the-palestinians

The Palestinians
Author(s): Jean Genet

Source: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Autumn, 1973), pp. 3-34
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Institute for Palestine
Studies
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THE PALESTINIANS
JEAN GENET
[EDITOR'S NOTE: In September 1972 a meeting took place between Genet

and seven young Palestinians one evening in Paris, at which a wide variety of
subjects relating to the Palestine problem and revolutionary activity in general
were discussed. Genet subsequently sent to one of the participants in this
conversation his reflections on, and reconstitution of, parts of the discussion
that evening. These follow. *
Many of the impressions recorded below derive from Genet's personal
experience of the Palestinian resistance during a visit to guerrilla bases in
Jordan in 1970.]
The principal subjects dealt with - sometimes in a tired and confused

atmosphere - were the following: Munichl, Black September, Islam, Zionism
and the Jews in France, the failure of the resistance in Jordan, the difficulties
of the couple institutionalized by marriage, the fact of the split between two
communities (Palestinian and Jordanian), anxiety to maintain warm relations
in a world which seems to be rushing headlong towards the coldest individ-
ualism, comparison of the Palestinian revolution with others in the world
of different types and at different stages.
I must point out at once that in this Paris apartment I found the same
freedom of expression as I did in Jordan, in the Fateh bases. The only reser-
vations I encountered (they did not exist in the bases I lived in) arose first in
connection with religion and then with the absence of marriage ties which all
the men here seemed to feel as almost a calamity - marriage and living as a
couple in our society make it possible to "escape from loneliness." I sensed the
uneasiness felt by young men who still found it difficult to speak French, liv-
ing in a sort of exile, embittered by the commandos' and the militia's surrender
* Most passages reprinted here have been translated from Genet's original hand-written
reflections in French upon the meeting. Parts of these appeared in Arabic translation in
Shu'un Filastiniya (Beirut) in December 1972, which also included some passages not available
to us in the original French. The most relevant of these passages have been translated by us
from Shu'un Filastiniya and included at appropriate places within the framework of the
original material - Ed.
4 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES
of their arms to the authorities. But I also sensed, in this opposition to free love,
another kind of uneasiness -that of the male whlo feels deprived of his prero-
gatives. Briefly, if women were free, men would lose one of the principal mani-
festations of power. It was probably for the same reason that several times in
the course of the conversation they tried to evade the religious problem.
Islam, like Christianity, maintains, or claims to maintain, the superiority of
man ovcr woman. F. even said "Islam is only a popular superstition, and
therefore not dangerous."
Another thing I noticed about F., one of those who spoke French best, was
his choice of difficult words. This seemed easy to him, but was perhaps also
an expression of the will to power: his vivid style was certainly trenchant and
might well intimidate certain commandos dazzled by so much science -dazzled
and therefore submissive.
As I start to talk about them I realize that the expressions "Resistance"
or "Palestinian Revolution" mean nothing to me; after several months spent
in the bases in Jordan, what I remember is a multitude of faces. Each had a
name, if only a false one. Every man, or woman, I knew, was going to react irr
a different way. I must dismiss, even forget all these faces if I want to lay hold
of what is common to them, what makes them tick. I shall not always succeed.
The special character, the uniqueness of the Palestinian revolution,

derives from its origins. An Ottoman province with an essentially peasant
character, Palestine enjoyed a degree of freedom, with Turkish officials coming
from time to time to collect one kind of tax or another. As in all the Arab
world, the Jews were few in number. When Zionism, in its earliest stages,
decided to occupy the country, the population was not alarmed. They knew
that many Jews were fleeing from pogroms, especially in Russia and Poland.
They were not badly treated. But Jewish occupation speeded up until it became
a veritable torrent. The Palestinians began to feel exasperated. Although they
were still part of a homogeneous whole called the Arab- nation, the Arabs
started to talk of "the Palestinians," of "Palestine," and of what was happening
there. Faced with tlieJews, whose pioneers were arriving in large numbers- ap-
parently poor, but with the resources of the Jewish National Fund behind
them - the Palestinians started, though it is impossible to say exactly when,
to feel different - different in language, in religion, in their customs and the
names they bore. This was the start of a collective, though not yet national,
consciousness. By a cunning system of land purchase, after which it was for-
bidden to sell the land back to non-Jews, the Jews came to possess large areas.
What took place was a process, which is still going on, by which the Palestinians
became more and more acutely conscious of themselves as a national entity,
in the face of an equivalent process among the Jews. But if the Jews were
growing more and more numerous and acquiring more and more land, the
THE PALESTINIANS 5
Palestinians became conscious of themselves as an autonomous nation in, but

separate from, the Arab world only at the moment when that nation was
deprived of its territory, when the Jews had bought all the land in Palestine
or driven out the population by terrorism - as if the Jews, arriving as they
did with the support of European finance, had pulled away the lalnd from
beneath the Palestinians' feet like a carpet. The three most brutal jolts in the
removal of the carpet took place in 1948, 1956 and 1967. The Palestinian nation
had at last come into existence.
It was an entity, but it no longer had a territory. Where was this nation?
Although the land was drawn from under its feet like a carpet, the nation
continued to act as a nation and to maintain its national consciousness, but
where? In two fields, both equally inadequate: fantasy and Arabism.
We must look closely at the way in which this new planet took shape.
In an ill-defined territory, we see a sprinkling of families attached to the land
because they live from it, but free to go either alone or in caravans from one
end to the other of the world where the Arabic language is spoken - and even
further throughout the world where the Koran is recited. These families or
individuals always return to the house in Hebron, Haifa or Jerusalem. Their
land is there, faithfully awaiting them. But little by little it shrinks, it shrinks
to vanishing point beneath their feet. But the Palestinian nation has acquired
greater and greater weight, and this is the moment when, dispossessed of its
land, it finds support for its ever increasing weight in fantasy and Arabism.
Fantasy, in the case of Palestine, is to some extent a blessing. The Pales-
tinian nation, unable to remain in a land where it might, indeed, have lost
its flavour, is obliged to find in fantasy rules which it observes rigorously as
a means of saving itself from fading away in dreams and idealism. At the same
time too, after the Jordanian massacres, open threats by Israel and, it must be
admitted, disguised threats by other Arab countries, a Palestine without land
has continued to form itself into an independent, autonomous nation. This
independence, this peculiar autonomy, it owes to its revolutionary spitrit.
For something else has happened: while its land was being drawn from
under its feet, the Palestinian nation was finding itself in fantasy, but for it
to be able to exist, to continue, it had to discover the revolutionary necessity.
And it is doing so more and more. The process is not yet complete, but the
Palestinian nation has accepted it as its own. If it remains constantly vigilant
it will expand its national consciousness, and this national consciousness will
protect revolutionary consciousness as being the sole means of achieving a
Palestinian authenticity.
On the other hand, Arabism. The danger of Arabism is greater than that
of fantasy, in the first place because fantasy always needs to be completed,
while Arabism is something already complete that is at once paternal and
maternal. I mean that it makes imperative demands (all that is involved in

the idea of paternalism: obedience to tradition, exaggerated manliness, and
insistence on belonging to the Arab community and to it all) and that it is
also maternal in that it implies taking refuge in the bosom of that community
to "escape" from the outside world, the non-Arab world, and to recover
what D. called - and sought - human warmth.
When I warn this nation and its uniqueness, wlich are still in the process
of evolving, against the dangers of Arabism, I do not mean to say thlat the Pales-
tinians are not Arabs. They are, but they are also something more.
Arabism is a danger in that above all it is a bourgeois nostalgia (with the
time and the means to dream) and that it compels the respect of the people
so as to distract them from their real interests.
I am told that a Tunisian revolutionary is more sensitized to the Pales-

tinian revolution than to the Vietnamese revolution. This is certainly true.
Thus this common culture which is Arabism may be positive if it helps revolu-
tionary solidarity, but dangerous if it appeals to a sentimentality which has
nothing to do with the exigencies of revolution. Moreover, it is not in its
aspect as a common culture that Arabism is most objectionable; it is rather
that many Arabs present it as an essence, an essence that is the foundation of
the "Arab being," to the exclusion of all others.
Culture makes a difference, but not a radical one. But whether it is
experienced as a common culture, ancient and modern, or is presented as an
essence - "Arab being" - Arabism is surely liable to prevent the Palestinian
movement from developing as a specifically Palestinian culture. It should
perhaps be added that if the Tunisians are more sensitized to the Palestinian
revolution than to those that are going on in Northern Ireland or Vietnam, a
Palestinian (a commando, at any rate), according to what I observed in the
bases in Jordan, has the same sympathy with and greater curiosity about
revolutions taking place outside the orbit of the Arab world. This is perhaps
an indication that Arab culture is less strong than it is said to be, and that the
commando is already escaping from it.
If revolution, to put it briefly, is understood to mean the elimination of
an unacceptable political order or system and its replacement by another,
more consistent with the interests of the popular masses, it goes without
saying that the Palestinian revolution has not taken place, because its aim is
not to change an existing order, because the national consciousness is coexistent
with the loss of the land, and because it is difficult for it to take place effectively,
inasmuch as it is not yet capable of changing the system of the Palestinian
population living in the camps, who are more or less strictly governed by the
system of the country in which the refugee camps are situated. However, it
is not wrong to speak of a Palestinian revolution in the following sense: the
THE PALESTINIANS 7
development of the national consciousness will be accompanied by the develop-

