968 PLO
Charter that called for Palestinian statehood in what was now Israel”
(Smith, 2007, 409).
Recall, for example, the position of the PLO in 1974 regarding
Resolution 242 which was rejected “categorically” for it implicitly
gave the Jewish state the de facto legitimacy or right of 78% of
former or historic Palestine:
The PLO reaffirms its previous attitude concerning

Security Council Resolution 242 which obliterates the
patriotic and national rights of our people and treats our
national cause as a refugee problem. It therefore
refuses categorically any negotiations on the basis of this
Resolution at any level of inter-Arab or international
negotiation (emphasis added)…
(PLO Resolution on Security Council Resolution 242
(1974); quoted in Smith, 2007: 347)
Being so drastic, this gradual change - indeed metamorphosis - in

the discourse of the PLO - from categorical rejection in 1974 to
recognition of Israel in 1988, of the “enemy” as no longer being
“enemy” and rather a partner in peace, a partner who has the right
to exist - is tantamount to death of the Palestinian discourse (see
Subsection 5.4.2 below).
5.4.1 The Khartoum Conference (1967)

and Onset of the Arab Slippery Slope
Discursive changes in the stance of Arabs regarding the “enemy”

have begun since 1967, following the new facts ‘Israel’ has created
on the ground through its occupation of the rest of Palestine, the
Sinai Peninsula (of Egypt) and the Golan Heights (of Syria).
Demoralised, as a result, Arabs or the official Arab stance has since
then become gradually concessive and compromising. It has been
so since the moment Egypt - the biggest Arab country - and Jordan
have acquiesced to Resolution 242 (see Subsection 5.2.1 above).
Since that moment of acquiescence to Resolution 242, Arab states
have tacitly “recognized the need to give Israel de facto, though not
279
de jure, recognition through negotiations conducted through third
parties, specifically the United Nations, if Israel would return to its
prewar frontiers” (Smith, 2007, 309). This stance was known as the
“land for peace” formula.
By agreeing to “unite their political efforts at the international and
diplomatic levels to eliminate the effects of the [1967] aggression
and to ensure the withdrawal of the aggressive Israeli forces from
the Arab lands occupied” in that aggression, the Arab heads of state
in The Khartoum Conference in 1967, have tacitly recognised the
existence of ‘Israel’ within the pre-June 5 borders or the Armistice
Line of 1949, i.e. within 78% of the territory of Mandate Palestine.
Talking about Israeli withdrawal to the pre-June 5 lines or the
Armistice Line of 1949: “withdrawal […] from the Arab lands which
have been occupied since the aggression of 5 June” rather than
withdrawal or at least return to the 1947 UN lines of partition
(Resolution 181), would implicitly mean such recognition, albeit its
being de facto. Tacitly, this implies the recognition of ‘Israel’ to exist
in the 78% of the total area of Mandate Palestine it ‘cleansed’ of
Palestinians in 1948, which is 22 or “23% more than Israel was
granted pursuant to the 1947 UN partition plan”.
5.4.2 PLO’s Ten Point Programme (1974)

and Onset of the Slippery Slope…
For nearly four decades Arafat had embodied a national

movement whose main aim was to seek legal and moral
recognition of the ethnic cleansing Israel had perpetrated
in 1948. The notion of how this might come about
changed with time, as did the strategy, and definitely, the
tactics […].
(Pappe, 2006: 242)
Apart from the first ten years of the history of the PLO, i.e. from the
year of its establishment in 1964 to 1974, the PLO’s stance has
become progressively concessive (see Subsection 5.4.3 below).
The PLO’s original position regarding the case and liberation of
Palestine was that of “armed struggle”. The goal was the liberation
of all of former or historic Palestine as clearly stated in Article 9 of
the Palestinian National Charter (PNC) (1968): “Armed struggle is
the only way to liberate Palestine”.
Hence, “armed struggle” rather than a political solution was the
belief, the strategy and the way. “The Palestinian nation should be
280
reborn in what was then Israel, a goal to be achieved through armed
struggle” (Smith, 2007: 345).
This position - the creation of a secular democratic Palestinian
State, “with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate [... as]
an indivisible territorial unit” (Article 2 of PNC) - however, has since
1974 (Shafiq, 2009) shifted, as can be gathered from the PLO’s Ten
Point Programme; it has shifted from full restoration and
consequently establishment of the state of Palestine on all of
Mandate Palestine to an “independent, combatant” national authority
on any liberated territory.
So, the notion of not only full liberation of former/historic or Mandate
Palestine has vanished but also of the prospect of a just solution
whatsoever, even if UN and peace discourse producers insist on
calling it “just” and “comprehensive”.
The PLO has thus begun since 1974 to change its notion from
establishing a Palestinian state “with the boundaries it had during
the British Mandate,” a “secular state for Muslims, Christians, and
Jews” – Jews “who were living in Palestine before the start of the
Zionist invasion” - to that of the two states. Thus, it has gradually
changed its stance towards full liberation, and moved drastically
“toward the concept of “two states for two peoples,” based, initially
on the lines of partition (Resolution 181 of 1947) - the borders that
“correspond to the UN partition plan of 1947” (Gavron, 2004: 223) -
and beginning from 1988 on those of the pre- 1967 - “the pre-June 5
lines” - (Resolutions 242 and 338) where 78% rather than 56% are
to remain taken by ‘Israel’.
In this regard, the study deplores the Arab heads of state’s tacit
recognition of ‘Israel’ (Smith, 2007), following the aggression of 5
June, in The Khartoum Conference (mentioned above) in 1967, and
the PLO’s 1974 Ten Point Programme, which commenced its
slippery slope from being a “pariah” to “partner” or freedom-fighter
to…; this slippery slope that has begun since the Arab heads of
state’s tacit recognition of ‘Israel,’ and then the PLO’s implicit then
later explicit abandonment of the 1968 Charter “that called for
and then augmented by the 1985 “Husayn-Arafat Accord” (2007:
411) or the Jordanian Option, which treats the “Palestinians as non-
existent” (Pappe, 2006: 239), then the PLO’s “open acceptance of
Resolution 242,” followed by the recognition of the existence of
‘Israel’ in December 1988; and then the ensuing Madrid Conference
in October 1991, and September 13 1993 Oslo Accords, and Interim
Agreement (Oslo 2) on September 28 1995, and...
Put differently, this CDA study deplores the transformations in the
PLO discourse. The study views such change as tantamount to
281
death of the Palestinian discourse - and given ‘Israel’’s entrenched
intent to manipulate – liquidation of the Palestine Question.
5.4.3 Peace Process: War against the Palestinians by Other

Means
With this end in mind, Oslo 2 provided for the expansion

of the network of bypass roads from Israel proper to all
settlements, linking them to each other and to pre-1967
Israel. These roads were intended, in Rabin’s words, to
“[enable] Israelis to move without crossing the Palestinian
population areas that will become the Palestinian
Authority’s responsibility.” Rabin did not note that the
roads would also cut off Palestinian areas from each
other, denying contiguity and blocking effective imposition
of any central Palestinian authority independent of Israeli
security.
(Smith, 2007: 462-463)
For over nine decades now, denied their Right to self-determination

- granted by God before international law to the progeny of Adam or
all peoples - and their Right of Return - granted also by God and law
to any noncombatants fleeing during a conflict to return after the
conflict is over - beleaguered and embattled Palestinians had to
painfully acquiesce to the notion of partitioning their motherland as a
de facto reality.
Thus, though the proposal of partition as a political solution to the
problem created in Palestine - through the waves of Jewish aliyoth
and their escalating terrorism that reached a crescendo in 1948 -
was made for the first time in 1937 (see Chapter 2) by the Palestine
Royal (Peel) Commission, and later in 1947 by the UN in its
Resolution 181, the concept or “principle of partition” (Gavron, 2004:
33) was accepted explicitly and officially by the PLO only in 1988 -
21 years after the Arab heads of state’s tacit and de facto
recognition of ‘Israel’ in the Khartoum Conference in August 1967,
and 6 years after the Arab Peace Plan in Fez in 1982; and about 51
years after the year of the first proposal (i.e. 1937), and 41 years
after the UN Partition Plan (1947); an acquiescence or a drastic
change in the discursive practices of PLO that has led to the
December 1988 PLO de facto recognition of the existence of ‘Israel,’
and the ensuing slippery slope to Palestinian - not independence but
-bantustanisation through the so-called “peace process” - the
process “that’s always been structured to avoid peace at all costs”.
282
As noted in the previous subsection, the PLO’s change of stance
can be seen as originating from her adoption of the Ten Point
Programme in 1974 (Shafiq, 2009), and later her discursive
acquiescence to Resolution 242 as a basis for partition or a two-
state solution despite its categorical rejection to it at the time of its
issuance and for many years - formally until 1988 as noted.
Further, based on this “flawed” “principle of partition” or apocalyptic
vision of the two-state solution based on Resolutions 242 and 338,
the ensuing ‘peace process’ has given the Palestine Question a new
dimension to the slippery slope. This ‘peace’ or rather Israeli
consolidation of territory process, started since the tacit recognition
of ‘Israel’ in 1967 by Arab states and by the PLO in 1974 and
expedited by the explicit recognition of the existence of ‘Israel’ in
1988 has led to further Israeli consolidation of power over
Palestinian territory rather than granting Palestinians independence.
It has given it a fresh continuity for further concessions on the
Palestinian side and further expansionism on the Israeli side. It has
arrogated to Israelis further expropriation or de facto annexation of
Palestinian lands and deprived Palestinians of further de jure rights.
So, instead of being a force behind the end of occupation, what is
known as the ‘peace process,’ has led to further Zionist expansion,
bleeding the Palestinians dry. It resulted, for example, in September
2000 - out of sheer frustration and utter despair created by the
realities of Oslo - in the second intifada, and in December 2008-
January 2009 in the Gazacaust of the besieged Strip - Israel’s latest
attempt at genocide or the racial extermination of Palestinians,
whose ‘cleansing’ will certainly lead to the kind of ‘peace’ ‘Israel’ or
Israeli leaders harbour or pursue.
A cause for exacerbation and the continuance of the status quo, this
is a fact that makes “it plain” - as revealed by Benny Morris’ candour
- “that the ‘peace process’ in all its guises (see Section 3.5) - as
multifarious as they are monotonous: [Madrid talks,] Oslo
[1993/1995], Camp David [July 2000], Taba [Jan. 2001], Road Map
[2003] or Geneva [2003] - is little more than war against the
Palestinians by other means” (New Left Review 26, March-April
2004). In this context, the apparent pursuit of ‘peace’ as an
American-Israeli means to sustain war (the status quo) need not be
a paradox.
283
CHAPTER SIX
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
6.1 OVERVIEW
Currently, there is no formally recognized Palestinian

state at the United Nations. There is no Palestinian flag in
front of the building. While there are Palestinian
representatives, they are only allowed to observe, rather
than vote during the decision making process. This
epitomizes what it currently feels like to be Palestinian:
present, but voiceless.
(Feature Writer, April 29, 2011)
This chapter presents a summary of the study, and the discourse

strategies and linguistic means characterising the discourse in
question, stressing the tripartite structure of this CDA study: (I) the
reproductive function of discourse in power relations and the
reproduction of domination, (II) the enlightening and emancipatory
role or transforming function of the critical study of discourse (CDA)
in social change, and (III) the Palestine Question with its past,
present and future dimensions. The chapter re-highlights some of
the main findings, and challenges facing the Palestine Question, and
concludes with recommendations and suggestions for further
research.
A first conclusion to be drawn from this study is that prior to her
formation and throughout her repressive existence, ‘Israel’ has used
- to sustain such formation and such existence - two mechanisms of
repression: military and linguistic, applying the force of arms for the
first and discursive acts for the second. While the former has been
used inside the Occupied Territories to keep suppressing the
occupied, the latter has been used to project in the outside world an
image contrary to the reality inside, polarising the situation. Within
this context of ‘Israel’’s repression in its overt and covert or naked
and linguistic forms, the Palestinians have been struggling against
staggering domination: the declared advocacy of peace, and the
actual pursuit of violence.
Out of these two mechanisms of Israeli or Zionist repression, it is the
second - that is repression in its linguistic forms” – that has been the
concern and focus of this study where a CDA of the role of
discourse in the realities of the Arab struggle against Israeli
284
occupation was conducted to reveal the role of UN and peace
discursive practices in the continuity of the Palestine Question.
In realising its aim - the textual analysis of the discourse declared to
realise a Palestinian state and bring to a halt “decades of
confrontation and conflict” in the Middle East; and its two objectives -
the study consisted of six chapters.
Foregrounding the three conceptual features of this study:
Discourse, CDA, and the Palestine Question, Chapter 1 served as
an orientation to the whole study, providing a background, and
limning a concise account of the problem, methodology, aim and
objectives, research questions, significance and implications of the
study, and a glossary of key and newly-minted terms.
As a background to the study and in light of the “still alive” Zionist
ideology that has driven the settler Zionist enterprise since its early
years, Chapter 2 presented background information about the
historical course of the Palestine Question: its origins and evolution
until the forcible creation of the Jewish state in 1948, bringing to light
the major formative events leading to the development of the
“Zionist enterprise in Palestine” and the ensuing “transformation of
Palestine into a Jewish state”. The chapter also explored the
obstacles currently exacerbating the Palestine Question.
Chapter 3 reviewed major works dealing with the relationship
between language and its many other functions that go beyond
traditional communication. The chapter also in emphasising the role
of CDA in helping liberate people from “oppression in its linguistic
forms,” reviewed in details, the concepts of language, discourse,
Discourse Analysis, and Critical Discourse Analysis in their relation
to domination and emancipation. The chapter also gave an overview
of the main proposals on the ‘Israel’/Palestine Question; and closed
with a review of some related research works where language and
power or discourse and domination are at work.
Chapter 4 described the research methods and CDA approach
(theoretical framework) adopted in the analysis and conduct of this
qualitative document or discourse study.
A central pillar of this work, Chapter 5, and in an attempt to meet the
research objectives, conducted a CDA of UN resolutions and
discourse of the ‘peace process’ on the Question of Palestine; and
endeavoured to detect the intent underlying such discourse,
revealing whether such discourse would be practical in achieving
what it has been articulating. The chapter next looked into the
change of discursive practices in the official Arab and Palestinian
stance regarding the Israeli Occupation or ‘Israel’.
285
6.2 SUMMARY AND FINDINGS
“We will never outviolence you Israelis. Israel has proved

