Making "illusion" in the Palestinian case

Our understanding of illusion - at least in this article - differs from the understanding that many Palestinian and Arab writers and politicians dealt with, in the sense of the situation in which impossible goals are adopted, difficult or impossible to achieve within the available data. This applies, for example, to issues such as Arab unity, the liberation of Palestine, or even the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, and sometimes reaches "national unity" and other matters related to the Palestinian cause and Arab issues. This also applies to some of the reactions to my book “Liberation of the East”, which spoke of it being nothing more than a dream or an illusion, although it talks about the need to create a new awareness of the East, which embodies it as a geostrategic entity that allows the convergence of its peoples.

The illusion that we mean here is that you "adopt" a slogan that you not only realize its unrealism and the impossibility of achieving, but that you have abandoned it in the first place, and do not seek to achieve it in any way, and at one moment you consider that it has been achieved, and you ask others to consider it as such, and deal with it. On this basis, it does so for other goals that are not related to the slogan itself, the most important of which is influencing public opinion in different directions.

The illusion here is not related to the difficulty or ease of the goal, nor to the possibility of achieving it or not. Rather, it is the state in which it is abandoned and the attempts to achieve it without acknowledging it, and it is usually done by circumventing and changing it in one way or another, and working to convince people to achieve it.

It is a hypothetical state experienced by the individual, or any legal entity, in which he considers that his goal has been achieved, so the matter mixes between reality and imagination, and between illusion and ambition, or that work is being done to achieve it without it being true. The illusion, in this case, is the transition from the state of working to achieve the goal, to considering it accomplished, even though this did not actually happen.

It is at the level of discourse, that you understand the matter as you want, and not as it is the reality of the situation, so the goal is dealt with as an achievement, and not as an aspiration, demand, and a project that is being worked on to achieve it. From here, any "dream", no matter how great the "imagination", is considered an illusion, if the serious work continues to achieve it. Thus, the "dream" of the fighters differs from the "delusion" of the defeated.

This kind of delusion is artificial among some elites, and perceived by other elites, but in many cases it spreads among broad segments of the people and among the simple masses. The delusional are those "ordinary" people who have been "conceived" by the issue of achieving the goal, or that it is in the process of being achieved, but those who realize this are usually outside the scope of the illusion, but are "busy" with it.

Based on the method of dealing with the goal, whether it was adopted in order to achieve it or in order to preoccupy itself with it and invest in it, it is possible to shed light on the development of the Palestinian illusion, which ranged from the state of “hobby” to the level of professionalism, as its level increases whenever the issue suffers from a closed horizon.

There is no doubt that Palestinian goals are "rare", and in fact I only remember one goal, which is the issue of the unity of Palestinian representation. They remain goals that absolutely no "illusion" was allowed to infiltrate, meaning that no "deception" was made to understand them. That is why the PLO has fought tirelessly all along, in all directions, to consolidate its representation of the Palestinians. In this case, the goal was not just a slogan, but rather a battle without all the sacrifices.

On the other hand, this goal was associated with another “slogan”, which was not characterized by the same rigor that accompanied the unity of representation, which is the “subject of the independent Palestinian decision”, which remained vague between being the reality of his life, or a goal and ambition that he works to achieve, or a “slogan” used when needed. In this case, the slogan's practice was selective from one situation to another, as the slogan's reality was mixed with a lot of "fraud" in dealing with it, and it was used to move from one political alliance to another, and in dealing with Arab contradictions that never stopped.

The Palestinian "illusion", which was characterized in its first phase by the vagueness of the position on the goal, moved to a "higher" stage after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority following the Oslo Accords, and it is the "symbolic" stage that has been confirmed by the Palestinian political behavior since then. This was embodied in the keenness to show the ceremonies that accompany sovereignty and the state, despite the absence of sovereignty and the state.