ment and transformation of the idea of an order "to come" that will effectively
govern the people. But this system, which is being worked out by certain
Palestinian political minds, has not yet (so it seems to me) produced a revolu-
tionary concept which, taking fantasy as its point of departure, could lead
to a "new order" effectively enforced by the Palestinian people. Nor has
it even sufficiently influenced the masses to give them enough revolutionary
consciousness to enable them, on their own, to create their own liberation
movement in the countries where the camps are situated.
If revolutionary keenness and urgency continue to operate in a vacuum,
that is to say, if there is no field of practical application, will not the revolution
be in danger of idealism? And if so, how can it be saved from that danger? But
I know that it is not yet very serious, for, apart from the fact of its present-
ing itself as a "coming order" capable of governing the people, the Palestinian
revolution is also, and above all, a pointer, if you like, an example in the midst
of Arabism from which it is escaping. And when I say that it is escaping
friom Arabism, be sure that it is going beyond it.
If I question the revolutionary values of Arabism, I must not be mis-
judged. The Arabs are the Arabs not because they all belong to a distinct
ethnic group, but as the result of a mingling and a quasi-historical identifi-
cation which gives the name "Arab" not only to a culture but also to the
outpouring on one part of the world of peoples who moved, who fought, in
the name of a religious faith. No, I do not deny the identification of numerous
phenomena; what I deny is the identity of one man with another which is
sometimes designated as Arabism.
Revolutionaries thinking of using the ambiguities of the bourgeoisie,
and of History as written by it, had better be careful. The bourgeoisie is well-
informed, wily, and still master of the definition of words.
You will certainly have observed that this helical or spiral movement
in which the population of an Ottoman province becomes a real nation
without a territorial base is a reflexion of the Jewish movement which
led to Zionism. By reflexion I mean an inverted image - certain Jews
scattered throughout the world formed a state by driving out the population
of Palestine which, according to their reckoning, should thenceforward have
had no more than a phantom existence or remained dispersed in various
Arab countries. Instead of which, Palestine in exile continues to be a very
hard core, without the slightest intention of disappearing. Throughout their
evolution these two contrasting births have presented contrasting images:
the Jews who came to Palestine under the name of "Israelis" with a very
vague socialist ideal, soon started harking back to an ancient history which is
mere mythology and, instead of a socialist state, they established a theocratic
state, or, to be more precise, a theocracy without a god, in the sense that they
made a point of fostering the idea of a "Jewish essence" which already existed
in the form of the "chosen people."
Driven out of the land where they had lived for so long, the Palestinians
have done the exact opposite of the Israelis. First because they were forced to:
the more the Jews advanced, the deeper they penetrated into the Arab
world; the more land Israel won, the more the Palestinians took refuge in
fantasy. The more Israel developed into a bourgeois-capitalist state, the more
the Palestinians wanted to be, and found that they were, revolutionaries.
The more money Israel received from the Diaspora to help her establish herself
more firmly in a conquered land, the more the Palestinians used Arab gifts
to develop revolutionary thought. It seems to me wrong, as certain French
writers have done, to compare the conduct and the destiny of the Palestinians
with those of the Jews, except perhaps in one particular: the will to survive
as a nation. But the difference has existed from the start, by force of circum-
stances.
If I were to be asked why I support the Palestinian revolution, in the

first place I would recall that a representative of the Liberation Organization in
France invited me to visit the Palestinians' camps and bases in Jordan. What
happened to me in these bases was the following: while the Palestinian revolu-
tion remained to some extent abstract and strange to me, I realized that it
had not only changed the Palestinians but also changed me. Let me explain,
In Europe, out of innate indolence, I used to consider the function, and not
the man. The waiter was necessary to put the plate and the glass on the table
and to fill the glass, but if he fell ill the plate and the glass would still be put
in front of me - another waiter would have taken his place. This happened
at all levels and with all functions: every man was exchangeable within the
framework of his function and; except in rare cases, we only noticed the function.
In the Palestinian bases the opposite happened: I changed in the sense
that my relations changed, because all relations were different. No man
was exchangeable as a man; we noticed the man only regardless of the function,
and the function was not a service to maintain a system, but a fight to smash a
system.
A revolution which does not aim at changing me by changing the relations
between people does not interest me; what is more, I doubt whether a re-
volution which does not affect me enough to transform me is really a revo-
lution at all. The Palestinian revolution has established new kinds of relations
which have changed me, and in this sense the Palestinian revolution is my
revolution.
Among the reasons for my interest in the area were my military service
in Damascus, my reading of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and my profound
THE PALESTINIANS 9
feeling that Lawrence was an impostor, even when he claimed to be assisting

in the liberation of the Arabs. Their liberation from the Ottoman yoke in
favour of Britain, France or Israel was no gain. As a result of being there, of
my freedom of movement in Damascus, on which Gouraud's bombs were
raining down, and of my personal attraction to Sultan al-Atrash, who was
in revolt against the French occupation, I continued to be interested in the
people of the Arab East.
In 1947-1948 faint echoes of the Israeli reality reached me in France,
and Abdul Nasser's burst of laughter when he nationalized the Suez Canal
aroused my enthusiasm. Then the Arab world relapsed into semi-slumber,
while North Africa was being liberated from French military control and ad-
ministration, although of course extensive French interests remained, especially
in Morocco.
In 1968, that is, after the Arab-Israeli war, I was in Tunis. That was in
the golden age of Ben Salah. News reached me by accident of the detachments
of Algerian and Moroccan troops which were passing through the north and
the south on their way to Cairo to join the Palestinian resistance. In the train
from Gabes to Tunis I heard of this for the first time, then a bookseller and
another Tunisian in Gafsa told me about Fateh's poetry and songs.
In 1970 I was enthralled by the hijacking of the planes, and I was in
Deraa at the beginning of October 1970.
After spending some months with the commandos in their bases I must
give some idea of how inconsistent of me it was to do so. For years I had done
all I could to sever all ties linking me to the French nation, and to some extent
I succeeded. But at the end of my quest I found myself happy to be helping
a dispossessed nation to recover its lost land. The reason perhaps was that in
the Palestinian revolution I saw above all the Palestinian revolution. It is
doubtless necessary to fight for return to the lost land, but it seems to me even
more essential to transform the Arab individual, first by the Palestinian ex-
ample, and then with the help of the Palestinians. I do not want to commit
myself too far; I will only suggest the following: "The Palestinians no longer
have any territory"; "the Palestinian nation, extremely dense, exists in fantasy";
"cannot some Palestinian elements go into action in diferent parts of the Arab nation,
which urgently needs regeneration?"
To sum up, the desire to recover the land is also a desire for justice. If
it was no more than that it would be limited indeed. But the Palestinians are
making it transcend itself in a revolution which will not be restricted to Pales-
tine, but will comprise the whole Arab world. This is probably why it has fas-
cinated young people all over the world. It is to be recalled that in May 1968
the leftists set up a Palestinian stand in the courtyard of the Sorbonne, near
to the Chinese stand.
It is difficult to say whether the many different origins of the commandos,

(Gaza, Hebron, Jerusalem, Deraa, Damascus, Amman, the various camps,
Damascus, Cairo, Kuwait), are giving rise to frictions in the population and
the PLO which will make common action difficult, or whether on the con-
trary, the Palestinian revolution is gaining and will continue to gain greater
richness from all this diversity.
Were punishments inflicted without my knowing it? An official may have
intervened without my noticing it, but I cannot recall any lively or violent
quarrels or altercations in the bases. This army of commandos lived very light-
heartedly, and my recollection is of a very civilized society. Of course, to say
this after the massacres by Hussein's Bedouin' may look like mere padding;
it is nothing of the kind. Volunteers in the ranks of Fateh, the PFLP, Saiqa,
and the PDFLP, both commandos and officials, had, with apparent non-
chalance, made a start on socialism under the trees, sometimes in the rain - a
sort of lean and rustic socialism which boded well for its developing within
itself and around itself an ever more complex society. This start on a completely
new world was murdered by Hussein, with the complicity of Israel, of many
Arab countries and of all the Western countries.
It is inconceivable that the Palestinian revolution should not be accom-

panied by the liberation of the Palestinian woman. I am not talking of bourgeois
women, or those who place themselves in the service of the revolution when
they graduate from universities - western or otherwise. I am talking of the
ordinary woman of the people who is, even in her present situation, an extreme-
ly dynamic and revolutionary element. I fancy that the freedom she enjoys-
the pre-liberation freedom - is not the result of 1970, 1967 or 1948, but goes
back much further than that.
I can say, like Rousseau: the Palestinian woman is born free and, so it
seems to me, she is better off than others for she is ready to accept any revo-
lutionary ideas although at the same time, because of her position and her
character, she is a conservative element. Woman in general -not the arti-
ficial, feminine woman that has become so because man wanted her to, but
the woman who believes in her heart of hearts that she is man's equal, in the
sense that she is not his mother or his sister or his mistress but his comrade -
this woman must take part in the struggle against the system because she
along with the child - is the being most subject to oppression. I do not at all
mean armed struggle by scratching and biting or hysterical outbursts against
men, but as a constant expression of her freedom and liberation.
1 I left Beirut when the commandos were encircled above Salt and Jerash, but it was
not till I was in France that I heard the news of the last ambush laid by the Jordanian army
for the commandos, which seemed to me proof that the Jordanian government - and the
bourgeoisie that it protects - were more afraid of the Palestinian revolution than of Israel.
THE PALESTINIANS 11
Not every Palestinian woman is Umm Hassan, but they all resemble her
in one important point - acceptance of the requirements of the struggle.
When Hassan introduced me to his mother, it was the month of Ramadan.
Vhen I told her that I was not Muslim and did not even believe in God, she
looked at me without amazement or scorn. She was a widow of nearly fifty,
and the time was about noon.
"If he doesn't believe in God, I must get him something to eat." And she
prlepared food for us. The fact that I was an unbeliever in the month of Rama-
dan had led her to the right answer: lunch. She herself did not eat until after
six in the evening.
At sunset the whole family helped to fill cartridge clips. And I mean the
family: the mother, Hassan, his sister and her husband. The Jordanian army
was firing at Irbid Camp from a hospital in which it was stationed. As soon
as darkness fell Hassan went to his position in the town, and I remained alone
in his room with three Kalashnikov sub-machine guns laid down near the
entrance to the shelter which, in turn, contained a number of weapons. The
firing was still going on at 1 o'clock, and I could not sleep. But when there was
a knock on the door, I pretended to be asleep and did not answer. A few
moments later the door opened, and in came Umm Hassan carrying a tray on
which were a glass of tea and a cup of coffee. There was a rifle hanging from
her shoulder. She put down the tray near the bed and went out. I drank the
tea. A few minutes later there was another knock on the door. I did not answer.
Umm Hassan came in, picked up the tray and left.
I have given this as an example of the simple and delicate manners of
a Palestinian woman of the people. The next day I saw her on her knees making
cakes. I asked if I could come in, and after greeting me she asked if I was
lhungry. When I said "No" she insisted on making me a glass of tea; she herself
refused to drink because the sun had risen. Then she smiled and said, "Allah."
It seemed to me significant that the authorities do not know to what extent
women have stopped behaving as orientals, in accordance with tradition.
One of the problems I am not going to evade is religion. It is pointed out