successful at warfare, imposing its will by force, pursuing
a strategy of violence, and acquiring the most advanced
weapons, while perfecting the rhetoric [discourse] of
peace. It is Shalom this, Shalom that, Shalom the other
thing, while being one of the most militarized societies in
the world!”
(Jonathan Kuttab, quoted in Gavron, 2004: 105)
Struggling in an age of dominant Zionist (media) discourse:

whitewash of words, distortion of facts and misrepresentation of
reality, I have maintained throughout this critical consciousness-
raising discourse study that the way the Palestine Question has
been discursively constructed “along certain lines rather than others”
is what has kept Palestine and the Middle East and much of the
turbulence engulfing the world in the way it is now. I have also
maintained that discourse is employed by the powerful to enact,
normalise and sustain domination and control; and that “conflicts
and wars begin and end with words;” and that “before guns are fired
and bombs start falling, words commit the first act of war;” that “Our
life is not shaped by the event but by the meaning we attach to it”
and that the “Selection of one term rather than another often entails
choosing particular modes of conceptualising the reality in question;”
that language is a medium of domination and social force; that
discourse is “socially constituted and socially constitutive;” that
“language is centrally involved in power, and struggles for power,
and that “power is exercised and enacted in discourse;” that
“domination and oppression” take place in and through “linguistic
forms;” and that “the emancipation of man from the oppression of
politics starts with the critical analysis of the linguistic manipulations
of politicians;” that “inequality and injustice are repeatedly
reproduced and legitimized by language;” that “the use of language
could lead to a mystification of social events which systematic
analysis could elucidate;” that discourse can be used as a
“tranquillising drug of gradualism,” indefinite temporisation and
deceptive optimism; and that discourse, with its wide heterogeneity,
is thus a “key to understanding both colonialism and the process of
becoming emancipated from the strictures of foreign domination”
(Divine, 2008: 2) and such indefinite temporisation...
Accordingly, I set out to investigate the discursive practices on the
Palestine Question with the goal to reveal whether protracted UN
and ‘peace’ discourse on the Palestine Question is bona fide and
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practical and accordingly whether it has contributed and if so in what
ways and to what extent to the abortive attempts of years of otiose
negotiations and the perpetuation of the status quo (second or
practical objective of study). The study sought to find out about how
practical and bona fide those discursive practices in ending Israel’s
occupation, in realising the Palestinian People Right to Self-
Determination (RQ I), and the Palestinian Refugees Right of Return
(RQ II), and thus paving the road to “peace” are. In the process, the
study sought to increase readers’ consciousness of the role
discourse plays in reproducing asymmetrical relations of power on
the one hand, and the role CDA can play in changing the status quo
on the other (first or theoretical objective of study). It sought to make
us, rulers and ruled, conscious of domination in its linguistic forms.
The CDA approach I took in this study to note, unearth and
articulate the discourse strategies and grammatical systems (see
Table 6.1 and Table 6.2 below) deployed in the construction of
certain calculated illocutionary forces to perpetuate the status quo
became possible when I provided, as part of a hermeneutic process
and CDA analysis, a detailed historical background in the manner of
a discourse-historical approach. So the analysis was done within the
framework of Reisigl and Wodak’s discourse analytic approach to
CDA, the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA).
Though the study was motivated by the social problem created in
Palestine - out of Zionist aspirations - in particular, its objectives
were not restricted to that wrong only, but extend to any other similar
social inequality that might have originated from or is being
legitimated and perpetuated through a certain dominant discourse.
The study drew much of its rationale and significance from its
demonstration of the centrality of each of the Palestine Question to
Middle Eastern politics and regional stability, discourse to power
relations, and CDA to social change.
Discourse, the study has maintained, is a powerful tool in the hands
of those seeking to dominate and impose hegemonic controls on the
less empowered. This work has unearthed and patiently noted
discourse strategies and linguistic means that the powerful use in
constructing the Palestine Question in a way that protracts the
problem of Israeli occupation or the Arab struggle against Israeli
occupation. Out of a total of 32 discourse strategies outlined in
Table 4.1 (Chapter Four), the following 20 global discourse
strategies have been found to characterise UN and Peace discourse
(see Table 6.1 and Table 6.2 below):
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Table 6.1
Summary of
Discourse Strategies and Linguistic Means
characterising UN Discourse on the Palestine Question
No UN Discourse Linguistic Means: Example

. Strategies grain-of-sand like means/ s
linguistic “pin-sting”
1 agency: passivisation/de-agentialisation/passive agent Table 5.6,
obscuring deletion: 5.7
causal agency Here the UN de-agentialises actions of which the
Israelis are agent; it has through passive agent
deletion helped conceal or obscure human
agency (i.e. Zionists/Israelis) as the one bringing
about the events in question (“have been
displaced and uprooted”/“persons displaced from
the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967”/“the
Palestinian people has been prevented from
enjoying its inalienable rights”), thus obscuring
rather than foregrounding who is responsible for
such crimes of displacement and uprootedness
and the impediment behind the Palestinian people
exercising their inalienable rights. The
marginalisation or omission of the agent in such
agentless passives, those calculated de-
agentialised constructions, can contribute to a
perception that the agent is relatively unimportant.
Consequently, a consumer may be more likely to
focus on the foregrounded information spending
less, if any, time thinking about the agent or actor.
2 deceptive use of the three-part statement Tables
purveyance of (e.g. “These are meaningful signs of respect for 5.3, 5.3,
optimism the rights of the Palestinians and their hopes for a 5.19
viable, democratic, peaceful Palestinian state,” or
“just, lasting and comprehensive” peace in the
Middle East.
3 obscurantism; use of verbal processes; Tables
resort to use of the subjunctive; 5.6, 5.17,
ambiguity and use of modality; 5.22
vague use of weasel words
formulations
4 elasticity or use of empty or floating or indeterminate signifiers Tables
empty (e.g. “at the earliest practicable date...,” “overall 5.2, 5.3,
signification security,” secure and recognized,” “through 5.9, 5.19,
measures including…etc.); 5.22
use of weasel words/use of modality (e.g. “may”)
5 hedging and use of empty/indeterminate signifiers; Tables
temporisatiom/ manipulation of articles; 5.3,5.7,
creating facts reiterations 5.8, 5.9
on the ground
6 using non- use of modality (e.g.) “refugees should be Tables
committal or permitted to [return] at the earliest practicable 5.3, 5.22
ambiguous date...;”
statements manipulation of articles (e.g.) “withdrawal of
Israel[i] armed forces from territories ”
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Table 6.2
Summary of
Discourse Strategies and Linguistic Means
characterising Peace Discourse on the Palestine Question
No. Peace Linguistic Means: Example

Discourse grain-of-sand like means/ s
Strategies linguistic “pin-sting
1 agency: passivisation/de-agentialisation/passive agent Table