to me that the Chinese, the Russians, the Vietnamese, the Cubans have all
finally accepted the religions of their people. Almost every one here adopts
the principle of an atheistic education, but they claim that the masses are
still immersed in all the improbabilities of religion and that too sudden secu-
larization would injure them.
Myself: First, if my memories and observations do not play me false, the
Palestinian people are not all that religious. In six months spent in Jordan,
in the camps and the bases, I only once saw a man (he was about 50) saying
his prayers. As a rule Ramadan was not observed in the bases. I never made
any attempt to conceal from people that I am an atheist, and no one-reproached
me for it. The few defenders of religion employed very conventional arguments.
In fact, if the Palestinians were in danger of being isolated in the Muslim world
for supporting a cause that was atheistic, because it was socialist, I believe that
the officials had not provided them with sufficient arguments to reply to the
attacks of the Hashemite administration. Some officials said they were atheists,
without explaining what they meant. If religion was questioned, it was without
sarcasm. Now since the Koran was preached, the Muslim religion has not
been united. In the time of Muhammad, this preaching was nearly always
received with mockery; I believe, even, that for a long time singers and poets
made jokes on this theme. People even wrote anti-Korans. In Arabia under
the Wahhabis, and elsewhere in the Arab world, religion became congealed,
sacralized to the extreme, because it was the only possession that Westerners
could not touch. If this way of looking at things is right, it could be said that
Islam today, in its present intransigent and restrictive form, is yet another
consequence of European colonization. To thaw k6lam a little, to make it
more checrful, more sceptical of itself, would merely be a matter of dealing
with a petrification caused by colonialism.
The argument often put forward that socialism already exists in the Koran,
does not hold water. Many suras recommend giving to the poor and not
practising usury. This was perhaps a good thing in the tribe of Quraish, but
alms-giving is not socialist conduct. Indeed, it is the negation of it. The "oil"
countries give the resistance a few million dollars, but this is alms given by
rich countries which are far from being socialist. Other rich countries also
give alms to the Palestinians in the refugee camps, through UNRWA.
Finally, religion today is made use of by established authority; it is an

instrument which serves authority, not the people. Like Hassan at the other
end of the Arab world, Hussein is entitled to say that he is a "good Muslim."
He is, much more than others, because he is descended from the Prophet.
Can socialist hypotheses be reconciled with theological ones?
Religion is a withdrawal into the self, it is the continuation of an archaic

attitude, which must inevitably clash with revolutionary projects, because both
in the short and the long run their goal is secularization. Finally, Islam, like
Judaism and Christianity, involves a concept of the transcendental which can
only be imposed on men with the assistance of the argument of authority, and
this is exactly what all three of them have done. Their distinguishing feature
is the Law which is the Law, there is no explanation, no reasons are given;
they are all Caesarian religions. There is no harm in assuming the existence
of a transcendent being. If you do so, believing in God does not mean aban-
doning yourself to the powers of religion. To believe in God as first cause
does not mean that this cause must regarded as sacred, or that it is sacrilege
to reject it.
THE PALESTINIANS 13
If you take the trouble to dedramatize the problem of faith, you see that
it is a question of a very simple phenomenon which can, perhaps, be reduced
to the precepts we receive in earliest childhood; the child inherits his father's
faith as he does his father's morality and his father's conduct. One may rid one-
self fairly soon of the last two, because they are inconsistent with or rejected by
the new ways of a new generation. But religious faith lasts longer, because, from
the start, it comes under the sign first of the Marvellous, then of the Holy and
finally of the Dangerous Imam; even if he is merciful, his wrath makes him
an ogre and all the more to be feared in that he remains unknown, just as his
purposes are unknown, unsurmised even. In childhood we accept faith with
the same confidence as we do all paternal, family and social values. There
is obviously something magical in religious stories - Koranic or otherwise-
and in ritual. Why is it so difficult to disentangle ourselves? First because we
are discouraged from criticizing faith because, as I say, it is the faith of the father,
and Arab society is mainly patriarchal. It is also the faith of the mother, and
therefore arouses tender emotions. But there are many children who have got
rid of faith, or rather whom faith has got rid of, between the age of 15 and 18,
without it giving rise to drama or pathos. What I mean is the faith that is
belief. There is also the power of ritual, imagined or accomplished, whose
function is to maintain a difference and in this case, in this light, difference also
means superiority. Finally, sacred books are used to justify hierarchical orders.
Even a highly structured religion without a church - like Islam - is hierarch-
ical in the sense that at the top there is God, the Prophet, the first caliphs
etc., whose precepts cannot be questioned. As practised today, religion is
used to justify all the hierarchical systems. It is through religion that man
knows that he is the master of woman. But there is something else more serious,
or just as serious. As in religion all thought comes from God and His Word,
all thought that tries to be independent must be conducted parallel with
religious thought. This leads to the existence in the individual of parallel
thoughts obeying a logical system that is different and contradictory; and to
the disintegration of free, audacious thought, or even the impossibility of free
thought. I am not talking of thought which, starting from a secular postulate,
reaches the conclusion that God exists. This is not my way of thinking, but I
do accept it as valid. What I find difficult to accept as valid is thought that
starts from a God imposed in childhood and reaches the conclusion of God
through religion: this, if I may use the expression, is congealed automatism.
What about my own experiences as regards faith? Brought up in the
Catholic religion, I had just as much or just as little faith as a peasant of the
same age as myself. But at about 15 or 16 I realized that faith had disappeared,
and that its disappearance coincided with my ability to laugh at myself and
to joke about things sacred. This disappearance of faith did not give rise to
any drama, either in me or around me. What then had it been? Probably a
belief that was so slight, so tenuous, that I found no difficulty in detaching

myself from it. What was perhaps stronger than faith was the observance of
ritual. The observance of ritual can be unsettling to the extent that it is theat-
rical. If it is theatrical, it must produce a sort of dichotomy in the faithful:
between him who acts theatrically and him who sees himself acting. It would
seem then that everything "sacred" is related to a very profane theatricality,
whiicl can be destroyed by a slightly mocking smile. Like other religions Islam
has its ritual, certainly simplified, but powerful because it is theatrical - ablu-
tion, postures, the slow or rapid repetition of the name of God or of Koranic
texts. But why am I getting so worked up over religion? On this, as on all
other points, Marx has given a much better answer than I can.
Moreover, it is very healthy to laugh at one's beliefs, even if' they are
thousands of years old, and at their past terrors. And I repeat: it is very dan-
gerous that an archetype of uncontested - and incontestable - power should
persist in the mind, because it is accompanied by an archetype of submission
to tyrannical power.
F., who wants to rationalize the concept of revolution and, naturally, of

the Palestinian revolution, said to me rather aggressively: "In general the Pales-
tinians are a people of peasants. We have to work our land in the other Arab
countries, and here in Paris we are out of our element." He said this with the
same emotion that I read in the face of a commando, who one night on the
bank of the Jordan saw the lights of Hebron that I pointed out to him. The
emotion is unmistakable; it is the emotion of the exile. But if we look more
closely we find that this idea of uprootedness, which F. regards as fundamental,
is in fact transitory.
"The peasant is happy to cultivate his land," he said.
That is true. But it is also true that, when he dies, or even before, his son
or sons couldn't care less for the land, for working on the land; they sell the
house and the fields, come to town and get a job in the Renault works, and
spend their holidays in Spain and Greece.
He agreed, but it is none the less true that at this moment, the land
Palestine, occupied by Israeli (in fact Western) force and guile, provides the
resistance with the base which enables it to transform itself and to extend in
the Arab world in the form of the Palestinian revolution.
Almost all the Palestinians in the room agree that the Palestinian move-
ment must keep its uniqueness by not becoming confused with some kind of
Arab pseudo-revolution. The Palestinian revolution could well be drowned
in the name of Arabism. It seems to me important that it should protect its
uniqueness. Distracted by the oceanic sensation of Arabism, it could easily
lose its violence. All the wars of national independence or pseudo-revolutions
THE PALESTINIANS 15
that have beeni carried out in the name of Arabism have becn of service to the
various Arab bourgeoisies first and foremost.
Here, I want to settle my account with a Lebanese philosopher wlho once
said to me: "The Palestinian revolution must Arabize itself more and more.
Arabism is always revolutionary." I answered him: "On the contrary. I hope
that the Arab world will Palestinianize itself more and more since, apart
from the example provided by Dhofar and Eritrea, the Palestinians are the
only people to have displayed revolutionary conduct."
In the past, Arabism may perhaps have played a "revolutionary" role. I
do not know. But I fear that today Arabism is only a sort of glamorous and
deceptive nostalgia. I remember a rich Lebanese woman who rapturously
described to me the battle of Badr and the glories of the Umayyads. If such
chimerical rubbish still exists in the minds of the people it is the fault of Arabism
and its overload of the past.
It is possible to regard the history of the Arabs, more or less exact, more
or less fabulous, as a fairy story, but it is one that may well impede revolutionary
action. The Palestinian revolution may be able to select elements from this
history and use them as models within the framework of a general revolut-
tionary idea. But I doubt whether Arabism can do the same, for its principal
concern is to rouse the bourgeoisie with the glories of past historv. Since its
appearance about 150 years ago, the idea of Arabism has been the ch}imerical
refuge of an Arab nation that was becoming ever more divided. If the Arab
nation is to be set alight once more, it must be from another fire.
Several times in the course of our talk the Paris Palestinians accused those
they called the "historical leaders." They had very harsh things to say about
them. One of them said to me: "We must change the political line."
Myself: "What do you mean?"
"Replace them. Perhaps not kill them, btut replace them... I don't know
them, I was a commando, but I know exactly where they brought us - we
were on the point of seizing power and we didn't seize it." (He was talkinig
of a general rising that might have taken place in Jordan before September
1970, to drive out Hussein and proclaim a republic.)
We proceeded to review the mistakes made by the resistance movement,
one of the most serious of which was its failure to establish a real bond of com-
mon interest between the Jordanian and Palestinian masses. Had they been
united, not by Arabism, but by serious and lasting information activity, by
collaboration and collective activities, they might have been able to assert
themselves. Instead of this, what do we find? On the one hand the commandos,
armed, arrogant in their camouflage, haughtily ignoring the Jordanian peas-
ants, and on the other hand these peasants or merchants, somewhat scared and
exasperated by the film star behaviour of the commandos, turning quite
naturally to the King - whose army of Bedouin protected them but, first and
foremost protected the King, whose eyes were on America.
Except in the few families where Palestinians married Jordanians or vice
versa, except in the royal army, where the enlisted Palestinians were obliged to
play the role the bourgeoisie wanted them to play, except, again, in the
Palestino-Jordanian upper bourgeoisie (here it is a case of complicity rather
than agreement) on both sides there was nothing but rancour, resentment and
contempt.
I remember arriving in Irbid from Deraa. At the customs post a customs of-
ficial aged about 25 got into the car, which was driven by a Palestinian, to
get a lift to Irbid. We went to a hotel run by Palestinians. The driver left.
But the customs official insisted on carrying my bag and came into the hotel
with me. It was a very small hotel with rooms with five or six beds. Thiere
were a lot of people. The Palestinians received me like a fricnd, but received
the customs official with contempt. When he had gone I asked them why they
did not try to establish relations - of friendship at first, and then political
with a Jordanian official in as humble circumstances as themselves. The hotel
owner shrugged his shoulders indifferently; the man wasn't a Palestinian.
F. also asked me if as soon as I arrived (the end of October 1970) I had
observed the retreat of the resistance and if I had been able to analyse the
reasons. Because I was right among the commandos, I could not help seeing
what was going on, and observing that the commandos' margin and capacity
for action were growing more and more restricted.
There was a sort of gaiety, perhaps even euphoria, in the woods between
Ajlun and Salt, a euphoria arising from the fact that the commandos had
succeeded in escaping from the inferno of Amman. They had the gaiety of
youth, the laughter, the mischievousness that you don't find in regular armies;
what I saw, for example, of the King's Bedouin or of the Syrian army was
sinister. This gaiety partly concealed defeat except in the cases when arms
had been surrendered, when it was very evident.
As for the reasons for this defeat, I could not hold the Palestinian resistance
solely responsible. Almost in spite of myself, I saw rather the agreements and
disagreements of the Great Powers. Too many questions still remain un-
answered: Wlhy did the Iraqi army let the royal army through? Why did the
Syrian army not give the resistance more support, towards the frontier, towards
Ramtha?
Question: How did you see the commandos as men? WVhat do you think of
their motives for being engaged to the extent of total sacrifice, and of the
objectives for which they were fighting?
What comes to my mind first and foremost, and in the most delightful
way, is the commandos' great freedom of speech. The word astonishing is
THE PALESTINIANS 17
not too strong to use here. They can - they could, at least - talk of every-
thing. I cannot recall that any subject was taboo. They were utterly frank,
whether they were criticizing authority, or religion as moral authority, or
dealing with sexual problems - once when I said that I was homosexual, no
one seemed shocked; they couldn't care less, it was my business. They were
very intrigued by what was going on in China at that time, and by Cuba.
Everything was discussed and discussed with a mixture of gravity and humour.
I do not know Arabic, but it seemed to me that the Arabic spoken by
the commandos was more sober than that spoken elsewhere by others - freer
of embroideries. Facts and simple expressions were more important than com-
ment, except when the comment was a matter of fact and not of personal
opinion. They were very handsome. There is - there was - a sort of com-
mando chic. You might say that their ethic was indistinguishable from their
aesthetic. So much for their outward appearance. The inside was both less
well-defined and harder. "Revolutionary" is an inflammatory word. They were
aware of being revolutionaries and they might well have been mere copies
had not circumstances forced them to act and behave like the real revolu-
tionaries they were, rather than adopting the conventional posture. They were
determined to bring about a double historical event - to lead the Palestinian
revolution for liberation of the whole of the Arab people, and at the same
time to reconquer Palestine. On this last objective the Palestinian masses
in the camps or elsewhere were kept informed, but of lighting the fire of rev-
olution in the Arab world they knew nothing, to the extent that the com-
mandos were supported as members of the resistance, not as revolutionaries.
The result was a sort of moral lameness that unbalanced them.
All this can change, has already changed. The whole people must turn
towards its Promised Land and the kindling of the revolutionary fire in the
Arab world. Certainly the commandos want a ground that will prove solid,
but the brightest of them have already realized that the hallmark of modernity
is not rootedness - trees, houses, rocks - but ever greater mobility.
After being in action with Fateh, F. told me that he wanted to carry on
the struggle for liberation in any country that would receive him. In Irbid
H. worked hard and methodically. They were both 22. But I repeat, the
masses knew nothing about revolution. Resistance yes, revolution no. This was
perhaps out of prudence, so as not to frighten the Palestinian right. Similarly,
at the time I sought in vain for the word "socialist" as applied to the govern-
ment that is to come. I could not find it in any PLO document.
I asked a commando in 1970: "What exactly is the object of the battles
you are fighting?"
Answer: "To recover our land."
Myself: "Can you recover it if you don't want something else as well?"
IPS - 2
He: "Can we get anything else if we don't recover our land?"
We both saw that it was possible to get lost in this game of question and
answer. There was already a question of underground activity. Though not for
the masses and not for the "historical" leaders. Black September struck down
Wasfi Tall at the end of 1971.
If Palestine became Palestine again, H. and others would not live there.
Then who would? Obviously the masses. But the "real" revolutionaries would
go on with the revolution elsewhere as if they were the aristocracy of revolution.
Many people told me: "The masses are revolutionary." This is true as regards
their aspirations to justice and freedom, but not as regards taking decisions.
No one talks about happiness in revolution. Do you imagine that rev-
olutionary action is gloomy? Not all revolutionary actions are joyful, certainly,
but they are attended by a sort of happiness in the destruction of the old
structure by the revolutionary. Many times I asked comnmandos: "You seem
to be happy; are you enjoying yourself?" The answer was always the same:
"Why not? Why shouldn't we find pleasure in the life we are leading, the
life of the fighter destroying obsolete values ?" If those who laid the foundations
of bourgeois morality know nothing but a sort of gloomy, melancholy sadness,
perhaps the revolution is destined, at one stage of its career, to be the opposite
of that gloom.
I am talking of the Fateh fighters, very open and very determined.
Those of the Democratic Popular Front, many of whom came from Gaza,
were often more subtle, or rather more fluent, but their vocabulary, the ease
with which they played with ideas, set me against them slightly. I felt more
at ease in the Fateh base. Also because - I must make this clear - in his con-
versation, from the most simple to the most difficult, almost every commando in
the base, whatever movement he belonged to, evinced impatience to take
action in accordance with revolutionary objectives.
We must touch on the question of language. If we want to be a cohesive

and stable people, enjoying that solidarity that I have already mentioned, we
must make the spoken language of the people, in this case Arabic, more beauti-
ful. By beauty I do not mean the embellishments that conceal ideas. On the
contrary; language becomes more beautiful to the extent that there is an
exact correspondence between facts on the one hand and the expression of
these facts on the other.
Infantile leftism has a tendency to bring anything within the framework
of words and expressions. But if beauty is not equivalent to simplicity, certainly
simplicity is a factor for beauty. The same applies to accuracy of expression.
It does not mean rigidity, but flexibility. The dictionary used by infantile
revolutionaries has nothing to do with facts, and I suspect that in using this
dictionary they are perhaps expressing a hidden wish to thwart the revolution,
THE PALESTINIANS 19
if the revolution really consists of changing the patterns of relations between