obscuring deletion: 5.25
causal agency (e.g., “persons displaced from the West Bank
and Gaza Strip in 1967”
2 positive transitivity selections Table
ingroup (for an idea about what transitivity means, see 5.20
presentation Section 1.3, p. 31; discussion of Table 4.5,
and negative and Subsections 3.2.2, and 3.2.4)
outgroup
presentation
3 assertion of use of modality (adverbs, modal verbs) Table
ingroup (e.g. “strongly committed” as in “Today 5.19
allegiances America is strongly committed to Israel’s
and solidarity security”)
use of the simple present tense
4 victim-agent transitivity selections – Table
reversal/blam (e.g. “Prime Minister Abbas recognizes that 5.20
e the victim terrorist crimes are a dangerous obstacle to
the independent state his people seek. He
argues that the process for achieving that
state is through peaceful negotiations…. He
has promised…to end the armed intifada. He
has promised to work without a compromise
for a complete end of violence and terror […]”.
This would make one wonder: Who is the
occupied and who is the occupying force?
5 devaluation or transitivity selections - Table
defamation by through (i) the use of processes that bespeak 5.20
distortion/ of a desire to end violence, acts of which
demonisation ‘Israel’ is the affected/goal; and (ii) through
of the other representing the Palestinians in implicative
subject positions
6 apparent use of modality Table
concessions 5.19
7 creating false lexical selections Table
impression 5.13
8 deceptive use of the simple present tense; lexical Table
purveyance of selections (e.g. except), modality, and the 5.19
optimism three-part statement
9 empathising modality Tables
with ingroup 5.19,
members 5.20
289
10 dichotomous transitivity choices; Tables
representation 5.19,
of the 5.20
situation
11 elasticity or use of empty signifiers Table
empty 5.16
signification
12 appeal to modality and categorical assertion Table
political 5.19
authority
13 appeal to use of the simple present tense; Table
reasoning and transitivity choices 5.19
rationality
14 presuppositio transitivity selections (e.g. “By his strong Table
n and leadership…and by rejecting terror…” – 5.19
implicature presupposition of terror on the part of the
Palestinians; implicating the victim of terror)
15 distortion/ transitivity selections – through Table
manipulation (i) the discursive qualification of leader of the 5.19
of facts/ Palestinians as someone who rejects
misrepresenta “terror;” someone who “recognizes that
tion of reality terrorist crimes are a dangerous obstacle
to the independent state his [‘terrorist’]
people seek;” someone who promises “full
efforts and resources to end the armed
intifada;” someone who promises to “work
without compromise for a complete end of
violence and terror,” etc.
(ii) the discursive qualification of Sharon – this
veteran warrior – as someone whose
“gestures of “reconciliation” are to be
appreciated, as someone who pledges to
“improve the humanitarian situation in the
Palestinian areas” and to “remove
unauthorized outposts immediately,” as
someone who expresses “frank statements
about the need for territorial contiguity”…
16 impression transitivity selections – the discursive Tables
formation and characterisation of the actors in question (as 5.19,
credibility noted above) provides the ground for 5.20
enhancement impression formation with the Palestinians
being thought of as ‘violent,’ ‘terrorist,’ and ‘a
dangerous obstacle to peace;’ and the Israelis
as ‘peaceable,’ ‘rational’ and ‘flexible,’
respectively.
17 evoking fear use of the simple present tense/categorical Table
and alarm assertion 5.19
18 hedging and use of hedges, use of floating signifiers, use of Tables
temporisation/ modality, and reiterations 5.7, 5.10,
creating facts 5.12,
on the ground 5.17
290
Structured subtly to provide the occupying Power with the time and
cover necessary to create further “facts on the ground,” to enable
further consolidation of Israeli control of territory, in a calculated way
that wrecks any real prospect of creating a viable Palestinian state,
the study has significantly contributed to highlighting the discursive
intricacies involved in the temporisation of the Palestine problem,
and concluded that neither UN resolutions, nor ‘peace process’
discourse in all its guises - pursuant to the 1988 PLO recognition of
‘Israel’ and the ensuing Middle East Peace Conference in 1991, with
the declared goal to end “decades of confrontation and conflict” - are
found to be bona fide or practical in ending “Israel’s oppression and
occupation”.
Found to be nothing but discourse, the study has revealed that UN
resolutions and ‘peace talks’ on the Palestine Question are
responsible for reproducing domination rather than trying to work out
a peaceful solution to the Palestine State problem. The way these
resolutions and ‘peace’ discourses is structured does not lay the
ground for peace, but rather indefinite protraction of this unequal
conflict where, given the current imbalance of power, the
Palestinians would continuously remain the main “losers” within this
form of social life. The way such UN resolutions and ‘peace talks’ is
structured has made ‘Israel’ so far for 44 years (i.e. since 1967) to
debate withdrawal and is still debating, and would continue
debating, refusing to withdraw from those territories it occupied by
force in 1967, and sought by the Palestinians for a state to bring to
an end their sufferings and homelessness; their past displacement
and present occupation.
An attempt at saving the remnant, this study has shown that those
discursive practices as they stand have given the powerful the
mechanisms for further expansionism. They have arrogated to
Israelis further de facto annexation of lands and deprived
Palestinians of further de jure rights. So temporisation and
protraction of the issue, of finding an amicable solution to the
Palestine State problem, the study has found, was an indirect but
calculated result of the linguistic ingenuity of the powerful forces,
with its underlying bad faith.
Hence, the main thrust of the study has lain in observing/analysing
and articulating the linguistic artistry or skilful semiotic manipulation
of the powerful, the discursive sources and key textual resources of
their power and dominance, and the abusive discursive practices
they consistently and consciously use in temporising the issue to
pursue their own interests. The ‘peace’ negotiations have been
hindered by Israeli indecisions and delays, and the intent to deceive.
291
Tragic or problematic, the study has found, is the fact that the whole
“Peace offensive” is based on Resolutions 242 and 338, i.e. on the
reconstruction of Palestine within the pre-June 5 lines or the June 4,
1967 borders which in their totality constitute only 22% of the total
area of former Palestine, less than half of what the United Nations in
its (Partition) Resolution 181 of 1947 allocated to the Arab state.
But what is more tragic or problematic is the fact that those
resolutions and ‘peace talks’ are structured linguistically in a way so
as to always give the occupying Power much leeway to even debate
the extent of withdrawal from territories whose totality if returned in
toto, would still, as noted, constitute only 22% of Mandate Palestine,
hence perpetuating rather than ending the status quo.
Neither Resolution 242 - with its ambiguous, contradictory,
tendentious and thus impractical nature - and Resolution 338, used
along with 242 as the basis for a settlement, nor Resolutions 1397
and 1515, used as echoes or reiterations of 242 and 338, nor the
Oslo discourse is structured (practically and bona fide) to end
“Israel’s oppression and occupation” and make it for the two-state
solution.
Therefore, the study has concluded that those discourses of the UN
and the ‘peace process’ are not structured to achieve “a just, lasting
and comprehensive peace settlement,” as foregrounded in the
invitation to the Middle East Peace Conference, but are rather being
subtle linguistic/discursive means meant to distort the nature and
origin of this unequal conflict and provide for the stronger party
enough wiggle room and elasticity to indefinitely temporise, dodge,
blame the victim, and gain more time to create further “facts on the
ground” and “further consolidation of Israeli power”.
The study has found in relation to the question of how practical or
dispositive and bona fide UN resolutions and discourses are in
ending occupation and realising a Palestinian state that is politically
sovereign and economically viable that the whole basis for the
‘peace process,’UN Resolutions 242 and 338, as noted, is flawed,
mala fide and impractical as these resolutions do not demand -
unambiguously - Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied
by force in 1967 first and then begin talking about ‘secure’ and
‘recognized’ borders, thus creating self-contradictions and
inconsistencies in the text-internal structures of the Resolution.
1397 and 1515, these two resolutions still, the study has shown, do
not stipulate immediate and full withdrawal. They do not stipulate “a
full and complete return to the 1949 armistice lines” or the June 4
1967 borders.
3236, as far as recognition, reaffirmation, and emphasis are
concerned, they are there in this Resolution. The Resolution,
292
however, lacks the language that turns such words from being mere
rhetoric to reality, from acting as a discursive drug of gradualism and
deceptive optimism to action and “facts on the ground”.
The study has found in relation to the question of territorial integrity
and contiguity that in light of Israeli intransigence, manipulation and
lack of good faith, discourse of the ‘peace’ process has in reality
meant little more than the maintenance of Israeli control of the life
and livelihood of the Palestinians, and the dismemberment of the
Palestinian territories through the creation of disconnected cantons,
surrounded by checkpoints allowing no freedom of movement, “a
truncated and divided Palestinian state in the West Bank,” a ‘state’
“separated into [four] enclaves, with Israelis manning checkpoints
and barriers at Palestinian enclave boundaries,” thus making the
‘Palestinian state’ nothing more than a group of enclaves that lack
economic viability, territorial contiguity, and thus viability and
independence.
Regarding Jerusalem, the study has stressed that though treated
according to the November 29 1947 UN Resolution 181 (Plan of
Partition) as a corpus separatum to be “administered by the United
Nations,” independently of either the Arab state or Jewish state to be
created in accordance with such resolution, Israel, upon its forcible
creation in 1948 declared (West) Jerusalem since January 1950 as
its capital. And 17 years later, upon its forcible acquisition or
belligerent occupation of the rest of former Palestine in 1967, ‘Israel’
“claimed all of Jerusalem as its capital,” annexing in 1980 East
Jerusalem (the part of Jerusalem falling in the Palestinian territories
occupied since 1967) and claiming it as part of Jerusalem proper,
unifying East and West Jerusalem, and calling them since 1980
Israel’s unified capital, “a united Jerusalem under its sovereignty,”
and therefore “a red line” or “non-negotiable, creating the impression
it was part of the original city”.
When talking about sovereignty, with the previous facts in mind, the
question of sovereignty needs not any further elaboration.
Similarly, orchestrated to create further “facts” and “realities” on the
ground, and given the still alive “transfer” Zionist ideology, the Israeli
dogma that “Only Transfer Will Bring Peace,” the study has
concluded, regarding the Palestinian Refugees Right of Return, that
neither UN resolutions, nor ‘peace’ discourse in all its guises has
been found to be bona fide or practical in implementing the Right of
Return or reconstituting the Palestinian refugees in their historic
homeland as more than half of the Palestinians (estimated by Badil
Resource Centre to be 7 million persons at the beginning of 2003)
are still languishing in diaspora. This has always been the case
despite decades of resolutions and ‘talks’. Still denying its
293
responsibility for the affluent Palestinian diaspora, the study has
emphasised that ‘Israel’ has not changed its entrenched intent
towards the refugees; a visible fact that makes those resolutions and
discourses nothing but means of further domination.
The study has shown that by boiling down the Palestine Question
from being a national cause, to a mere “refugee problem,” and by
not specifying the Right of Return as the just solution, Resolution
242 not only harbours bad faith regarding implementing the Right of
Return, but also helps obfuscate and obliterate “the patriotic and
national rights” of the Palestinians, their right to self-determination.
In its call for “the implementation of Security Council Resolution 242
(1967) in all of its parts,” Resolution 338, the study has shown, does
not add anything new as to the Refugees Right of Return. Hence,
the study has concluded that Resolution 338 does not differ in any
way from 242 as to implementing the Right of Return.
The study has concluded that due to the lack of stipulation or at
least mention of the Right of Return in resolutions 212 (1948) and
302 (1949), and the lack of a timeframe in 194 for the repatriation of
refugees, along with the framing of repatriation in the modal form of
advisability, resolutions 212 and 302 are irrelevant to the question of
the Right of Return, while 194 lacks the necessary enforceability to
make it practical; an assumption that given the scale of the tragedy
or crime brings the intent of the discourse drafters or those behind
the resolution into question.
Dealing only with those Palestinians displaced in the aggression of
1967 from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (Second Massive
Wave of Ethnic Cleansing), and in a manner that makes it possible
to debate indefinitely who constitutes “a displaced person,” while
ignoring or (giving the semblance of) deferring the Question of the
Right of Return of the 1948 refugees (First Massive Wave of Ethnic
Cleansing) proves, the study has shown, ‘peace’ talks are found to
be little more than further temporisation, a delaying tactic until the
creation of further ‘irreversible’ “facts on the ground;” where it would
later become “unrealistic to expect” a reversal to the status quo
ante, and hence “further consolidation of Israeli power”.
As for the issue of whether any attempt within the current ‘peace
process’ discourse at achieving peace can be “just, lasting and
comprehensive” - as claimed by producers of the UN and ‘peace’
discourse - without undoing this gross injustice, the study has stated
that in simple unequivocal accents, talking about a “just,” “lasting,”
and “comprehensive” settlement as all those resolutions and ‘peace
talks’ claim their goal to be, entails the immediate reconstruction of a
territorially contiguous, sovereign and viable independent
Palestinian state, along with the unconditional return of those
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defenceless refugees “expelled from their homes at gunpoint” and
denied return.
However, Israel, under various guises and pretexts, until now denies
her responsibility for the collective Palestinian dispossession, the
crimes that made it possible for her to come into existence. All
ongoing ‘peace’ discourse has until now failed to draw a “legal and
moral recognition of the ethnic cleansing Israel had perpetrated in
1948”.
The study has shown that those UN resolutions taken as the basis
for the ‘peace process’ to negotiate an end to the Israeli occupation
as such can never lead to a “just, lasting and comprehensive peace
settlement” as the dominant Zionist discourse projects it, thus
revealing that peace accords are about justice and fairness to be
nothing but a myth.
They might one day - though still also unlikely given the fact that the
process has entered its third decade without improving the grim
conditions of the Palestinians lead to a certain modus vivendi of
some kind if ‘Israel’ decides to go to the negotiating table without the
symptomatic intent to dodge and deceive, and to really want to
coexist with the Palestinians. Nonetheless, to call such a modus
vivendi - if it ever takes place - “just,” “lasting,” and “comprehensive”
is misrepresentation and disregard for inexorable facts; indeed not
as long as this modus vivendi is being based on resolution 242 and
its duplicate 338. Actually it remains so as long as ‘Israel’ itself
exists (in the heart or at the expense of another nation) or at least as
long as the bulk of the Palestinians is still homeless and stateless.
Anything else would be iniquitous!
So even if current dilatory discourse ends up with a modus vivendi
which is very doubtful as noted, given the basis for such a modus
vivendi, with its underlying entrenched intent to deceive, it is unjust
to call it “just” or “lasting” or “comprehensive” as this is nothing but
discourse, hence is my insistence on calling it modus vivendi rather
than settlement to connote that such a way of resolving this unequal
conflict is temporary, not permanent.
Having a “just,” “lasting,” and “comprehensive” peace settlement
would require that the whole basis be, as a first step, just, which as
noted means that the entire basis used currently for a resolution of
this unequal conflict has to be changed. It would require that the
whole Zionist mentality or ideology be changed; it would require a
transformation in the shibboleth of Greater Israel; a transformation in
the Nile-to-Euphrates ideology; a transformation in the dogma that
“EVERY JEW [is] A KING and every gentile a slave” etc. (see
Section 6.3).
295
However, given the continuation of this ideology and Israel’s mala
fides - the stronger stakeholder in this unequal conflict - apparently
neither a just nor unjust settlement seems to be in the offing.
The study has shown that while many of those UN resolutions and
‘peace talks’ on the problem of Israeli occupation or the Arab
struggle against Israeli occupation act to dilute and defuse
indignation and agitation at the systematic encroachments
committed by ‘Israel’ while giving it more time to create more “facts
on the ground,” they are structured to create a false impression that
things are improving; they purvey a sense of optimism that is
deceptive as the underlying intent is to sustain the status quo to
create “facts on the grounds;” “facts” that will continuously make it
“unrealistic to expect” a reversal to the status quo ante.
By calling for “Withdrawal of Israel[i] armed forces from [the]
territories occupied in the recent conflict [1967],” Resolution 242, for
example, has made it possible for ‘Israel’ to debate withdrawing from
those territories until today while the creation of Israeli “facts on the
ground” is being nonstop. With the way it is phrased, Resolution
242, the study has detailed, ignores a number of inexorable
historical facts created by Zionism or Zionist terrorism; it thus
disregards the heart of the problem: the problem as a “national
cause;” the problem as a people whom the Zionists have uprooted
from their place of origin and made to languish in diaspora.
Similarly, as we saw in Chapter 5, the use of the word “interim,” as a
further example, harbours mala fides as the word “interim” could and
has actually been used as an expedient to give ‘Israel’ time to
expropriate more Palestinian lands and construct on them colonies
as a mechanism to create further “facts on the ground” and hence
deeper concessions before reaching a ‘final’ or the ‘final’ settlement.
Use of empty signifiers to allow for creating further “facts on the
ground,” manipulation, temporisation, hedging, stonewalling,
backing out... and the like and thus “further consolidation of Israeli
power” was found a common feature of such UN and protracted and
mala fide peace discourse. Can anyone, for example, bet what the
general and manipulative term “overall security” denotes or could
connote? Can anyone predict the interpretations and lebensraum
this elastic term could have when it comes to ‘Israel’’s view of
“security” and what is “secure”? Similarly, can anyone tell what
“secure and recognized boundaries,” could eventually mean to
‘Israel’ whose Greater Israel mentality or the Nile-to-Euphrates
ideology are part and parcel of its Zionist thinking? Clearly, “overall
security” is prone to various interpretations, not to an exegesis.
Everything could be or become, at least from the Israeli perspective,
part of the “overall security”.
296
Use of weasel words such as “might,” “seems,” “possibly” or
“appears,” etc. to “create enough wiggle room for a rhino” - since
such words can well be taken to mean the exact opposite - is again
found to be not uncommon in the discourse under question. The
word “may,” for example, found in the locution, may agree to submit
to arbitration disputes (examined in Table 5.19) is a weasel word par
excellence. Since it can be used to mean exactly the opposite, this
‘little’ word that seems as infinitesimal as the loophole of a needle,
has the elasticity to “create enough wiggle room” for an elephant. In
other words, this apparently ‘innocuous’ word simply makes what
appeared possible, impossible.
Such possible-impossible instances, discourse strategies and
argumentative moves, realized through subtle linguistic means and
subtle uses or abuses of language – all derived from the dominant
Zionist discourse workshops and the discursive arsenal of the Israeli
“angles of telling,” that are aimed to defend the indefensible,
dominate and control the powerless, mystify and manipulate, divert
attention and obfuscate, distort and misrepresent, legitimate or
delegitimate events or social players, “make notions which are in
fact debatable seem like ‘givens’,” and “givens” debatable,
delegitimise the powerless as violent, terrorist and irresponsible and
legitimise the powerful as “peaceable, rational and flexible” (Amer,
2009)... – are systematically found to be used in such UN and
‘peace’ discourse; a fact that not only undermines the possibility of
such discourse to forge a settlement or a modus vivendi but also
perpetuates, through a battery of discourse strategies and linguistic
means underlain by the intent to deceive, the status quo - and
indefinitely.
297
6.3 THE PALESTINE QUESTION: PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE
The goal for which we have striven so concernedly for

3,000 years is at last within our reach, and because its
fulfilment is so apparent, it behoves us to increase our
efforts and our caution tenfold. I can safely promise you
that before ten years have passed, our race will take its
rightful place in the world, with EVERY JEW A KING and
every gentile a slave. – Rabbi Rabinovich
(Chang, 2005: blurb)
With “EVERY JEW A KING,” it has been rightfully observed that “No
regional crises have great potentials to affect world peace than the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” instantiated in the ongoing sufferings and
homelessness of the Palestinian people and their denial of the Right
of Return and Self-Determination. Of this scale is the Palestine
Question, the fulcrum of (the practical objective of) this CDA study.
In essence, the Palestine Question - pith and core of the Arab
struggle against Israeli occupation - is, as maintained throughout
this study, the result of a grand Zionist scheme which was hatched
more than 100 years ago to create a national homeland for the Jews
in Palestine. It is the question of a people whom the Zionists have
accordingly uprooted from their homeland and made to languish in
diaspora; the question of a people whom the Zionists have expelled
by force of arms and then denied return; the question of a nation
that existed in Palestine from time immemorial before it has been -
through Zionist/Israeli domination - subjected to gradual oblivion.
Thus, the 1948 Zionist radical procedures against the human
geography and demography of Palestine, resulting in the First
Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing; and exacerbated by the 1967
occupation of the rest of Palestine and the resultant Second
Massive Wave of Ethnic Cleansing constitute the genesis, crux and
impetus of the Palestine Question, and consequently much of the
turbulence or disorderly state engulfing the Middle East and the
world at large.
Attempts at the resolution of the Arab struggle against Israeli
occupation have always been made, or this is what we have been
made to believe. Unsurprisingly however, those attempts have
equally always been ineffective as a result of bad faith on the part of
the powerful forces. This is not, however, how the reality is being
projected, which is what has prompted the conduct of this critical
social research, this problem-oriented CDA study.
This bad faith as I have often referred to - cause of the failure of
every attempt at settlement - is the result of an ideology, a racial
298
ideology, the “still alive” “Zionist ideology of ethnic supremacy”
(Pappe, 2006: 234); of believing to be ‘the chosen;’ or, as noted in
the above epigraph that “EVERY JEW [is] A KING and every gentile
a slave”.
This cold superiority – the propelling force behind Zionism – that all
people born from a mother other than a Jew are considered racially
inferior has made “the Jews,” according to Werner Sombart –
quoted in Jensen (1948: 37) – to wish “to live separated from the
rest because they felt themselves superior to the common people
around them. They were the Chosen Race [...]”. Sombart further
states:
The Rabbis did all that was required to fan the flames of
pride - from Ezra, who forbade inter-marriage as a
profanation of Jewish purity, down to this very day, when
the pious Jew says every morning: ‘Blessed are Thou, O
Lord, King of the Universe, who hast not made me a
Gentile [...]’.
This racial ideology or dogma of Jewish ethnic supremacy, and of