individuals. Finally, by beauty of language I mean the rejection of all academic
tendencies and the acceptance and encouragement of all discoveries sponta-
neously made by the people.
Bearing arms is not everything in life. Man tends to withdraw from life
or rather from effort at a time when the need for quiet has become so urgent
and when there is such a brisk sale of tranquillizers. I was accustomed to arms
in my youth, and then forgot them; it was a sort of cowardice that led me to
"wisdom." But my meeting in Jordan with commandos who are in love with
their arms and insist on using them - the commandos and all the inhabitants
of the camps - brought me back to the reality of violence and made me under-
stand that violence is essential. By violence I mean effort aimed at achieving
a rupture with a pattern of withdrawal that prevents living: the bursting open
of buds is violence; the growth of grains of wheat when their shoots pierce
the surface of the earth is also violence. If the press and suchlike are against
violence, it is because they realize that violence is the source of life, so that they
deliberately confuse it with coarseness. But coarseness is in fact inconsistent
with violence in the sense that it derives from an action, or a group of actions,
restricted to themselves, whereas violence is the search - easy or otherwise -
undertaken by a iiew generation.
But the bourgeoisie knows that it can confuse the domains of words and
expression, and condemns acts of violence whatever their source, although it
knows very well that such acts include both those that are vicious and useless
and acts of necessary violence.
In my opinion, if the Arab world wants to rid itself of a falsified history,
of a scented and bustling bourgeoisie, of physical and physiological misery, of
the exploitation of its sub-soil, it is quite obvious that the Arab world must
bring about a revolution, but not a pseudo-revolution, in words. That is why
I distrust a certain kind of vocabulary which also can delude. And in the Arab
world, I repeat, Palestine and Palestine alone - because Dhofar and South
Yemen are on the point of being crushed - Palestine alone, eventually
through the medium of the masses, now through its commandos, has accepted
to be the nation that carries the revolutionary ferment of the Arab world.
In this connection I think it can be said that the masses neither expect nor
demand caution, or tangled explanations, but a fresher, bolder way of dealing
with problems - that of religion, that of a measure of independence for women.
When you say the masses would not understand, you are insulting them. To
say this means that both the officials and the commandos want to ensure
some kind of domination over the masses. To want to liberate them is to talk
to them as freely as the commandos do among themselves.
Let us take the example of N., a Palestinian woman doctor living in Amer-
ica, who came on her own account to treat the wounded in Amman. A beautifu 1
woman wearing trousers. We had to go from Jerash to Salt to meet a doctor

and also a political official there. We were taken there by a taxi-driver who was
also a member of the militia. When we arrived in Salt in the evening the doctor
was not there; a car took us to his base where we arrived at night. As soon as
he saw N. he said a few words to the official which N. herself translated for me:
"She must be taken back to Salt; she cannot spend the night here. The fighters
would not understand, and if the people knew they would not understand a
woman spending the night at the base."
Both the road and the region were dangerous. Some commandos were told
to take her back to Salt as quickly as possible, and then return, in the middle
of the night. Can one really believe that the masses, if they had been spoken to
frankly, would not have understood that a woman doctor, dressed as she was,
should spend the night under a blanket in a corner of the room? The Palestinian
masses would not have thought this debauchery.
A few days later N. and I were walking in the streets of Gaza Camp.
Six or seven women spoke to us, and smilingly invited us to tea. On the floor
of the only room of the house they spread some blankets and laid some cushions
for us. I was suddenly struck by the strangeness of the situation from the point
of view of a conventional Arab world: the Thousand and One Nights! I was
the only man among seven or eight women talking politics. I told them so;
they merely burst out laughing. Would not these women, and their husbands,
have understood N.'s staying the night at the base? They would have found
it more difficult to understand why she should be taken back at night in an
area that was dangerous even in the daytime.
It would have been easy, for example, to have had a paragraph published
in the newspaper Fateh to the effect that "in view of the danger arising from
the presence in the area of elements of the Jordanian Army, our comrade Dr.
N. was obliged to spend the night in such and such a base..."
And why not an information campaign?
I come back, I shall often come back to religion, at the risk of annoying
the Palestinians this evening - in fact they have been questioning me since
8 o'clock and it is already next morning. About the Catholic religion, for exam-
ple. Well, yes, here too religion has clouded the issue. In Mozambique, in Spain,
in South America, there are indubitably sincere and courageous men; sickened
by the violence of capitalism and the tacit complicity of the official church
in this violence - against the poor, the blacks, the Indians etc. - sincere
men, priests, have decided to lead a life in conformity with Gospel models.
But sincerity is not the same thing as truth. These men believe and they are
sincere. The official church has understood how to turn this to account. It
has condemned the violence of capitalism, but in the same sentence condemned
revolutionary violence. Some young priests, especially in South America,
THE PALESTINIANS 21
in Brazil, for example, have joined the direct struggle - that which has recourse
to revolutionary violence. But the time will come when their evangelical faith
is an embarrassment, for there is the problem of Revelation, whether evangelical
[Christian] or Muhammadan, both equally awkward when you have to refer
to them to start a class struggle. The sacred books are neither explicit enough
nor strong enough to prevent the exploitation of man by man. To put it simply:
if religion is both the expression and the support of tradition, how can it have
any part in a project which wants to smash tradition? Unless one maintains
that the revolutionary project was, as it were, already prefigured in tradition.
And in fact, very often Christians as well as Muslims accept this inconsistency.
At the most critical moments of the struggle Islam may well mystify the
combatant. A sheikh may say to a fellah who wants to revolt: "What, we are
both Muslims and we are going to make war ?" The fellah lays down his arms
and takes up his mattock, the sheikh takes the plane for London or Paris
with his millions, and are those who defend religion going to call for the
suppression of the suras of the Koran which explicitly defend property?
It is possible that those of the people who are religious do not know the
Koran, but Hussein's ministers know the best passages, those which make it
possible to put the screws on in the name of Muhammadan revelation.
One sometimes hears this answer: "It all depends on one's idea of God."
Certainly, but the Christian religion is based on the so-called sacred literature
of the Old and New Testaments, the Muslim religion is based on the Koran,
and Jehovah and Allah are not Spinozist gods.
At one moment I was really angry. This was when F. said to me in a tone
that brooked no argument "that all Palestinians must work for the Palestinian
cause, and especially the intellectuals, who must employ all their faculties
for the Palestinian cause." "If not," he said, "after the victory, those who have
done nothing for the revolution must be excluded from the nation." This
recourse to dogmatic argument, this condemnation, really shocked me. First,
there are more things in the world than the Palestinian revolution. A man,
even a Palestinian, must have the liberty to engage in whatever quest he likes;
he may be mistaken, we may not be interested in his quest or in him, but to
exclude him from any community, however small, is to exclude him from the
whole human community. This is exactly what bourgeois morals do, whether
Western or not, when every man who does not recognize accepted values
is either banished, imprisoned or reduced to a marginal position.
"Perhaps you have misunderstood," said D.
Perhaps, I often do misunderstand. But in a liberation movement as soon
as I detect an attempt at authoritarian judgement, a tone of implacable con-
demnation, I begin to be afraid that the movement is denying itself, Zhdano-
vizing itself.
A little later I replied rather angrily when D. said: "Simple people would
not have understood."
"'Simple' people are not such mugs as you think. They understand."
The difficulty of tackling sexual problems among the masses is the result
not only of bourgeois morality - many of whose taboos are, indeed, broken
by the bourgeoisie itself - but also of a sort of modesty produced by a social
situation which reduces all sexual pleasure to a mere mutilated stump of
pleasure because of various economic restraints. In the Palestinian camps the
houses are so small, so close to each other, there are the children in the same
room, and the indispensable hygienic necessities - water, for example - are
rare and difficult to secure. And time. For the bourgeoisie to make love, in
one form or another, means first of all having the space, time and hygienic
facilities which make the sexual act an act of as complete happiness as possible,
and not just a means of reproduction. The masses understand this more or
less obscurely. If they condemn the sexual act, or the mere mention of it,
it is because they understand that, in its completeness, it is reserved for the
bourgeoisie. It is, to say the least, piquant that the book that makes so much
of the sexual activities of the Prophet should be the origin of sexual morality. But
when one has the opportunity, as I have had, to visit the camps in the company
of a young and beautiful Eurasian woman, one soon realizes that the camps
are heavy with a vague erotic reverie which can be traced to these social
demands: the need for more space, the need for time, for leisure, to the extent
that one sometimes questions if the masses don't want the revolution so that
they can make love better.
I do not speak Arabic and the questions I asked in the camps, not in the
bases, were too shocking for my interpreters, nearly all Muslims and nearly
all puritans and too awkward to deal with the problem - and yet I cannot
help thinking of certaini Palestinian women whose looks disclosed such a
vigour of mind, such an intellectual audacity that I am sure they would have
answered without turning a hair. Revolutionary activity is not restricted to
the use of an emotive vocabulary, nor even to the use of the rifle; it also lies in
the challenge to live a happy life to the full. I know no other people in the Arab
world that aspires to rid itself of gloomy thoughts, to liberate itself from op-
pressive drudgery, from rags and from humiliating situations as much as the
Palestinians do. Leaving aside the Palestinian bourgeoisie, which is like other
bourgeoisies, there is in the camps a will to look truth in the eyes. It would
probably not take much for a man or a woman to answer: "But we are
much too crowded to make love happily. We need space!"
In writing this, am I perhaps expressing the freedom of a Westerner who
has time, space, mobility, money, and who, like every Westerner - including
proletarians - still benefits from the truly usurious exploitation of the
THE PALESTINIANS 23
resources of the Third World? It is possible. My reflections could be

regarded as an open or insidious attack, by which the West is attempting
to impose itself, by other methods this time. I am not forgetting that the West
has imposed the Gregorian calendar almost everywhere. And perhaps we say
that it is the best so that people may be convinced of the excellence of our
choice. Moreover, do not think that I believe that what I have said in this
short passage is of universal application. It is possible to find profound hap-
piness in a brief embrace, in the smallest space, but the luxury, money, time
and space enjoyed by the bourgeoisie may well infuriate the masses and make
them realize what they are missing. There is another thing that could make
them angry; breaking moral, sexual and social taboos is only possible for the
bourgeoisie. They may well ask why this should be so. For we know very well
that breaking taboos is one of the profoundest pleasures. I even wonder if the
following idea is too far-fetched: what gives the bourgeoisie its joy is that it
knows that there is another world that does not know that joy. What is real
luxury for the eye is to be able to grasp a poor man, or miserable conditions,
like an ornament.
Unable to live entirely in the functional universe we must at least let our
look fall on that which seems to be immutable, or outside time. Here too we
are conservative. Let no one touch the spectacle I am looking at. I know
that it is made up of miseries and rags, but it satisfies not only my aesthetic
needs, but also my need to prove my superiority in being able to appreciate
the condition of the poor, as being there to give me pleasure.
Or is it such an accident that the Mechouar Palace in Rabat is close to
a shanty-town housing 60,000 people? An accident that certain Palestinian
refugee camps are so close to fine blocks of flats in Beirut? An accident that
Europeans are spending their holidays more and more in the underdeveloped
countries, where they can lose themselves in the souks, but stay in luxury
hotels builtfor Furopeans. To the extent that if a badly dressed Arab, or a slightly
disreputable-looking American black, strays into a residential quarter, the police
are sent for. This is what a Moroccan workman replied when I asked him what
he dreaded most in Paris: "Walking in the street, because every one looks at
me."
In the same way, the builder offers a view which cannot be spoiled from
a luxury block. This view that cannot be spoiled is: an old farm, a vineyard
with men and women working in it. From his flat the bourgeois sees the land-
scape, just as Hassan knows the shanty-town, but the "landscape that cannot
be spoiled," the farmer, the vine-dressers - are they content to be the
landscape? And why should the inhabitants of the camps accept to be the land-
scape looked at by the bourgeois, or the more or less silent witness of the pleasures
of the bourgeoisie which needs so much space and leisure? Why shouldn't
they move the space of the bourgeois and their leisure hours - so as to lead
a more acceptable life, certainly, but also for the fun of the game? It must
not be forgotten that the great embezzlers regarded their activities as a game.
If there is an element of pleasure in the game, why refuse it to the exploited?
One should never be ashamed of a revolutionary pleasure.
The Palestinians I am with keep on asking questions. I cannot help

noticing, not for the first time, that their questions and their answers to my
questions provide evidence of very great intellectual agility, and sometimes of
very real depth. But there is a danger lying in wait for them. They have a
tendency to very rapid conceptualization. It is not only that the coldness
and rigidity of concepts can discourage a party to a discussion who belongs to
another school, to another discipline, and naturally this applies to a Palestinian
combatant who is not familiar with the intellectual gymnastics of European
specialists, but what is more, while this language may seem at first to be the
attribute of a special power, later it may become an instrument of totalitarian
power. One should be on one's guard against pure concepts.
A Palestinian makes coffee for us.
* *
I want to return to the idea of the Westerner or the Westernized man

who looks out of his window, and the Third World which is at once exploited
and looked at. If the landscape is only looked at, he who looks has a reassuring,
though somewhat sadistic feeling of peace, since he neither is the landscape,
nor is he in the landscape. He is conservative in the sense that he does not
want his landscape to change in form or colour. The miseries of the oppressed
give very beautiful colours to the picture - or the landscape - looked at
by the Westerner. So nothing must be changed - "that," says the bourgeois,
"would spoil the landscape." And it is his landscape.
If the landscape is exploited by he who looks at it, another kind of relation
is established. He who looks at it is no longer the passive guardian of the
landscape, he is the active master of its modification, and this modification
can have only one object- production for the master.
The above is intended to explain that passive and sensual possession
corresponds exactly to positive, modifying possession; as soon as the eye looks,
as soon as it tastes the pleasure of looking, it wants to "preserve" the image
looked at, it takes possession of the landscape so as to keep it to look at, just as
the master wants to take possession of it with another profit in mind.
No one likes to be a strong man's landscape. A self-satisfied look,
that is to say one that wants to keep something so as to look at it, has no
innocence.
THE PALESTINIANS 25
It is to be hoped that henceforward the look of Europeans will never again

be able to fall on "local colour," and that the oppressed will never again offer
anything "beautiful to look at." This was the case with the Black September
commando wearing the cowl at Munich. But will every event take the form of
a challenge to the West?
All this depends, of course, on the style the Palestinian revolution chooses
for itself. If it sets store by its good reputation with the Western countries, it
will try to present an image of itself that is acceptable to the West. In this case
it will deprive itself of the stratagems and tactics that are "condemned" by
international morals and moralism. It will lose by this, it will gain nothing,
because Israel's vigilance and her supporters throughout the world will make
a point of presenting any Palestinian phenomenon - apart from total sur-
render, of course - as a kind of evil that must be combated and crushed, for
imperialism, and its outgrowth, Zionism, are the last incarnations of Judaeo-
Christian morality, which is itself a master of the definition of terms.
The Munich incident hardly surprised me at all. I was in Italy. If it
interests you, I will say a few words about it. As has been said often enough,
the Olympic Games are no more than a profit-making operation, a display
of prestige; they are competitions, therefore a form of international outbidding
through sport. They are a sort of United Nations of sport where all the small
nations can indeed compete, but the only real rivalry is between the two giants.
The real reason why the Munich drama caused such an uproar was not the
Games themselves but the Western press, which is directly or indirectly linked
to Tel Aviv by a complex system of newspaper directors, editors and colum-
nists.
The hijacking by Palestinians of three planes to the Jordanian desert in
August 1970 aroused the same indignation. The papers carried the same sort
of headlines. The vocabulary was the same: criminals, monsters, despicable,
cowardly to describe the Palestinians. The others were innocent victims.
Europe I [radio] even invented the following gag: a woman had a child in the
desert, without water, without medical attention, all among the flies and the
malaria. All the European broadcasting services talked of the dangers to which
the new-born baby was exposed but none of the women passengers was preg-
nant, none of them had a child. A discreet denial was broadcast, but the harm
was done and, because of a completely fabricated incident, the people of
Europe had reason to be indignant with the Palestinians.
The I.C.P. [Italian Communist Party] wrote: "The I.C.P. resolutely
condemns the episode of blind and criminal violence perpetrated in Munich
by a group which is not only outside the real Palestinian struggle..." When
one reads this one must remember that for Europeans it is the newspapers
and the parties, even the communist parties, that are still the masters of lan-
guage, the masters of definition. They make words mean what they want to
please European readers. When the papers, which form opinion, ought to
write "commando" [fida'i], which means one who sacrifices himself, they
write "assassin." They seem to be hypnotized by the Hebrew eye in the sacred
triangle, or by the one eye of Dayan. Here is an example of their use of words:
"All the hostages were killed. Four Palestinians were cut down (abattus). Three
others fled, a policeman was killed and a pilot very seriously wounded" (Figaro,
September 7, 1972): every word is deliberately assigned its load of infamy and
opprobrium.
Again: "... behind the half-closed shutters the Federal police marksmen
opened fire at a prearranged signal, in the same hundredth of a second cutting
down the Palestinian terrorists, and freeing the Israeli hostages unharmed..."
(France-Soir, September 8, 1972). Palestinians have to be cut down, Israelis
freed unharmed. It can also be read as follows: Palestine Crushed, Israel in
Glory. Accomplices: all the Western states and nearly all the Western peoples.
The choice of words in the papers after Munich was calculated to set Pales-
tinians outside the law. To describe any action by such words is to link it
to an underworld which, here again, is the Third World.
This is what it means to be the master: to determine the meaning of
words, to assign to them or withdraw from them their moral import and to
replace it by a load of infamy. Thus the language of the masters, which is
still anti-Semitic, is placed at the service of those who were humiliated yester-
day, of the survivingJews, who frown, proud of their past humiliation.
It is now known that the Israeli ambassador was at the airport. Golda
Meir gave the order to fire from Jerusalem. This death of Jews was desired
by Israel. It was necessary that "all Israel should lament," that the "Israelites
should cry vengeance."
It is also to be observed that, as the German press said: "The police of
all the countries of Europe cooperated so closely in hunting down the Arabs
that it is not too much to say that for a few days there was a single European
police force."
As soon as the idea of a "Common Market," a "Europe of the Six," a
"Europe of the Ten" was put forward it was clear that the unity of Europe
would be achieved, but would only be achieved in strength against a common
enemy. The only common enemy is the poor, the humiliated, the Negro, the
Arab, the yellow man, the slit-eyed. Once the police forces had collaborated
so closely, unity was bound to come. It is not only the capitalists who will
benefit from this Europe, but all the "spectators" of a landscape, European
bourgeois and proletarians alike, because the latter are really bourgeois, as
opposed to the "lumpen," who are the coloured peoples.
England, England before America. The British Empire reached its