Jewish superiority, was a main cause - as noted in Chapter 2 - in the
rise of Zionism or “Jewish nationalism” in the second half of the
nineteenth century in Western Europe so as to prevent being
‘profaned’ by assimilation.
Such ideology has thus historically guarded or prevented Jews from
assimilation, a major cause behind Anti-Semitism as indicated also
by the founder of Zionism when he observed that the Jews’ “loss of
the power of assimilation” was the “remote cause” behind Anti-
Semitism; and that “whether we like it or not, we are now, and shall
henceforth remain, a historic group with unmistakable characteristics
common to us all” (1896/1946/1988: 91).
Obviously, such jingoism and tendency against assimilation into
other peoples is the major force behind the antipeace politics,
Machiavellian realpolitik and discrimination that ‘Israel’ practises
against the Palestinians today.
It is, as maintained by this study, the cause behind bad faith, which
is in turn the cause behind the failure of ‘peace’ discourse. It is thus
the cause behind ‘Israel’’s ongoing indecision about whether to
seriously seek a settlement with the Palestinians and her Arab
neighbours or perpetuate the status quo (i.e. occupation), fearing
that actual peace might lead gradually to loss of the Jewish identity
or character, which is one of the main causes - as discussed in
Chapter 2 - behind the emergence and development of the Zionist
299
enterprise in Palestine, and current exacerbation of the Arab
struggle against Israeli occupation.
Accordingly, Zionists view the “advocacy of peace [...as] more
threatening than the pursuit of violence” (Israeli organisers of a
conference that took place in the Spring of 1988 - following the first
intifada - where two Arab lawyers from Gaza were incarcerated by
‘Israel’ within two weeks following an invitation “to speak on the
goals of the intifada at a gathering at Tel Aviv University” where the
two lawyers advocated “peaceful coexistence in separate states”)
(Smith, 2007: 422).
Such mentality or ethnic pride or Zionist ideology, and particularly
the Revisionist Zionist ideology of the Likud which advocates
consolidation, militancy, expansionism “east and west of the Jordan
River,” temporisation to create further “facts on the ground,” and
concessions to “compromise the compromise,” all at the expense of
another nation, is a major impediment to any modus vivendi, let
alone a final disposition to the Arab struggle against Israeli
occupation.
Driven by such mentality or ideology, Shamir (1915-), the then
Israeli prime minister, in his initiative of May 1989, for example,
rather than really working to grant autonomy to the Palestinian
people in the territories, as claimed by that initiative (The call “for
“free and democratic elections” among Palestinian Arabs in the
territories in May 1989, supposedly leading to autonomy that would
grant them authority over their [unspecified] “affairs of daily life””
(Smith, 2007: 425).) his hidden agendum was to “stall” the then
incipient “negotiating process” between the PLO and Washington
that was requesting ‘Israel’ to talk to the PLO, following Arafat’s
recognition of ‘Israel’ in December 1988 and thus pursuing a policy
of rapprochement. Shamir’s initiative was thus a stratagem to “stall”
rather than “promote” peace, to wage war rather than peace to
enable further control of the territories and “further consolidation of
Israeli power in these areas” (2007: 425). Shamir, Smith (2007)
adds “revealed his real intent when he responded to rightist critics,
such as Ariel Sharon, who charged that any promise of autonomy
would lead to Palestinian independence”:
“We shall not give the Arabs one inch of our land, even if
we have to negotiate for ten years. We won’t give them a
thing.... We have the veto in our hands.... The status quo
of the interim arrangement will continue until all parties
reach agreement on the permanent arrangement,” which
would ratify acceptance of the territories as part of Israel
(425).
300
Consistent with Israel’s bad faith and politics of temporisation, and
the creation of “facts on the ground,” and hence the “further
consolidation of Israeli power” in the occupied territories of 1967 in a
continuous Israeli effort to liquidate the Palestine Question as a
“national cause,” Smith (2007), in another context, states:
Shamir’s intent, as he admitted after leaving office in

June 1992, “was to drag out talks on Palestinian self-rule
for 10 years while attempting to settle hundreds of
thousands of Jews in the occupied territories,” giving the
appearance of accommodation while working to ensure
Israeli retention of the territories [a vision or scenario that
Oslo discourse has worked to fulfil] (433).
Such “ideology and praxis:” ‘God’s ‘chosen people,’ “the delusion of

a Greater Israel,” “hedging on promises” and retractions, ambiguity
and evasion, bellicosity and intransigence, “annexationist ambitions”
and “ongoing Israeli settlement expansion,” duplicity and the intent
to deceive, such Israeli stances, such Likudism or the Likud platform
of “full absorption of Judea and Samaria into Israel” (Smith, 2007:
529), of “We shall not give the Arabs one inch of our land” all make
the Palestinian struggle chronic, and the Palestinian issue
“intractable”.
The Palestinian issue, however, though complex, is not, in essence,
intractable. What is “intractable” or what makes it “intractable,” in
fact, is this mentality, this modern ideology or invention of
Jewishness by Zionism (Sand, 2009), this jingoism, this Zionist
ideology of settler colonialism and elimination of the native.
Indeed, there has been a number of feasible peace and
accommodation proposals put forth by various intellectuals and
quarters (see Chapter 3, Section 3.5) but what has consistently
undermined all of them - and for this case any other potential future
proposals - is this Zionist mentality; this Jewish chauvinism; this
“Israeli Likud recalcitrance;” this Revisionist Zionist ideology of
militancy and expansionism with its advocacy of a Jewish state “east
and west of the Jordan River;” this Nile-to-Euphrates warped
perception; this dogma that “EVERY JEW [is] A KING and every
gentile a slave;” this policy of creating “facts on the ground,” of
victim-agent reversal, of invariably placing “the burden of
implementation solely on the Palestinians,” of “If there is a way to
solve the problem through the transfer of the [...] remaining Arabs,
then we will do this,” of the Zionist belief that “between the sea and
Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty,” of the fact that even
the signatory of the 1993 Oslo Accords (Rabin) states: “I don’t
301
believe there is room for an additional state between Israel and
Jordan,” of Netanyahu’s “no Jew hitherto ever longed to give up
slices of the homeland,” of Sharon’s declaration: “If they [the
Palestinians] aren’t badly beaten, there won’t be any negotiations
[meaning deeper concessions],” of Rafael Eitan’s – Sharon’s
comrade-in-arms and friend – dehumanising statement of the Arabs
likening them to “drugged cockroaches scurrying in a bottle,”11 of
Menachem Begin’s conception of the Palestinians as “two-legged
beasts”/two-footed animals, of the Israeli axioms of “no return to the
1967 borders,” and no implementation of the Palestinian Right of
Return, of the ongoing advocacy “for the “transfer” of [the remaining]
Palestinians from the occupied territories” as called for by a number
of Israeli parties - this rightist Israeli dogma that “Only Transfer Will
Bring Peace,” as a huge “Right-Wing Israeli Demonstration against
the 1995 Interim Agreement (Oslo 2)” (Smith, 2007: 466) on October
5, 1995 advocated openly.
It is this mental attitude, this mentality of the Israeli leadership, this
intransigence, this blatant insensitivity to Palestinian humanity,
survival and interests, this dehumanisation and bestialisation of the
Arabs, this blinkered Zionist nationalism, this drive for an exclusively
Jewish state, this double talk where you try to give the impression
that you are bent on having peace when you are actually or when
your hidden motive is the antithesis of peace; when your hidden
agendum is to actually wreck any prospect of genuine peace and
coexistence; when you are concerned only about your own
existence; when “settlement expansion and land confiscation” in the
territories have never slowed down even when drawling about
peace; when Israeli leaders such as Ariel Sharon and “many others”
- as noted by Smith (2007: 479) - view a Palestinian state as not
meaning “Palestinian independence;” when “Israel’s interests,” in the
words of Dore Gold - former ambassador of Israel to the United
Nations - “take primacy;” when ‘Israel’’s hegemony is “more
important than peace,” when Israeli self-preservation is what is
deemed important, and when Palestinian annihilation or decimation
is what is deemed the genuine solution for peace - at least the
Israeli version or understanding of the word peace: “Only Transfer
11““WHEN WE HAVE settled the land [the 22% remnant of Palestine occupied in
1967], all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged
cockroaches in a bottle.” — Rafael Eitan [former Army Chief of Staff of the Israel
forces], April 14, 1983” (Delinda C. Hanley, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs,
January/February 2005, pages 21, 23).
302
Will Bring Peace” (meaning the expulsion of the remaining
Palestinians in the West Bank to make it pure for ‘the Chosen,’).
Such antipeace attitudes or politics is not a new development in
Zionist dogmatism. It has always been there, before and after the
creation of ‘Israel’ as a Jewish state. Zionist leaders have always
been unanimous in their intention and goal to “transfer”
(expel/cleanse) the Palestinians away from Palestine or to use the
words of the founder of practical Zionism - as entered in his diary in
1895 - “to expel the poor population across the border unnoticed”.
‘Israel’’s antipeace politics have been manifested in her ongoing
construction of colonies in the territories, and her apartheid politics
rather than peace as the title of Jimmy Carter’s (2006) book,
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid indicates. Such settlement blocks
with their growing cantonisation of the West Bank into enclaves are
an ongoing witness on ‘Israel’’s real intents concerning peace, and
the discrimination practised by it, ‘the lone democracy in the Middle
East’ indeed, but evidently the only apartheid state existing in the
world today.
As early as the stage of premeditation on “compulsory transfer,” or
“forced relocation” of Palestinians, Zionists’ expansionist policies
(Masalha, 2000) and “annexationist ambitions” (Smith, 2007: 435)
have always been part of the ideology of Zionism; which renders the
‘peace process’ to none other than Zionist filibuster and discourse.
In this regard, Finkelstein (2003) observes:
Israel’s settlement policy in the Occupied Territories

during the past decade points up the real content of the
‘peace process’ set in motion at Oslo [...]. Due primarily
to massive Israeli government subsidies, the Jewish
settler population increased from 250,000 to 380,000
during the Oslo years with settler activity proceeding at a
brisker pace under the tenure of Labor’s Ehud Barak than
Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu. Illegal under international
law and built on land illegally seized from Palestinians,
these settlements now incorporate nearly half the land
surface of the West Bank (xix).
So it is this “ideology and praxis,” this use of realpolitik, of antipeace

politics and of what Yitzhak Rabin (1922-1995) once called the “iron
fist” – politics that stem from the ideology of settler colonialism, from
this “still alive” founding Zionist ideology that planned and executed
the expulsion of the Palestinians and their Nakba – that is the major
cause in the exacerbation of the Arab struggle against Israeli
occupation as such repressive, expansionist and discriminatory
303
practices are counterproductive to peace. Such politics are the
obstacle and threat indeed to peace and to any prospect of ending
occupation - whether the one-state or two-state or extraterritorial
states solution or indeed any other settlement or modus vivendi.
The Palestinians, despite (or as a result of) their daily sufferings
under Israel’s yoke and America’s “tolerance of Israeli intransigence”
and the international indifference to such realities, have proven
tractable, flexible and willing to coexist.
Indeed, in search for peace and salvation, Palestinians have offered
proposals “that actually went beyond the international consensus”.
But still again and again, Israel’s symptomatic response has always
been one of a kind: either outright rejection or neither acceptance
nor rejection: a tertium quid.
Such tertium quid or attitude makes the resolution of the Palestinian
struggle impossible; and unless there is a resolution for the
Palestine Question, for the affluent Palestinian Diaspora through
implementing the refugees’ Right of Return, for an end to the
belligerent Israeli occupation, the powerless will be further
victimised, leading to further sufferings locally, radicalisaion
regionally, and disgruntlement internationally.
One of the Israeli axioms, as noted in this study is that “nothing that
occurred prior to 1967, including the Nakba and the ethnic
cleansing, will ever be negotiable” (Pappe, 2006: 239). The
implications of such denial of or disregard for the events preceding
1967 and particularly those of 1948 are, as stated by Pappe (2006)
clear:
[...] it totally removes the refugee issue from the peace

agenda and sidelines the Palestinian Right of Return as a
‘non-starter’. This [...] axiom totally equates the end of
Israeli occupation with the end of the conflict [...]. For the
Palestinians, of course, 1948 is the heart of the matter
and only addressing the wrongs perpetrated then can
bring an end to the conflict in the region (239).
Relinquishing Zionism and eliminating all forms and ideologies of

racialism and thus ending occupation is the only empowerment for
coexistence; indeed, the sine qua non of peace and of any prospect
for stability in the region. Without this, peace as it stands will be
nothing but mirage and delusion, further inequity and injustice, more
murder and martyrdom, artillery and mortality; and more importantly,
a means to sustain domination and control.
Furthermore, the human conscience - if awake - will ever remain
troubled. Any hope of local, regional, or international climate of
304
détente will remain unrealisable. Peaceful coexistence will be
elusive as reality and history witness and as every passing day does
so; a fact that intensifies domination and injustice.
Further, this will continue to be the case so long as the Zionist
“ideology and praxis” remain in force, shaping the intent to filibuster
and deceive in any “peace talks;” and so long as The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration on the Granting of
Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples remain no more
than discourse as for the Palestine Question. It will continue to be
the case so long as life of the Palestinian is violable; so long as
there is no equality; so long as “human rights” when it comes to the
oppressed are nothing but rhetoric; so long as it is the bullet and not
the ballot that is practised in the land of Palestine, so long as
temporisation does not come to a halt, and the discursive drug of
gradualism is in force; so long as the Palestinian people remain
occupied, dispossessed and deprived of their human or God-given
rights, dignity and freedom to live like free citizens in a recognised
state that they can call homeland without fear of being assassinated,
and so long as the United Nations does not truly subsidise the
Palestinians’ struggle by putting an end to their occupation,
dispossession and diaspora.
It will continue to be the case and the “region will not know stability,”
not as long as ‘Israel’ does not stop her “apartheid politics” and
recognise “unambiguously its role in the suffering imposed on the
Palestinians and its obligation to participate in the solution to the
problem;” and not as long as “an unconditional disengagement [end
of occupation] from the Palestinian territories” occupied (at least) on
June 4 1967 has not taken place, with “a full and complete return to
the [pre-June 5 lines, the] 1949 armistice lines;” and not as long as
there is no “real withdrawal, that leaves the Palestinians territorial
contiguity in a West Bank linked to Gaza, [and] open to Egypt and
Jordan”.
Discourses declared to “end decades of confrontation and conflict,”
and discourses on human rights would be little more than a means
of further arrogation of power rather than an end to occupation; and
the chapter of the so-called ‘war on terror’ will remain open and,
therefore, ‘peace’ as it stands will be a means to sustain domination,
as true peace requires, as maintained by the Declaration of Mexico
on the Equality of Women and Their Contribution to Development
and Peace, adopted at the World Conference of the International
Women’s Year, in Mexico City in June 1975:
the achievement of national liberation and independence,

the elimination of colonialism and neo-colonialism,
305
foreign occupation, Zionism, apartheid, and racial
discrimination in all its forms as well as the recognition of
the dignity of peoples and their right to self-determination.
Corroborating the same principle, and as two of six specific steps,

outlined as part of a Grand Strategy to reduce terrorism or “the
present confrontation between the Muslim world and the United
States,” former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at
the CIA,” Graham E. Fuller (2010), in a highly enlightening and “an
intriguingly successful” book, states:
Western military and political intervention in the Muslim

world - all highly provocative to Muslims - must cease so
that the area can begin to calm. This means withdrawal
of all US and Western forces from Muslim soil (301).
An early solution to the Palestinian problem must be
found. It is perceived across the Muslim world as the
single most egregious case of foreign imperialism, which
has displaced local people and cast them into desperate
living conditions in refugee camps, imposed second-class
citizenship upon them in Israel, or pushed them into exile
– for more than sixty years. Palestinian suffering has
grown, accompanied by a radicalization that has spread
beyond Palestine. The crisis demands a quick solution,
the general outlines of which are well known to all
parties. The Israeli colonization efforts in Palestinian
territories must end and be reversed (302).
A conclusion drawn by a number of scholars, Western and non-

Western, Muslims and non-Muslims, indeed, without a “withdrawal of
all US and Western forces from Muslim soil,” and an end to western
or Zionist dominance in the Muslim world, and an end to the
apartheid practised in Palestine, an end to occupation, and realising
the Palestinian people Right to Self-Determination, neither will
Palestinian sufferings end nor will Israeli security and global
turbulence.
306
6.4 RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR
FURTHER RESEARCH
Initially, this problem-driven interdisciplinary and emancipatory CDA

study was meant to include a CDA - as part of the discourse of the
‘peace process’ - of Hebron Agreement (1997), Wye River
Memorandum (1998), Sharm e-Sheikh Memorandum (1999), Taba
Talks (2001), the Rose Garden Address (June 2002), the Middle
East Road Map, officially announced on April 30 2003, the Geneva
Accord (2003), Israel’s Revised Disengagement Plan (June 6,
2004), and subsequent and apparently infinite ‘peace’ discourse.
The study was also meant to include a CDA of related divulged
documents such as WikiLeaks (2010) and The Palestine Papers
(2011).
However, due to limitations of study and some other constraints, the
study has stopped short of these documents; a task that can be
recommended for further research as a follow-up project or CDA
study that can proceed on the same lines as this study.
If nothing else, this work has been meant – besides increasing
readers’ consciousness of the functions of discourse and CDA in
reproducing and transforming reality or the status quo, respectively
– to provide new insights into the rigmarole of a discourse
constructed in such a way as to perpetuate domination on the part of
the powerful, and protraction of the status quo on the part of the
powerless.
I therefore, recommend researchers - driven by the impetus to
change the status quo, to help “victims of discursive injustice” put an
end to their further being victimised; to help “analyse, and thus
contribute to the understanding and the solution of serious social
problems, especially those that are caused or exacerbated by public
text and talk” - to build on this problem-oriented CDA study and
extend analysis of the ‘peace process;’ its ensuing developments or
ongoing discursive attempts geared ostensibly towards the arrival at
a settlement of a century-long unequal conflict.
307
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APPENDICIES
APPENDIX A (i)
UN RESOLUTION 181(1947)
UNITED
NATIONS
_____________________
A
General
Assembly
A/RES/181(II)
29 November 1947
Resolution 181 (II). Future government of Palestine
A
Having met in special session at the request of the mandatory Power to constitute and
instruct a special committee to prepare for the consideration of the question of the
future government of Palestine at the second regular session;
Having constituted a Special Committee and instructed it to investigate all questions

and issues relevant to the problem of Palestine, and to prepare proposals for the
solution of the problem, and
Having received and examined the report of the Special Committee (document A/364)
1/including a number of unanimous recommendations and a plan of partition with
economic union approved by the majority of the Special Committee,
Considers that the present situation in Palestine is one which is likely to impair the
general welfare and friendly relations among nations;
Takes note of the declaration by the mandatory Power that it plans to complete its
evacuation of Palestine by 1 August 1948;
Recommends to the United Kingdom, as the mandatory Power for Palestine, and to all
other Members of the United Nations the adoption and implementation, with regard to
the future government of Palestine, of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union set out
below [due to certain constraints, I have not included the text of this Plan of Partition
here in the appendix];
Requests that
(a) The Security Council take the necessary measures as provided for in the plan for its
implementation;
(b) The Security Council consider, if circumstances during the transitional period
require such consideration, whether the situation in Palestine constitutes a threat to the
peace. If it decides that such a threat exists, and in order to maintain international
peace and security, the Security Council should supplement the authorization of the
General Assembly by taking measures, under Articles 39 and 41 of the Charter, to
322
empower the United Nations Commission, as provided in this resolution, to exercise in
Palestine the functions which are assigned to it by this resolution;
(c) The Security Council determine as a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act
of aggression, in accordance with Article 39 of the Charter, any attempt to alter by force
the settlement envisaged by this resolution;
(d) The Trusteeship Council be informed of the responsibilities envisaged for it in this
plan;
Calls upon the inhabitants of Palestine to take such steps as may be necessary on
their part to put this plan into effect;
Appeals to all Governments and all peoples to refrain from taking action which might
hamper or delay the carrying out of these recommendations, and
Authorizes the Secretary-General to reimburse travel and subsistence expenses of the

members of the Commission referred to in Part I, Section B, paragraph 1 below, on
such basis and in such form as he may determine most appropriate in the
circumstances, and to provide the Commission with the necessary staff to assist in
carrying out the functions assigned to the Commission by the General Assembly.
B 2/
The General Assembly
Authorizes the Secretary-General to draw from the Working Capital Fund a sum not to
exceed $2,000,000 for the purposes set forth in the last paragraph of the resolution on
the future government of Palestine.
Hundred and twenty-eighth plenary meeting 29 November 1947 [At its hundred and
twenty-eighth plenary meeting on 29 November 1947 the General Assembly, in
accordance with the terms of the above resolution [181 A], elected the following
members of the United Nations Commission on Palestine: Bolivia, Czechoslovakia,
Denmark, Panama and Philippines.]
Source: http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic
323
APPENDIX A (ii)
UN RESOLUTION 212 (November 19 1948)

UN Resolution 212: Aid to Palestinian Refugees
202 (III) Assistance to Palestine Refugees
Whereas the problem of the relief of Palestine refugees of all communities is one of
immediate urgency and the United Nations Mediator on Palestine in his progress report
of 18 September 1948, part three, states that "action must be taken to determine the
necessary measures [of relief] and to provide for their implementation"1/ and that "the
choice is between saving the lives of many thousands of people now or permitting them
to die";2/
Whereas the Acting Mediator, in his supplemental report of 18 October 1948, declares
that "the situation of the refugees is now critical"3/ and that "aid must not only be
continued but very greatly increased if disaster is to be averted";4/
Whereas the alleviation of conditions of starvation and distress among the Palestine
refugees is one of the minimum conditions for the success of the efforts of the United
Nations to bring peace to that land,
The General Assembly
1. Expresses its thanks to the Governments and organizations which, and the
individual persons who, have given assistance directly or in response to the Mediator's
appeal;
2. Considers, on the basis of the Acting Mediator's recommendation, that a sum of

approximately 29,500,000 dollars will be required to provide relief for 500,000 refugees
for a period of nine months from 1 December 1948 to 31 August 1949; and that an
additional amount of approximately 2,500,000 dollars will be required for administrative
and local operational expenses;
3. Authorizes the Secretary-General, in consultation with the Advisory Committee on

Administrative and Budgetary Questions, to advance immediately a sum of up to
5,000,000 dollars from the Working Capital Fund of the United Nations, the said sum to
be repaid before the end of the period specified in paragraph 2, from the voluntary
governmental contributions requested under paragraph 4;
4. Urges all States Members of the United Nations to make as soon as possible
voluntary contributions in kind or in funds sufficient to ensure that the amount of
supplies and funds required is obtained, and states, that, to this end, voluntary
contributions of non-member States would also be accepted; contributions in funds
may be made in currencies other than the United States dollar, in so far as the
operations of the relief organization be carried out in such currencies;
5. Authorizes the Secretary-General to establish a Special Fund into which

contributions shall be paid, which will be administered as a separate account;
6. Authorizes the Secretary-General to expend the funds received under paragraphs 3

and 4 of the present resolutions;
7. Instructs the Secretary-General, in consultation with the Advisory Committee on

Administrative and Budgetary Questions, to establish regulations for the administration
and supervision of the Fund;
324
8. Requests the Secretary-General to take all necessary steps to extend aid to
Palestine refugees and to establish such administrative organization as may be
required for this purpose, inviting the assistance of the appropriate agencies of the
several Governments, the specialized agencies of the United Nations, the United
Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, the International Committee of the
Red Cross, the League of Red Cross Societies and other voluntary agencies, it being
recognized that the participation of voluntary organizations in the relief plan would in no
way derogate from the principle of impartiality on the basis of which the assistance of
these organizations is being solicited;
9. Requests the Secretary-General to Appoint a Director of United Nations Relief for

Palestine Refugees, to whom he may delegate such responsibility as he may consider
appropriate for the overall planning and implementation of the relief programme;
10. Agrees to the convoking, at the discretion of the Secretary-General, on an ad hoc
advisory committee of seven members to be selected by the President of the General
Assembly to which the Secretary-General may submit any matter of principle or policy
upon which he would like the benefit of the committee's advice;
11. Requests the Secretary-General to continue and to extend the implementation of

the present relief programme until the machinery provided for by the present resolution
is set up;
12. Urges the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the
International Refugee Organization, the United Nations International Children's
Emergency Fund and other appropriate organizations and agencies, acting within the
framework of the relief programme herein established, promptly to contribute supplies,
specialized personnel and other services permitted by their constitutions and their
financial resources, to relieve the desperate plight of Palestine refugees of all
communities;
13. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the General Assembly, at the next
regular session, on the action taken as a result of this resolution.
1/ See Official Records of the third session of the General Assembly, Supplement No.
11, page 52,
V
2/ Ibid., page 52, V, 2.
3/ See document A/689, paragraph 4.
4/ Ibid., paragraph 8.
325
APPENDIX A (iii)
UN RESOLUTION 194 (December 111948)

UN Resolution 194: Palestinian Refugees 1948
194 (III). Palestine -- Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator

Having considered further the situation in Palestine,
1. Expresses its deep appreciation of the progress achieved through the good offices of
the late United Nations Mediator in promoting a peaceful adjustment of the future
situation of Palestine, for which cause he sacrificed his life; and
Extends its thanks to the Acting Mediator and his staff for their continued efforts and
devotion to duty in Palestine;
2. Establishes a Conciliation Commission consisting of three States members of the
United Nations which shall have the following functions:
(a) To assume, in so far as it considers necessary in existing circumstances, the

functions given to the United Nations Mediator on Palestine by resolution 186 (S-2) of
the General Assembly of 14 May 1948;
(b) To carry out the specific functions and directives given to it by the present resolution
and such additional functions and directives as may be given to it by the General
Assembly or by the Security Council;
(c) To undertake, upon the request of the Security Council, any of the functions now
assigned to the United Nations Mediator on Palestine or to the United Nations Truce
Commission by resolutions of the Security Council; upon such request to the
Conciliation Commission by the Security Council with respect to all the remaining
functions of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine under Security Council
resolutions, the office of the Mediator shall be terminated;
3. Decides that a Committee of the Assembly, consisting of China, France, the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, shall
present, before the end of the first part of the present session of the General Assembly,
for the approval of the Assembly, a proposal concerning the names of the three States
which will constitute the Conciliation Commission;
4. Requests the Commission to begin its functions at once, with a view to the
establishment of contact between the parties themselves and the Commission at the
earliest possible date;
5. Calls upon the Governments and authorities concerned to extend the scope of the
negotiations provided for in the Security Council's resolution of 16 November 1948 1/
and to seek agreement by negotiations conducted either with the Conciliation
Commission or directly, with a view to the final settlement of all questions outstanding
between them;
6. Instructs the Conciliation Commission to take steps to assist the Governments and
authorities concerned to achieve a final settlement of all questions outstanding
between them;
7. Resolves that the Holy Places - including Nazareth - religious buildings and sites in
Palestine should be protected and free access to them assured, in accordance with
existing rights and historical practice; that arrangements to this end should be under
effective United Nations supervision; that the United Nations Conciliation Commission,
in presenting to the fourth regular session of the General Assembly its detailed
326
proposals for a permanent international regime for the territory of Jerusalem, should
include recommendations concerning the Holy Places in that territory; that with regard
to the Holy Places in the rest of Palestine the Commission should call upon the political
authorities of the areas concerned to give appropriate formal guarantees as to the
protection of the Holy Places and access to them; and that these undertakings should
be presented to the General Assembly for approval;
8. Resolves that, in view of its association with three world religions, the Jerusalem
area, including the present municipality of Jerusalem plus the surrounding villages and
towns, the most eastern of which shall be Abu Dis; the most southern, Bethlehem; the
most western, Ein Karim (including also the built-up area of Motsa); and the most
northern, Shu'fat, should be accorded special and separate treatment from the rest of
Palestine and should be placed under effective United Nations control;
Requests the Security Council to take further steps to ensure the demilitarization of
Jerusalem at the earliest possible date;
Instructs the Conciliation Commission to present to the fourth regular session of the
General Assembly detailed proposals for a permanent international regime for the
Jerusalem area which will provide for the maximum local autonomy for distinctive
groups consistent with the special international status of the Jerusalem area; The
Conciliation Commission is authorized to appoint a United Nations representative, who
shall co-operate with the local authorities with respect to the interim administration of
the Jerusalem area;
9. Resolves that, pending agreement on more detailed arrangements among the