height - that is, covered the greatest area of land and sea - when Victorian
THE PALESTINIANS 27
morality was triumphant. While she was crushing, in her own interests, the
whole of India, Hindu and Muslim, the Middle East, the Egypt of Mahomet
Ali, and then "inventing" Iraq, Jewish Palestine and Arabia, England at
home was becoming more and more moralist, to the extent of affectation.
At home, in the British Isles, she allowed herself the luxury of a liberal demo-
cracy that fascinated the world.
When General Amin said that the Israelis should go back to England
he was showing great good sense. When America took over everything that
Europe had done, it was only natural that she should take charge of Israel too.
In the Europe of police forces governments have, as much as they could,
made use of pirates and piracy, just as the police in France in the last century
made use of the services of an cx-convict, Vidoq. French fighter planes
kidnapped Ben Bella, the French police Ben Barka; not long ago the
American police kidnapped, first in Stockholm and then in Copenhagen,
a diplomat who was supposed to have wanted to kill Chiang Kai-shek's son.
The League for Human Rights didn't raise a finger. You know more
than I do about the outrages of the Stern Gang and the Irgun, the explo-
sions in Haifa and the King David Hotel. The English soldiers killed and
stuffed with explosives. You know about the killing of Bernadotte, and the
strange thing is that every one knows about it in Europe - I mean the jour-
nalists - but censorship is exercised when it is a question of the origin of the
Jewish state.
You will have realized that as far as I am concerned the Black September
fighters died as soldiers, and that this Palestinian nation, whose only territory
is Arabism and fantasy, must indeed be strong in the heart of every
Palestinian for it to give birth to men so resolute, so ready to give their lives.
This meant that dialogue with Israel was impossible. The appearance on
the television screen, and on the front pages of newspapers, of the silhouette
hidden by a hood with two holes pierced in it and a sort of "bun" on top
was both frightening and disagreeable. It seems to me to indicate that Black
September has refused to be this landscape, this operetta Third World, this
local colour where death and misery, viewed from afar by European "specta-
tors," are agreeable to look at. This silhouette was, and will remain, strangely
close. Westerners are afraid it might be in their midst. It is neither Fantomas
nor Tarzan; as yet it has no name, and so much the better.
By bringing the struggle to Europe, Black September has brought it
back to its true terrain: Israel and the Arab world at war had become some-
thing of a confrontation between two great gods - Allah and Jehovah - with
each knowing that it was the One. By bringing the war back to Europe they
are returning with perfect logic to the source of their misfortunes - it was
the Russian, Polish, German, French and English governments that were
in favour of the creation of the Jewish state. To return to them as accusers,
as avengers if necessary, can only help Europe to realize its responsibility for
the pogroms. Indifferent to the pogroms, Europe was also indifferent to the
massacres of the Arab population in Palestine. The Jews, hunted out of Europe,
pressed on the place of least resistance - this Ottoman province from which,
they would have us believe today, they were driven out more than two thousand
years ago. But by whom? By the Romans, not by the Arabs.
The Israelis come from all over Europe. If there are among them a few
Iraqi and Yemeni Jews who have escaped massacres, this is a black mark
against Iraq and Yemen, not against the Palestinians.
It seems to me that what has come out of this struggle in the sharpest
focus is the fact that the conflict has gone beyond itself in the sense that it
is no longer only against Zionism and imperialism, but against a tyrannical
morality, the morality which gives rise to Western "values," and also to rac-
ism, anti-Semitism, capitalism and the various imperialisms. It is a morality
that has imposed itself tyrannically. The aim of all the current explosions
in the Third World - in Palestine too - so it seems to me, is to confront words
which are used to express condemnation - for this morality started to exert
its influence by contaminating language. The European press still speaks of
"acts of blind violence, subhuman, unforgivable, abject crimes," when talking
of the Palestinians, in an attempt to intimidate them by a moral asphyxiant
which is exclusively European.
"Mrs. Meir's Call to the Free World" (Figaro, September 13, 1972).
This headline is a slip which discloses that Palestine is not free, but it also says
that the "Free World" - of which Israel is a part - cannot be confused with
the world which has been bound hand and foot, gagged, emaciated, pillaged,
by the "Free World." Without noticing the editor has provided the evidence;
the "Free World" has its armies, its banks, its prisons, its phallic skyscrapers,
its bureaucracy, its innumerable distortions, to confront Palestinian lostness.
Every time a conflict breaks out between the Third World and Europe
it is a conflict between Good and Evil, Europe, of course, representing - no,
being - all that is good. To the extent that one wonders what advantage the
Palestinians can derive from a conflict based on customs - on rules, rather
- which claim to govern the Western world. (In the first place these rules
are not respected. England hands back to Hassan's police two conspirators
who had sought asylum in Gibraltar.) All methods are good if they strike a
blow at this morality which is only observed, and so desperately defended,
because it is a barricade against the demands of an exploited world.
Here is a question that Palestinians always ask me: "What comparison

can be made between the Palestinian revolution and revolutionary movements
in the West (May 1968) ?" My answer will not be satisfactory. The few days
in May 1968 already existed scattered throughout the period of time that
THE PALESTINANS 29
preceded that month in France. In time and in space. But they had to be
"gathered together" if they were to be "written" in a few revealing rather
than spectacular days to disclose what had been at work for a long time. The
Palestinians are still at the stage, as regards the Western world and the bour-
geois Arab regimes, where all blows are useful. According to the international
rules - which are never observed - they are at the stage of the game where
you cheat (for these are rules of war and revolution codified by the West and
observed by the various Arab bourgeoisies). So far it is impossible to say what
Palestine will disclose when she is victorious because, as I have said, her
national consciousness is still being formed in the camps, in the bases, in the
minds of Palestinian students abroad.
One last word: the commando bases created an atmosphere full of vitality,
like that created in France in May 1968. But there was a radical difference
between the two. The commandos were armed, and their arms attracted the
arms ofthe Bedouin like magnets; they lived in a mixture of gaiety and awareness
of danger, and the danger made life in the bases something fine and austere.
Question : What is your view of the European origins of the Palestine question
(the Jewish problem) ? And the extent to which this question is a living issue
today - the persistence of anti-Semitism?
Zionism having been a retort to anti-Semitism on its own ground, what
outcome do you see to this specifically Western problem?
Answer: Obviously anti-Semitism still exists in Europe, and I wonder to
what extent anti-Arab racism may also be used to camouflage anti-Jewish
anti-Semitism. But the origins of anti-Semitism in the Christian West are
extremely complex, one of them perhaps being that the Christians derived
the essentials of their doctrine from the sacred books of the Jews. This, though,
would require very long study which I am incapable of.
It seems clear that, as long as it lasts, the Arab-Israeli conflict will salve
the conscience of the anti-Semites. It allows them to take sides openly with
the "Europeans," for it seems to me that Western public opinion, from in-
dolence, from a desire for intellectual comfort, regards Zionist settlement as
having one origin only - the socialist pioneers who came from Poland and
Russia to found kibbutzim.
It can be said that Jews in Europe are now secure from all persecution
because they are still "covered" by the terrible persecutions of Nazi Germany.
But Israel seems to me to constitute a real danger in the Middle East.
The total imperialism of America could give rise to "minor" imperialisms in
that part of the world, of which Israel would be one.
Here F. interrupted me to point out that anti-Semitism started in Europe
in the Middle Ages. He was probably right if he meant the persecution of
the Jews, especially by the Inquisition. The years of pogroms and terrors
that the Jews lived through in the Christian West cannot be denied. That
anti-Semitism was the cause of Zionism is the explanation now accepted,
perhaps also accepted by the Zionists. But I believe that it should not be
forgotten that Zionism is a nineteenth century phenomenon, which is an
exact copy of its model, colonialism. And since its beginnings Zionism has
displayed just as total a lack of good faith as colonialism. Colonialism claimed
to propagate throughout the world the revolutionary values of 1789, but in
fact it initiated a system of slavery calculated to increase its profits. The
ostensible task of Zionism was to maintain a refuge against Western anti-
Semitism and to recover the Promised Land, but in fact it built a theocratic
state by driving out a whole people. The mechanics of occupation were more
or less the same in both cases: a few pioneers with fairly elementary ideas,
and adventurers who did not hesitate to terrorize and kill the local inhabi-
tants. But all this you know better than I do. As for the last part of the question,
I must say that I can see no other solution than the establishment of socialism.
By this I mean a new order capable of dissolving the essences (Jews and Arabs)
and replacing them by the socialist man. But this solution - and dissolution -
will not come about unless Israel realizes the necessity for socialist revolution.
It seems that we are a long way from that. Israel today is possessed by a feb-
rile will for power.
When someone uses the word socialism as often as I have, you have the
right to ask me: Should I, myself, accept the socialist world?
If it is the kind of socialism whose broad outlines have already been
applied in the world, more or less badly, certainly not. But I should agree to
participate totally in working out a world in which socialism was in a process
of becoming.
Question: What do you think of the movement of support for the Palestinian
revolution in France and the West and the possibilities of its expanding its
scope? What can the Palestinians and their friends do in this field?
Answer: If, for economic reasons - Middle East oil - the French govern-
ment is obliged to make a few declarations of principle in favour of the Pales-
tinians, to recognize their right to exist and even their right to self-determi-
nation, and to tolerate certain Palestinian official representations in France,
we must not let this deceive us: in twelve years the government supplied
Israel with large quantities of arms, and it was childish - or else it was part
of a double game - to advise Israel, as de Gaulle did in 1967, not to use these
arms. How could a state which had paid such a high price for these supplies
cf armaments be expected to listen to the advice of the armaments merchant?
The government is well aware that almost all the French press is controlled
byJews, and that Israel is still loved by the majority of French Jews.
THE PALESTINIANS 31
I think that what has been achieved is good: pressure on the "oil" countries
so that they may exert ever greater pressure on the French government to
shelter and protect the Palestinians in France. But the pro-Palestinian move-
ment itself is very weak and always runs the risk of being accused of anti-
Semitism. Thus the attitudes taken are more humanitarian than really political.
But I am too often outside France to have a point of view, as you would
like me to.
However, I do think that it would be interesting to carry out extensive
studies of a nation in the process of formation, as is done in the case of stars
in the process of formation. In this case, Palestine, not as she will be, that
is impossible, but as she is - that is to say not only since her territory was
removed, but as she is now, since the territory of Jordan and that of South
Lebanon have been withdrawn from under the feet of the commandos.
People thought that these disappointments, these misfortunes would have
defeated the Palestinians and finished off Palestine - as Dayan hoped. But
it seems to me that she is stronger than ever. This is the phenomenon that we
must describe if we are to help her.
Question: What role can literature and art play in the revolution, in the
battle for the liberation of man?
Answer: Here too we must be precise: there is the social, economic revo-
lution, and there are other revolutions, artistic, pictorial, musical, literary
etc. - not to mention cultural revolution, which is something else again.
In general, when people talk of the role of art in the revolution, they
naturally think of making bourgeois art serve the revolution. They try, for
example, to make use of the art of the novel, which seems to me to be a bour-
geois form of expression, against the bourgeoisie. I know of no proletarian novel
and I doubt whether a proletarian, or a revolutionary, would accept the minor
revolutions that have taken place in the art of the novel in the last few years.
To bring about the revolution of October '17 was magnificent. To bring
about a pictorial revolution, as Cezanne did on his own, was also something
very fine. But the men of '17 seized political power and since 1924 they have
forbidden exhibitions of Cezanne or painters who have understood his lesson.
Political revolution and artistic revolution are not always mutually
exclusive, but it must be admitted that one of the things that all revolutions
desire is to be glorified by the academism that should be destroyed.
"Struggle for the liberation of man." Certainly. But revolutions in art
are liberties too great for political revolutionaries.
I firmly believe that the work of the artist should be left free. No one can
advise him. It is possible that some artists may help us from time to time;
they will not be the best.
For the revolution, it is not a question of art, but of information. The