Governments and authorities concerned, the freest possible access to Jerusalem by
road, rail or air should be accorded to all inhabitants of Palestine;
Instructs the Conciliation Commission to report immediately to the Security Council, for
appropriate action by that organ, any attempt by any party to impede such access;
10. Instructs the Conciliation Commission to seek arrangements among the

Governments and authorities concerned which will facilitate the economic development
of the area, including arrangements for access to ports and airfields and the use of
transportation and communication facilities;
11. Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with
their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that
compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for
loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity,
should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible;
Instructs the Conciliation Commission to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and

economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation,
and to maintain close relations with the Director of the United Nations Relief for
Palestine Refugees and, through him, with the appropriate organs and agencies of the
United Nations;
12. Authorizes the Conciliation Commission to appoint such subsidiary bodies and to
employ such technical experts, acting under its authority, as it may find necessary for
the effective discharge of its functions and responsibilities under the present resolution;
The Conciliation Commission will have its official headquarters at Jerusalem. The
authorities responsible for maintaining order in Jerusalem will be responsible for taking
all measures necessary to ensure the security of the Commission. The Secretary-
327
General will provide a limited number of guards to the protection of the staff and
premises of the Commission;
13. Instructs the Conciliation Commission to render progress reports periodically to the
Secretary-General for transmission to the Security Council and to the Members of the
United Nations;
14. Calls upon all Governments and authorities concerned to co-operate with the
Conciliation Commission and to take all possible steps to assist in the implementation
of the present resolution;
15. Requests the Secretary-General to provide the necessary staff and facilities and to
make appropriate arrangements to provide the necessary funds required in carrying out
the terms of the present resolution.
***
At the 186th plenary meeting on 11 December 1948, a committee of the Assembly
consisting of the five States designated in paragraph 3 of the above resolution
proposed that the following three States should constitute the Conciliation Commission:
France, Turkey, United States of America.

The proposal of the Committee having been adopted by the General Assembly at the
same meeting, the Conciliation Commission is therefore composed of the above-
mentioned three States.
1/ See Official Records of the Security Council, Third Year, No. 126
328
APPENDIX A (iv)
UN RESOLUTION 302 (December 8 1949)

UN Resolution 302: Establishment of UNRWA
302 (IV). Assistance to Palestine Refugees 1/

Recalling its resolutions 212 (III) 2/ of 19 November 1948 and 194 (III) 3/ of 11
December 1948, affirming in particular the provisions of paragraph 11 of the latter
resolutions,
Having examined with appreciation the first interim report 4/ of the United Nations
Economic Survey Mission for the Middle East and the report 5/ of the Secretary-
General on assistance to Palestine refugees,
1. Expresses its appreciation to the Governments which have generously responded to

the appeal embodied in its resolution 212 (III), and to the appeal of the Secretary-
General, to contribute in kind or in funds to the alleviation of the conditions of starvation
and distress among the Palestine refugees;
2. Expresses also its gratitude to the International Committee of the Red Cross, to the
League of Red Cross Societies and to the American Friends Service Committee for the
contribution they have made to this humanitarian cause by discharging, in the face of
great difficulties, the responsibility they voluntarily assumed for the distribution of relief
supplies and the general care of the refugees; and welcomes the assurance they have
given the Secretary-General that they will continue their co-operation with the United
Nations until the end of March 1950 on a mutually acceptable basis;
3. Commends the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund for the
important contribution which it has made towards the United Nations programme of
assistance; and commends those specialized agencies which have rendered
assistance in their respective fields, in particular the World Health Organization, the
United nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the International
Refugee Organization;
4. Expresses its thanks to the numerous religious, charitable and humanitarian

organizations which have materially assisted in bringing relief to Palestine refugees;
5. Recognizes that, without prejudice to the provisions of paragraph 11 of General

Assembly resolution 194 (III) of 11 December 1948, continued assistance for the relief
of the Palestine refugees is necessary to prevent conditions of starvation and distress
among them and to further conditions of peace and stability, and that constructive
measures should be undertaken at an early date with a view to the termination of
international assistance for relief;
6. Considers that, subject to the provisions of paragraph 9(d) of the present resolution,
the equivalent of approximately $33,700,000 will be required for direct relief and works
programmes for the period 1 January to 31 December 1950 of which the equivalent of
$20,200,000 is required for direct relief and $13,500,000 for works programmes; that
the equivalent of approximately $21,200,000 will be required for works programmes
from 1 January to 30 June 1951, all inclusive of administrative expenses; and that
direct relief should be terminated not later than 31 December 1950 unless otherwise
determined by the General Assembly at its fifth regular session;
7. Establishes the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in
the Near East:
329
(a) To carry out in collaboration with local governments the direct relief and works
programmes as recommended by the Economic Survey Mission;
(b) To consult with the interested Near Eastern Governments concerning measures to
be taken by them preparatory to the time when international assistance for relief and
works projects is no longer available;
8. Establishes an Advisory Commission consisting of representatives of France,
Turkey, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United
States of America, with power to add not more than three additional members from
contributing Governments, to advise and assist the Director of the United Nations
Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East in the execution of
the programme; the Director and the Advisory Commission shall consult with each near
Eastern Government concerned in the selection, planning and execution of projects;
9. Requests the Secretary-General to appoint the Director of the United Nations Relief
and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East in consultation with the
Governments represented on the Advisory Commission;
(a) The Director shall be the chief executive officer of the United Nations Relief and
Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East responsible to the General
Assembly for the operation of the programme;
(b) The Director shall select and appoint his staff in accordance with general
arrangements made in agreement with the Secretary-General, including such of the
staff rules and regulations of the United Nations as the Director and the Secretary-
General shall agree are applicable, and to the extent possible utilize the facilities and
assistance of the Secretary-General;
(c) The Director shall, in consultation with the Secretary-General and the Advisory
Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, establish financial regulations
for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near
East;
(d) Subject to the financial regulations established pursuant to clause (c) of the present
paragraph, the Director, in consultation with the Advisory Commission, shall apportion
available funds between direct relief and works projects in their discretion, in the event
that the estimates in paragraph 6 require revision;
10. Requests the Director to convene the Advisory Commission at the earliest
practicable date for the purpose of developing plans for the organization and
administration of the programme, and of adopting rules of procedure;
11. Continues the United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees as established under
General Assembly resolution 212 (III) until 1 April 1950, or until such date thereafter as
the transfer referred to in paragraph 12 is affected, and requests the Secretary-General
in consultation with the operating agencies to continue the endeavour to reduce the
numbers of rations by progressive stages in the light of the findings and
recommendations of the Economic Survey Mission;
12. Instructs the Secretary-General to transfer to the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East the assets and liabilities of the United
Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees by 1 April 1950, or at such date as may be
agreed by him and the Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees in the Near East;
13. Urges all Members of the United Nations and non-members to make voluntary
contributions in funds or in kind to ensure that the amount of supplies and funds
required is obtained for each period of the programme as set out in paragraph 6;
330
contributions in funds may be made in currencies other than the United States dollar in
so far as the programme can be carried out in such currencies;

Administrative and Budgetary Questions, to advance funds deemed to be available for
this purpose and not exceeding $5,000,000 from the Working Capital Fund to finance
operations pursuant to the present resolution, such sum to be repaid not later than 31
December 1950 from the voluntary governmental contributions requested under
paragraph 13 above;

Administrative and Budgetary Questions, to negotiate with the International Refugee
Organization for an interest-free loan in an amount not to exceed the equivalent of
$2,800,000 to finance the programme subject to mutually satisfactory conditions for
repayment;
16. Authorizes the Secretary-General to continue the Special Fund established under
General Assembly resolution 212 (III) and to make withdrawals therefrom for the
operation of the United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees and, uponä the request
of the Director, for the operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees in the Near East;
17. Calls upon the Governments concerned to accord to the United Nations Relief and
Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East the privileges, immunities,
exemptions and facilities which have been granted to the United Nations Relief for
Palestine Refugees, together with all other privileges, immunities, exemptions and
facilities necessary for the fulfilment of its functions;
18. Urges the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, the
International Refugee Organization, the World Health Organization, the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the Food and Agriculture
Organization and other appropriate agencies and private groups and organizations, in
consultation with the Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees in the Near East, to furnish assistance within the framework of the
programme;
19. Requests the Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East:
(a) To appoint a representative to attend the meeting of the Technical Assistance

Board as observer so that the technical assistance activities of the United Nations
Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East may be co-ordinated
with the technical assistance programmes of the United Nations and specialized
agencies referred to in Economic and Social Council resolution 222 (IX) A 6/ of 15
August 1949;
(b) To place at the disposal of the Technical Assistance Board full information
concerning any technical assistance work which may be done by the United Nations
Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, in order that it may
be included in the reports submitted by the Technical Assistance Board to the
Technical Assistance committee of the Economic and Social Council;
20. Directs the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the
Near East to consult with the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine in
the best interests of their respective tasks, with particular reference to paragraph 11 of
General Assembly resolution 194 (III) of 11 December 1948;
331
21. Requests the Director to submit to the General Assembly of the United Nations an
annual report on the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East, including an audit of funds, and invites him to submit to the
Secretary-General such other reports as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
for Palestine Refugees in the Near East may wish to bring to the attention of Members
of the United Nations, or its appropriate organs;
22. Instructs the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine to transmit the
final report of the Economic Survey Mission, with such comments as it may wish to
make, to the Secretary-General for transmission to the Members of the United Nations
and to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near
East.
_______________
1/ See Official Records of the third session of the General Assembly, Part II,
Resolutions, page 19.
2/ Ibid., Part I, Resolutions, page 66.
3/ Ibid., page 21.
4/ See Official Records of the fourth session of the General Assembly,
Annex to the Ad Hoc Political Committee, document A/1106.
5/ Ibid., documents A/1060 and A/1060/Add.1.
6/ See Official Records of the Economic
332
APPENDIX A (v)
UN RESOLUTION 242 (1967)

Resolution 242 (1967) of 22 November 1967
The Security Council,
Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East,
Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to
work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security,
Emphasizing further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the
United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of
the Charter,
1. Affirms that the fulfilment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just
and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the
following principles:
(i) Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and
acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of
every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized
boundaries free from threats or acts of force;
2. Affirms further the necessity
(a) For guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the

area;
(b) For achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem;
(c) For guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political independence of every State
in the area, through measures including the establishment of demilitarized zones;
3. Requests the Secretary-General to designate a Special Representative to proceed

to the Middle East to establish and maintain contacts with the States concerned in
order to promote agreement and assist efforts to achieve a peaceful and accepted
settlement in accordance with the provisions and principles in this resolution;
4. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council on the progress of

the efforts of the Special Representative as soon as possible.
Adopted unanimously at the 1382nd meeting.
333
APPENDIX A (vi)
UN RESOLUTION 338 (October 22 1973)
U.N. Security Council Resolution 338
Calls upon all parties to present fighting to cease all firing and terminate all military
activity immediately, no later than 12 hours after the moment of the adoption of this
decision, in the positions after the moment of the adoption of this decision, in the
positions they now occupy;
Calls upon all parties concerned to start immediately after the cease-fire the
implementation of Security Council Resolution 242 (1967) in all of its parts;
Decides that, immediately and concurrently with the cease-fire, negotiations start
between the parties concerned under appropriate auspices aimed at establishing a just
and durable peace in the Middle.
Source: mideastweb.org
334
APPENDIX A (vii)
UN RESOLUTION 3236 (November 22 1974)
3236 (XXIX). Question of Palestine

Having considered the question of Palestine,
Having heard the statement of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the representative
of the Palestinian people,1/
Having also heard other statements made during the debate,
Deeply concerned that no just solution to the problem of Palestine has yet been
achieved and recognizing that the problem of Palestine continues to endanger
international peace and security,
Recognizing that the Palestinian people is entitled to self-determination in accordance

with the Charter of the United Nations,
Expressing its grave concern that the Palestinian people has been prevented from
enjoying its inalienable rights, in particular its right to self-determination,
Guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter,
Recalling its relevant resolutions which affirm the right of the Palestinian people to self-
determination,
1. Reaffirms the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people in Palestine, including:
(a) The right to self-determination without external interference;
(b) The right to national independence and sovereignty;
2. Reaffirms also the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and
property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return;
3. Emphasizes that full respect for and the realization of these inalienable rights of the
Palestinian people are indispensable for the solution of the question of Palestine;
4. Recognizes that the Palestinian people is a principal party in the establishment of a

just and lasting peace in the Middle East;
5. Further recognizes the right of the Palestinian people to regain its rights by all means
in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations;
6. Appeals to all States and international organizations to extend their support to the
Palestinian people in its struggle to restore its rights, in accordance with the Charter;
7. Requests the Secretary-General to establish contacts with the Palestine Liberation

Organization on all matters concerning the question of Palestine;
8. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the General Assembly at its thirtieth

session on the implementation of the present resolution;
9. Decides to include the item entitled "Question of Palestine" in the provisional agenda
of its thirtieth session.
335
APPENDIX A (viii)
UN RESOLUTION 1397 (12 March 2002)