following proposition must therefore be accepted: the art that will be used
by the revolution is an art that will be rejected by some artists, isolated or
otherwise, and will be replaced by a different art.
If we accept political phraseology, we must admit that art belongs to both
the left and the right. That is to say, it is rooted in a tradition and is reflected,
or wants to be reflected, in a future which it will itself have formed, to a vcry
small extent. This ambiguity in artistic work makes it difficult in a political
struggle.
But we can go further than this. In my view artistic work is of two kinds,
and in defining the two kinds in accordance with their functions there must
be no question of preference. On the one hand there is the work which serves
the revolution; this is constructive in the sense that it destroys bourgeois values.
Then there is another kind of artistic work, essentially violent and inflam-
matory, in the sense that it refuses to submit to any value or to any authority.
It disputes even the existence of man. This was the kind I meant when I said
that artistic work cannot serve the revolution, and I insist that it rejects all
values and all authority.
Should art be tied to the revolution? Here it is easier to talk than to act.
How can arrows that fly in different directions be tied together? Take, for
example, Goya's Horrors of War, a collection of pictures in which Goya
condemns the Napoleonic wars. Anyone who has the opportunity of seeing the
whole series is enchanted by the beauty of this work of art. We are so absorbed
by the lightness and vitality of Goya's line that the beauty of the spectacle
makes us forget to condemn the war it represents. What is the state of someone
who looks at this work? I can describe my own feeling as follows: a state of
inward passivity which persists in an unending search for beauty without the
passivity ending. This is its point of no return; if it goes beyond it, it will be
faced with dazzlement and, at the extreme point, death.
As for the revolution and its demands, they are always practical orders,
and when I say that artistic work is inflammatory I mean that in the long run
it upsets all established order, and that the artistic workwhich attacks certain
values gradually, and combats and depreciates them, in doing so starts to
consolidate the highest powers of the revolution. You may say that they are
the powers of the people, and that they are absolute in that the people are the
masters of their destiny. But we must accept the idea that no revolution will
triumph over death. In spite of this it is the duty of the revolution to encourage
its adversaries: works of art. This is because artistic work, which is the product
of the struggle of the artist in isolation, tends to contemplation, which, in the
long run, may turn into the destruction of all values, bourgeois or otherwise,
and their replacement by something else that will more and more come to
resemble what we call freedom.
THE PALESTINIANS 33
But we are still far from that. Revolutionary work has its place in the
revolutionary struggle, but in the bourgeois world it is exposed to all kinds
of exhibitionism and corruption, as is the case at present and will continue to
be for a long time.
The artist is humble, and artistic work will become more and more an
experience of humility. I do not say stupidity, but humility. Whereas at present,
whether in the bourgeois world or in the revolution, it is an instrument of power.
In a different way craftsmanship can drive the craftsman into more and
more archaic attitudes. In certain Arab countries pottery provides many
families with a means of survival. It therefore has to be preserved, because the
first need of a being is to be. To meet the requirements of a transient clientele,
the potter is obliged to repeat ad infinitum the same type of amphora or pot,
a type of amphora that existed and was used two or three thousand years ago,
and that tourists believe to be linked by its very shape to the country or the
landscape. The potter will repeat these shapes ten or twenty thousand times.
If he wants them to sell, these amphoras must conform completely to the idea
of them that has formed in the mind of the tourist. One error and the amphora
is spoiled, and therefore unsaleable. If Picasso casts an amphora it will be all
the more valuable in that it will avoid the antique, and thus academic, shape.
If you like, the more of himself he puts into it, the more he will put his own
freedom into the amphora or, to be more precise, the more the amphora is
the expression of his freedom the more beautiful it will be. But the craftsman
cannot afford make the slightest scratch on the wet clay. There can be no
question of his allowing this deviation to remain and, through it, of making
his own freedom enter into the amphora. Not an atom of his subjectivity. This
is why "tourist" potteries are so melancholy, why the potters are so listless,
because what they make is never of any use to them: their women use light green
plastic pails which are much handier.
A work of art - I am talking of bourgeois art, or art acceptable to the
bourgeoisie - leaves too much to the subjectivity of the artist. I repeat, this
subjectivity can be moving, but I doubt if it can be a revolutionary weapon.
Finally, the definition of a work of art could be the following: an object
that is really of no use.
Nowadays there is a simple medium of expression and communica-
tion - the cinema. Might it be possible for some of the commandos - or
other combatants - to be provided with cameras - including sound ap-
paratus - with which they could make short films, themselves discovering
the most effective technique and aesthetic principles, for showing in the camps,
The Palestinian revolution is right to make use of bourgeois - and so
virtually completed - artistic forms. But at the same time this is a danger for
the revolution, for it tempts it to exploit the same themes, the same images,
the same clichds, and thus the same lies as those which support the bourgeoisie.
Even worse, the artists of the bourgeoisie (the best ones) are marginal in the
bourgeoisie, and to a certain extent the art they produce works against bour-
geois power (not very vigorously, it is true). An art that is entirely at the service
of the revolution is in danger of becoming entirely at the service of the political
power of the revolution. I do not think that this is a good thing, unless we think
that revolutionary power is always capable of appreciating and encouraging a
literary, pictorial, musical, etc., revolution.
To my knowledge there is as yet no Palestinian artistic revolution. It
may well be that people's minds are fully engaged in the political and armed
struggle. But it could happen that an artist, isolated or not, might be vigorous
enough to offer his people new forms which are cleaner, more obvious; if so he
must not be discouraged on the pretext that "Simple people are incompetent."
Simple people understand a new kind of art better than the theoreticianis
who are themselves immersed in bourgeois culture.
As regards helping the isolated artist, I want to say the following. Artistic
work is a proof of the rejection of ordinary laws - that is to say, the laws of
custom - for the discovery of new laws that may open the door to a new
language. The Arab world has been frozen for more than a hundred and fifty
years; if the Palestinian revolution does not give artists opportunities to create,
this will be a great loss. To achieve their goals, these artists will employ the
methods of all people, the methods they can use. So the only schools, the only
rules that exist, are those which must be destroyed and replaced by new rules.
The artist is weak, and it is the duty of the revolution to protect him even
in the sphere of the mistakes he makes - but at the same time he is one of
the most powerful weapons of revolution.
Translated by Meric Dobson

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The Palestinians

Author(s): Jean Genet

[EDITOR'S NOTE: In September 1972 a meeting took place between Genet

The principal subjects dealt with - sometimes in a tired and confused

The special character, the uniqueness of the Palestinian revolution,

Palestinians became conscious of themselves as an autonomous nation in, but

maternal. I mean that it makes imperative demands (all that is involved in

I am told that a Tunisian revolutionary is more sensitized to the Pales-

development of the national consciousness will be accompanied by the develop-

If I were to be asked why I support the Palestinian revolution, in the

feeling that Lawrence was an impostor, even when he claimed to be assisting

It is difficult to say whether the many different origins of the commandos,

It is inconceivable that the Palestinian revolution should not be accom-

One of the problems I am not going to evade is religion. It is pointed out

Finally, religion today is made use of by established authority; it is an

Religion is a withdrawal into the self, it is the continuation of an archaic

belief that was so slight, so tenuous, that I found no difficulty in detaching

F., who wants to rationalize the concept of revolution and, naturally, of

"The peasant is happy to cultivate his land," he said.

Answer: "To recover our land."

He: "Can we get anything else if we don't recover our land?"

We must touch on the question of language. If we want to be a cohesive

if the revolution really consists of changing the patterns of relations between

woman wearing trousers. We had to go from Jerash to Salt to meet a doctor

resources of the Third World? It is possible. My reflections could be

The Palestinians I am with keep on asking questions. I cannot help

I want to return to the idea of the Westerner or the Westernized man

It is to be hoped that henceforward the look of Europeans will never again

England, England before America. The British Empire reached its

Here is a question that Palestinians always ask me: "What comparison

For the revolution, it is not a question of art, but of information. The

Translated by Meric Dobson

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