S/RES/1397 (2002)
Security Council
Distr.: General
Resolution 1397 (2002)
Adopted by the Security Council at its 4489th meeting, on 12 March 2002
Recalling all its previous relevant resolutions, in particular resolutions 242 (1967) and
338 (1973),
Affirming a vision of a region where two States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side
within secure and recognized borders,
Expressing its grave concern at the continuation of the tragic and violent events that
have taken place since September 2000, especially the recent attacks and the
increased number of casualties,
Stressing the need for all concerned to ensure the safety of civilians,
Stressing also the need to respect the universally accepted norms of international
humanitarian law,
Welcoming and encouraging the diplomatic efforts of special envoys from the United
States of America, the Russian Federation, the European Union and the United
Nations Special Coordinator and others, to bring about a comprehensive, just and
lasting peace in the Middle East,
Welcoming the contribution of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah,
1. Demands immediate cessation of all acts of violence, including all acts of terror,
provocation, incitement and destruction;
2. Calls upon the Israeli and Palestinian sides and their leaders to cooperate in the
implementation of the Tenet work plan and Mitchell Report recommendations with the
aim of resuming negotiations on a political settlement;
1. Expresses support for the efforts of the Secretary-General and others to assist the
parties to halt the violence and to resume the peace process; 4. Decides to remain
seized of the matter.
336
APPENDIX A (ix)
UN RESOLUTION on Israeli Wall (October 2003)

UN GA Resolution on Israeli Wall
Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland,

France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg,
Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and
the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: draft resolution
Illegal Israeli actions in Occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied
Palestinian Territory
Recalling its relevant resolutions, including resolutions of the tenth emergency special
session,
Recalling Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) of 22 November 1967, 267 (1969) of
3 July 1969, 298 (1971) of 25 September 1971, 446 (1979) of 22 March 1979, 452
(1979) of 20 July 1979, 465 (1980) of 1 March 1980, 476 (1980) of 30 June 1980, 478
(1980) of 20 August 1980, 904 (1994) of 18 March 1994, 1073 (1996) of 28 September
1996 and 1397 (2002) of 12 March 2002,
Reaffirming the principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force,
Reaffirming its vision of a region where two States, Israel and Palestine, live side by
side within secure and recognized borders,
Condemning all acts of violence, terrorism and destruction.
Condemning in particular the suicide bombings and their recent intensification with the
attack in Haifa,
Condemning also the bomb attack in the Gaza Strip which resulted in the death of
three American security officers,
Deploring the extrajudicial killings and their recent intensification, in particular the
attack yesterday in Gaza,
Stressing the urgency of ending the current violent situation on the ground, the need to
end the occupation that began in 1967, and the need to achieve peace based on the
vision of two States mentioned above,
Particularly concerned that the route marked out for the wall under construction by
Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and
around East Jerusalem, could prejudge future negotiations and make the two-State
solution physically impossible to implement and would cause further humanitarian
hardship to the Palestinians,
Reiterating its call upon Israel, the occupying Power, to fully and effectively respect the
Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949,
Reiterating its opposition to settlement activities in the Occupied Territories and to any
activities involving the confiscation of land, disruption of the livelihood of protected
persons and the de facto annexation of land,
1. Demands that Israel stop and reverse the construction of the wall in the Occupied
Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, which is in departure of
337
the Armistice Line of 1949 and is in contradiction to relevant provisions of international
law;
2. Calls on both Parties to fulfil their obligations under relevant provisions of the Road
Map; the Palestinian Authority to undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest,
disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks;
the Government of Israel to take no actions undermining trust, including deportations
and attacks on civilians and extrajudicial killings;
3. Requests the Secretary-General to report on compliance with this resolution

periodically with the first report on compliance with operative paragraph 1 to be
submitted within one month and upon receipt of which further actions should be
considered, if necessary, within the United Nations system;
4. Decides to adjourn the tenth emergency special session temporarily and to authorize
the current President of the General Assembly to resume its meeting upon request
from Member States.
Source: UNISPAL
338
APPENDIX A (x)
UN RESOLUTION 1515 (2003)
United
Nations
S/RES/1515 (2003)
Security Council
Distr.: General
1
9 November, 2003
Resolution 1515 (2003)
Recalling all its previous relevant resolutions, in particular resolutions 242 (1967), 338
(1973), 1397 (2002) and the Madrid principles,
Expressing its grave concern at the continuation of the tragic and violent events in the
Middle East,
Reiterating the demand for an immediate cessation of all acts of violence, including all
acts of terrorism, provocation, incitement and destruction,
Reaffirming its vision of a region where two States, Israel and Palestine, live side by
side within secure and recognized borders,
Emphasizing the need to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the
Middle East, including the Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Lebanese tracks,
Welcoming and encouraging the diplomatic efforts of the international Quartet and
others,
1. Endorses the Quartet Performance-based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State

Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (S/2003/529);
2. Calls on the parties to fulfil their obligations under the Roadmap in cooperation with
the Quartet and to achieve the vision of two States living side by side in peace and
security;
3. Decides to remain seized of the matter."
339
APPENDIX B
The Balfour Declaration
Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the
following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been
submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a

national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the
achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which
may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in
Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist
Federation.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour
Source: http://www.mideastweb.org/mebalfour.htm
340
APPENDIX C
The Palestine Mandate

(1922)
The Council of the League of Nations:
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed, for the purpose of giving effect to
the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, to entrust to a
Mandatory selected by the said Powers the administration of the territory of Palestine,
which formerly belonged to the Turkish Empire, within such boundaries as may be fixed
by them; and
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be
responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd,
1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in
favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it
being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil
and religious rights of existing non Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and
political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; and
Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish
people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that
country; and
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have selected His Britannic Majesty as the
Mandatory for Palestine; and
Whereas the mandate in respect of Palestine has been formulated in the following
terms and submitted to the Council of the League for approval; and
Whereas His Britannic Majesty has accepted the mandate in respect of Palestine and
undertaken to exercise it on behalf of the League of Nations in conformity with the
following provisions; and
Whereas by the aforementioned Article 22 (paragraph 8), it is provided that the degree
of authority, control or administration to be exercised by the Mandatory, not having
been previously agreed upon by the Members of the League, shall be explicitly defined
by the Council of the League Of Nations; confirming the said Mandate, defines its
terms as follows:
ARTICLE 1. The Mandatory shall have full powers of legislation and of administration,
save as they may be limited by the terms of this mandate.
ARTICLE 2. The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such
political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the
Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-
governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the
inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.
ARTICLE 3. The Mandatory shall, so far as circumstances permit, encourage local

autonomy.
ARTICLE 4. An appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognised as a public body for the
purpose of advising and cooperating with the Administration of Palestine in such
economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish
national home and the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine, and, subject
341
always to the control of the Administration to assist and take part in the development of
the country.
The Zionist organization, so long as its organization and constitution are in the opinion
of the Mandatory appropriate, shall be recognised as such agency. It shall take steps in
consultation with His Britannic Majesty's Government to secure the cooperation of all
Jews who are willing to assist in the establishment of the Jewish national home.
ARTICLE 5. The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory
shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government
of any foreign Power.
ARTICLE 6. The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position
of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration
under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish agency
referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and
waste lands not required for public purposes.
ARTICLE 7. The Administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a

nationality law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate
the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent
residence in Palestine.
ARTICLE 8. The privileges and immunities of foreigners, including the benefits of

consular jurisdiction and protection as formerly enjoyed by Capitulation or usage in the
Ottoman Empire, shall not be applicable in Palestine.
Unless the Powers whose nationals enjoyed the aforementioned privileges and
immunities on August 1st, 1914, shall have previously renounced the right to their re-
establishment, or shall have agreed to their nonapplication for a specified period, these
privileges and immunities shall, at the expiration of the mandate, be immediately
reestablished in their entirety or with such modifications as may have been agreed
upon between the Powers concerned.
ARTICLE 9. The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that the judicial system
established in Palestine shall assure to foreigners, as well as to natives, a complete
guarantee of their rights.
Respect for the personal status of the various peoples and communities and for their
religious interests shall be fully guaranteed. In particular, the control and administration
of Wakfs shall be exercised in accordance with religious law and the dispositions of the
founders.
ARTICLE 10. Pending the making of special extradition agreements relating to

Palestine, the extradition treaties in force between the Mandatory and other foreign
Powers shall apply to Palestine.
ARTICLE 11. The Administration of Palestine shall take all necessary measures to
safeguard the interests of the community in connection with the development of the
country, and, subject to any international obligations accepted by the Mandatory, shall
have full power to provide for public ownership or control of any of the natural
resources of the country or of the public works, services and utilities established or to
be established therein. It shall introduce a land system appropriate to the needs of the
country, having regard, among other things, to the desirability of promoting the close
settlement and intensive cultivation of the land.
342
The Administration may arrange with the Jewish agency mentioned in Article 4 to
construct or operate, upon fair and equitable terms, any public works, services and
utilities, and to develop any of the natural resources of the country, in so far as these
matters are not directly undertaken by the Administration. Any such arrangements shall
provide that no profits distributed by such agency, directly or indirectly, shall exceed a
reasonable rate of interest on the capital, and any further profits shall be utilised by it
for the benefit of the country in a manner approved by the Administration.
ARTICLE 12. The Mandatory shall be entrusted with the control of the foreign relations
of Palestine and the right to issue exequaturs to consuls appointed by foreign Powers.
He shall also be entitled to afford diplomatic and consular protection to citizens of
Palestine when outside its territorial limits.
ARTICLE 13. All responsibility in connection with the Holy Places and religious
buildings or sites in Palestine, including that of preserving existing rights and of
securing free access to the Holy Places, religious buildings and sites and the free
exercise of worship, while ensuring the requirements of public order and decorum, is
assumed by the Mandatory, who shall be responsible solely to the League of Nations in
all matters connected herewith, provided that nothing in this article shall prevent the
Mandatory from entering into such arrangements as he may deem reasonable with the
Administration for the purpose of carrying the provisions of this article into effect; and
provided also that nothing in this mandate shall be construed as conferring upon the
Mandatory authority to interfere with the fabric or the management of purely Moslem
sacred shrines, the immunities of which are guaranteed.
ARTICLE 14. A special commission shall be appointed by the Mandatory to study,

define and determine the rights and claims in connection with the Holy Places and the
rights and claims relating to the different religious communities in Palestine. The
method of nomination, the composition and the functions of this Commission shall be
submitted to the Council of the League for its approval, and the Commission shall not
be appointed or enter upon its functions without the approval of the Council.
ARTICLE 15. The Mandatory shall see that complete freedom of conscience and the
free exercise of all forms of worship, subject only to the maintenance of public order
and morals, are ensured to all. No discrimination of any kind shall be made between
the inhabitants of Palestine on the ground of race, religion or language. No person shall
be excluded from Palestine on the sole ground of his religious belief.
The right of each community to maintain its own schools for the education of its own
members in its own language, while conforming to such educational requirements of a
general nature as the Administration may impose, shall not be denied or impaired.
ARTICLE 16. The Mandatory shall be responsible for exercising such supervision over
religious or eleemosynary bodies of all faiths in Palestine as may be required for the
maintenance of public order and good government. Subject to such supervision, no
measures shall be taken in Palestine to obstruct or interfere with the enterprise of such
bodies or to discriminate against any representative or member of them on the ground
of his religion or nationality.
ARTICLE 17. The Administration of Palestine may organist on a voluntary basis the
forces necessary for the preservation of peace and order, and also for the defence of
the country, subject, however, to the supervision of the Mandatory, but shall not use
them for purposes other than those above specified save with the consent of the
Mandatory. Except for such purposes, no military, naval or air forces shall be raised or
maintained by the Administration of Palestine.
343
Nothing in this article shall preclude the Administration of Palestine from contributing to
the cost of the maintenance of the forces of the Mandatory in Palestine.
The Mandatory shall be entitled at all times to use the roads, railways and ports of
Palestine for the movement of armed forces and the carriage of fuel and supplies.
ARTICLE 18. The Mandatory shall see that there is no discrimination in Palestine
against the nationals of any State Member of the League of Nations (including
companies incorporated under its laws) as compared with those of the Mandatory or of
any foreign State in matters concerning taxation, commerce or navigation, the exercise
of industries or professions, or in the treatment of merchant vessels or civil aircraft.
Similarly, there shall be no discrimination in Palestine against goods originating in or
destined for any of the said States, and there shall be freedom of transit under
equitable conditions across the mandated area.
Subject as aforesaid and to the other provisions of this mandate, the Administration of
Palestine may, on the advice of the Mandatory, impose such taxes and customs duties
as it may consider necessary, and take such steps as it may think best to promote the
development of the natural resources of the country and to safeguard the interests of
the population. It may also, on the advice of the Mandatory, conclude a special
customs agreement with any State the territory of which in 1914 was wholly included in
Asiatic Turkey or Arabia.
ARTICLE 19. The Mandatory shall adhere on behalf of the Administration of Palestine
to any general international conventions already existing, or which may be concluded
hereafter with the approval of the League of Nations, respecting the slave traffic, the
traffic in arms and ammunition, or the traffic in drugs, or relating to commercial equality,
freedom of transit and navigation, aerial navigation and postal, telegraphic and wireless
communication or literary, artistic or industrial property.
ARTICLE 20. The Mandatory shall cooperate on behalf of the Administration of

Palestine, so far as religious, social and other conditions may permit, in the execution
of any common policy adopted by the League of Nations for preventing and combating
disease, including diseases of plants and animals.
ARTICLE 21. The Mandatory shall secure the enactment within twelve months from
this date, and shall ensure the execution of a Law of Antiquities based on the following
rules. This law shall ensure equality of treatment in the matter of excavations and
archaeological research to the nationals of all States Members of the League of
Nations.
(1) "Antiquity" means any construction or any product of human activity earlier than the
year 1700 A. D.
(2) The law for the protection of antiquities shall proceed by encouragement rather than
by threat.
Any person who, having discovered an antiquity without being furnished with the
authorization referred to in paragraph 5, reports the same to an official of the
competent Department, shall be rewarded according to the value of the discovery.
(3) No antiquity may be disposed of except to the competent Department, unless this
Department renounces the acquisition of any such antiquity.
No antiquity may leave the country without an export licence from the said Department.
344
(4) Any person who maliciously or negligently destroys or damages an antiquity shall
be liable to a penalty to be fixed.
(5) No clearing of ground or digging with the object of finding antiquities shall be
permitted, under penalty of fine, except to persons authorised by the competent
Department.
(6) Equitable terms shall be fixed for expropriation, temporary or permanent, of lands
which might be of historical or archaeological interest.
(7) Authorization to excavate shall only be granted to persons who show sufficient
guarantees of archaeological experience. The Administration of Palestine shall not, in
granting these authorizations, act in such a way as to exclude scholars of any nation
without good grounds.
(8) The proceeds of excavations may be divided between the excavator and the
competent Department in a proportion fixed by that Department. If division seems
impossible for scientific reasons, the excavator shall receive a fair indemnity in lieu of a
part of the find.
ARTICLE 22. English, Arabic and Hebrew shall be the official languages of Palestine.
Any statement or inscription in Arabic on stamps or money in Palestine shall be
repeated in Hebrew and any statement or inscription in Hebrew shall be repeated in
Arabic.
ARTICLE 23. The Administration of Palestine shall recognise the holy days of the
respective communities in Palestine as legal days of rest for the members of such
communities.
ARTICLE 24. The Mandatory shall make to the Council of the League of Nations an
annual report to the satisfaction of the Council as to the measures taken during the
year to carry out the provisions of the mandate. Copies of all laws and regulations
promulgated or issued during the year shall be communicated with the report.
ARTICLE 25. In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of
Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of
the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such
provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local
conditions, and to make such provision for the administration of the territories as he
may consider suitable to those conditions, provided that no action shall be taken which
is inconsistent with the provisions of Articles 15, 16 and 18.
ARTICLE 26. The Mandatory agrees that, if any dispute whatever should arise
between the Mandatory and another member of the League of Nations relating to the
interpretation or the application of the provisions of the mandate, such dispute, if it
cannot be settled by negotiation, shall be submitted to the Permanent Court of
International Justice provided for by Article 14 of the Covenant of the League of
Nations.
ARTICLE 27. The consent of the Council of the League of Nations is required for any
modification of the terms of this mandate.
ARTICLE 28. In the event of the termination of the mandate hereby conferred upon the
Mandatory, the Council of the League of Nations shall make such arrangements as
may be deemed necessary for safeguarding in perpetuity, under guarantee of the
League, the rights secured by Articles 13 and 14, and shall use its influence for
345
securing, under the guarantee of the League, that the Government of Palestine will fully
honour the financial obligations legitimately incurred by the Administration of Palestine
during the period of the mandate, including the rights of public servants to pensions or
gratuities.
The present instrument shall be deposited in original in the archives of the League of
Nations and certified copies shall be forwarded by the Secretary General of the League
of Nations to all members of the League.
Done at London the twenty fourth day of July, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-
two.
____________________
Source: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Palestine_Mandate.html
346
APPENDIX D
The White Paper of 1922

(the "Churchill White Paper")
British White Paper
June 1922
The Secretary of State for the Colonies has given renewed consideration to the existing
political situation in Palestine, with a very earnest desire to arrive at a settlement of the
outstanding questions which have given rise to uncertainty and unrest among certain
sections of the population. After consultation with the High Commissioner for Palestine
[Sir Herbert Samuel] the following statement has been drawn up. It summarizes the
essential parts of the correspondence that has already taken place between the
Secretary of State and a delegation from the Moslem Christian Society of Palestine,
which has been for some time in England, and it states the further conclusions which
have since been reached.
The tension which has prevailed from time to time in Palestine is mainly due to
apprehensions, which are entertained both by sections of the Arab and by sections of
the Jewish population. These apprehensions, so far as the Arabs are concerned are
partly based upon exaggerated interpretations of the meaning of the Balfour
Declaration favouring the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, made
on behalf of His Majesty's Government on 2nd November, 1917.
Unauthorized statements have been made to the effect that the purpose in view is to
create a wholly Jewish Palestine. Phrases have been used such as that Palestine is to
become "as Jewish as England is English." His Majesty's Government regard any such
expectation as impracticable and have no such aim in view. Nor have they at any time
contemplated, as appears to be feared by the Arab delegation, the disappearance or
the subordination of the Arabic population, language, or culture in Palestine. They
would draw attention to the fact that the terms of the Declaration referred to do not
contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National
Home, but that such a Home should be founded `in Palestine.' In this connection it has
been observed with satisfaction that at a meeting of the Zionist Congress, the supreme
governing body of the Zionist Organization, held at Carlsbad in September, 1921, a
resolution was passed expressing as the official statement of Zionist aims "the
determination of the Jewish people to live with the Arab people on terms of unity and
mutual respect, and together with them to make the common home into a flourishing
community, the upbuilding of which may assure to each of its peoples an undisturbed
national development."
It is also necessary to point out that the Zionist Commission in Palestine, now termed
the Palestine Zionist Executive, has not desired to possess, and does not possess, any
share in the general administration of the country. Nor does the special position
assigned to the Zionist Organization in Article IV of the Draft Mandate for Palestine
imply any such functions. That special position relates to the measures to be taken in
Palestine affecting the Jewish population, and contemplates that the organization may
assist in the general development of the country, but does not entitle it to share in any
degree in its government.
Further, it is contemplated that the status of all citizens of Palestine in the eyes of the
law shall be Palestinian, and it has never been intended that they, or any section of
them, should possess any other juridical status. So far as the Jewish population of
Palestine are concerned it appears that some among them are apprehensive that His
Majesty's Government may depart from the policy embodied in the Declaration of 1917.
It is necessary, therefore, once more to affirm that these fears are unfounded, and that
347
that Declaration, reaffirmed by the Conference of the Principle Allied Powers at San
Remo and again in the Treaty of Sevres, is not susceptible of change.
During the last two or three generations the Jews have recreated in Palestine a
community, now numbering 80,000, of whom about one fourth are farmers or workers
upon the land. This community has its own political organs; an elected assembly for the
direction of its domestic concerns; elected councils in the towns; and an organization
for the control of its schools. It has its elected Chief Rabbinate and Rabbinical Council
for the direction of its religious affairs. Its business is conducted in Hebrew as a
vernacular language, and a Hebrew Press serves its needs. It has its distinctive
intellectual life and displays considerable economic activity. This community, then, with
its town and country population, its political, religious, and social organizations, its own
language, its own customs, its own life, has in fact "national" characteristics. When it is
asked what is meant by the development of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, it
may be answered that it is not the imposition of a Jewish nationality upon the
inhabitants of Palestine as a whole, but the further development of the existing Jewish
community, with the assistance of Jews in other parts of the world, in order that it may
become a centre in which the Jewish people as a whole may take, on grounds of
religion and race, an interest and a pride. But in order that this community should have
the best prospect of free development and provide a full opportunity for the Jewish
people to display its capacities, it is essential that it should know that it is in Palestine
as of right and not on the sufferance. That is the reason why it is necessary that the
existence of a Jewish National Home in Palestine should be internationally guaranteed,
and that it should be formally recognized to rest upon ancient historic connection.
This, then, is the interpretation which His Majesty's Government place upon the
Declaration of 1917, and, so understood, the Secretary of State is of opinion that it
does not contain or imply anything which need cause either alarm to the Arab
population of Palestine or disappointment to the Jews.
For the fulfilment of this policy it is necessary that the Jewish community in Palestine
should be able to increase its numbers by immigration. This immigration cannot be so
great in volume as to exceed whatever may be the economic capacity of the country at
the time to absorb new arrivals. It is essential to ensure that the immigrants should not
be a burden upon the people of Palestine as a whole, and that they should not deprive
any section of the present population of their employment. Hitherto the immigration has
fulfilled these conditions. The number of immigrants since the British occupation has
been about 25,000.
It is necessary also to ensure that persons who are politically undesirable be excluded
from Palestine, and every precaution has been and will be taken by the Administration
to that end.
It is intended that a special committee should be established in Palestine, consisting
entirely of members of the new Legislative Council elected by the people, to confer with
the administration upon matters relating to the regulation of immigration. Should any
difference of opinion arise between this committee and the Administration, the matter
will be referred to His Majesty's Government, who will give it special consideration. In
addition, under Article 81 of the draft Palestine Order in Council, any religious
community or considerable section of the population of Palestine will have a general
right to appeal, through the High Commissioner and the Secretary of State, to the
League of Nations on any matter on which they may consider that the terms of the
Mandate are not being fulfilled by the Government of Palestine.
With reference to the Constitution which it is now intended to establish in Palestine, the
draft of which has already been published, it is desirable to make certain points clear.
In the first place, it is not the case, as has been represented by the Arab Delegation,
that during the war His Majesty's Government gave an undertaking that an independent
348
national government should be at once established in Palestine. This representation
mainly rests upon a letter dated the 24th October, 1915, from Sir Henry McMahon, then
His Majesty's High Commissioner in Egypt, to the Sherif of Mecca, now King Hussein
of the Kingdom of the Hejaz. That letter is quoted as conveying the promise to the
Sherif of Mecca to recognise and support the independence of the Arabs within the
territories proposed by him. But this promise was given subject to a reservation made
in the same letter, which excluded from its scope, among other territories, the portions
of Syria lying to the west of the District of Damascus. This reservation has always been
regarded by His Majesty's Government as covering the vilayet of Beirut and the
independent Sanjak of Jerusalem. The whole of Palestine west of the Jordan was thus
excluded from Sir. Henry McMahon's pledge.
Nevertheless, it is the intention of His Majesty's government to foster the establishment

of a full measure of self government in Palestine. But they are of the opinion that, in the
special circumstances of that country, this should be accomplished by gradual stages
and not suddenly. The first step was taken when, on the institution of a Civil
Administration, the nominated Advisory Council, which now exists, was established. It
was stated at the time by the High Commissioner that this was the first step in the
development of self governing institutions, and it is now proposed to take a second
step by the establishment of a Legislative Council containing a large proportion of
members elected on a wide franchise. It was proposed in the published draft that three
of the members of this Council should be non official persons nominated by the High
Commissioner, but representations having been made in opposition to this provision,
based on cogent considerations, the Secretary of State is prepared to omit it. The
legislative Council would then consist of the High Commissioner as President and
twelve elected and ten official members. The Secretary of State is of the opinion that
before a further measure of self government is extended to Palestine and the Assembly
placed in control over the Executive, it would be wise to allow some time to elapse.
During this period the institutions of the country will have become well established; its
financial credit will be based on firm foundations, and the Palestinian officials will have
been enabled to gain experience of sound methods of government. After a few years
the situation will be again reviewed, and if the experience of the working of the
constitution now to be established so warranted, a larger share of authority would then
be extended to the elected representatives of the people.
The Secretary of State would point out that already the present administration has
transferred to a Supreme Council elected by the Moslem community of Palestine the
entire control of Moslem Religious endowments (Waqfs), and of the Moslem religious
Courts. To this Council the Administration has also voluntarily restored considerable
revenues derived from ancient endowments which have been sequestrated by the
Turkish Government. The Education Department is also advised by a committee
representative of all sections of the population, and the Department of Commerce and
Industry has the benefit of the cooperation of the Chambers of Commerce which have
been established in the principal centres. It is the intention of the Administration to
associate in an increased degree similar representative committees with the various
Departments of the Government.
The Secretary of State believes that a policy upon these lines, coupled with the
maintenance of the fullest religious liberty in Palestine and with scrupulous regard for
the rights of each community with reference to its Holy Places, cannot but commend
itself to the various sections of the population, and that upon this basis may be built up
that a spirit of cooperation upon which the future progress and prosperity of the Holy
Land must largely depend. Source: http://www.mideastweb.org/1922wp.htm
349
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List of Tables …………………………………………….……… ix

CHAPTER 3: REVIEW OF LITERATURE…………………. 97

CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY………………….…………. 184

CHAPTER 5: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS………… 210

CHAPTER 6: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION…………… 284

Table No. Page

2.1 Jail sentencing in Israel 79

Figure No. Page No.

3.1 Textual analyses 143

My interest in this work has not developed out of vacuum. I wanted

A vital ingredient in the rise of almost any éminence grise or many of

Human conflict begins and ends via talk and text. We

Thus - the means to establish every paradigm, discipline and

Thus, the activities of colonialism are regularly promoted

Apart from the concrete manifestations of colonialism or occupation

We are unfortunately unable, due to our mental attitudes

Discourse -the mere fact of speaking, of employing

A “way of behaving and making others behave” (Firth, quoted in

The role of discourse within the society and culture is

In modern times, social change takes place largely as a result of

The investigation of whether the different discourse types

Discourses are multifarious and heterogeneous. There are

1.3 CDA, THE PALESTINE QUESTION AND THIS STUDY

A “young science;” an “emerging strand of research in linguistics;” a

1.4 AIM OF STUDY

As discourse is an instrument of the social construction or distortion

The Palestine Question is a time bomb and has come of

The Palestine problem or rather the problem created in Palestine - a

Provoked by the Arab/Jewish conflict over Palestine,

An early solution to the Palestinian problem must be

The Palestine Question – a century-long multifaceted social problem

In the contemporary world, the Palestinian Issue remains

The Palestinian issue is a global issue where different

Thus, the Palestinian issue is an issue with which – not only

1.6 OBJECTIVES OF STUDY

1.7 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1. How practical and bona fide are UN resolutions and ‘peace

2. To what extent has such UN and ‘peace’ discourse gone in

Each of the two Questions is concerned with a Palestinian right; the

1.8 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

The intrinsic interrelation of language and the mind, of language and

1.9 DEFINITION OF KEY AND NEWLY MINTED TERMS

Beyan – an Arabic word, translated as ‘speech and articulate

Discursive maquillage refers to the deception or linguistic makeup

Deceptive purveyance of optimism (DPO) is a discourse strategy

Ethnic Cleansing as defined by Petrovic (1994, quoted in Pappe,

[...] a well-defined policy of a particular group of persons

According to the electronic encyclopaedia Wikipedia, as quoted in

can be understood as the forced expulsion of an

It is against such “well-defined policy” “to systematically eliminate

Gazacaust or the latest Palestinian holocaust (as part of this well-

Historic Palestine - when talking about Palestine nowadays, many

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