These things were mastered by President Abu Ammar to a great extent. Red carpets when receiving important guests, and when visiting any city inside or outside the country. And the orchestra accompanied him wherever he went, and the official procession that was a must on the go. Giving the titles of president, minister, and all designations found in countries to senior officials of the Palestinian Authority. That or most of it continued after the era of President Arafat.

Of course, symbolism need not be an illusion. If it is treated as a means to achieve sovereignty in reality and in people's conscience, then there is no illusion. But if it is understood and dealt with on the basis that sovereignty has been achieved, and this symbolism is nothing but evidence of its embodiment, then this is the delusion itself. The picture is exactly like someone who buys furniture before building the house, so this can be understood as an insistence on going to build the house, or that as long as the furniture is there, the house must have been found, and the matter is dealt with on this basis, and here is the illusion.

In the first and second phases of the Palestinian "illusion", the two phases in which the goal was dealt with vaguely, the difference between the goal and its necessity faded away, and the matter became ambiguous between the goal being worked on and being considered accomplished. Among those who understand that the presence of the red carpet means the actual existence of a president, or the necessity of working to find him, and that the presence of a president means the actual existence of a state, or the necessity of struggling to achieve it, the overlap in the two matters was so great that it was difficult to acknowledge the existence or non-existence of an illusion.

However, the matter becomes more clear when talking about a third stage of "illusion", which lies in the Palestinian dealing with the relationship between the means and the goal, so they exchange roles, and the matter moves to considering the means as the constant, and the goal as the variable.

In this context, the means are not replaced if the goal is difficult to achieve, but rather the goal is changed to suit the continuation of the means. And so that we do not enter into a series of changing goals in order to preserve the means, preserving it becomes the greatest goal, as there is no compromise in that at all, and where we record our permanent success as long as we can maintain our means, that is, as long as we succeed in preserving ourselves... We are the means and we the goal.

But this is not the height of delusion in the Palestinian political situation. There is a stage that can be considered more "advanced", in which the declaration of the goal is confused with its achievement, as the importance of announcing the goal is raised to the level of the goal itself.

The Palestinians considered the "declaration" of independence, or the declaration of the Declaration of Independence, independence, and they celebrated and celebrate the declaration just as other peoples celebrate their independence. Many consider the "declaration" of the establishment of the State of Palestine to be the same level as its establishment. They act on this basis... ministries, parliament, agencies, elections and laws...

Once again, what is important here is the context in which matters are understood and dealt with. If this reaches the people (the people), as an incentive to mobilize and insist on moving towards achieving goals, then this is natural, necessary and appreciated. And if it arrives that the task has been accomplished and they only have to “enjoy” the achievements and the goals that have been achieved, then this is an integrated illusion, which will result in a lot of damage.

Delusion is linked to lack of awareness of it, so if we treat it as a mental illness that disappears once awareness of it, then many Palestinian political and cultural elites are not delusional - given their awareness of the situation, but rather produce, market and use the illusion as well. The "injured" is basically the largest percentage of the people and some elites, including those "opposition", who are demanding things that they are supposed to realize that those who are asking them are not related to what they are asking, or are not in a position to deal with those demands.

Palestinian elites have moved beyond the state of illusion to the state of "investing" in it. In the sense that it gave illusion a functional role, benefiting from it in self-preservation and "gains". In this way, all the "mechanisms" by which the status quo continues will be preserved, and this, as we said, requires going beyond the real goals, while maintaining the illusion mechanisms. That which requires "movement", or something like movement, to provide its owner with the ability to justify his existence, nothing more.

This is taking place in the stance towards division, negotiations, some forms of resistance, and the relationship with the United Nations and its organizations, and appears in some political behavior of some political parties, "loyal" or "opposition", as well as in the behavior of some trade unions and civil society institutions.

This illusion, which is made by "experts" in Plato's "parable" theory - and let me be excused for not being familiar with it - so they depict reality as a fantasy and bring in a fantasy according to measure, to present it as an achievement, and it is what is sponsored by a "new" formula of education, media and an army of intellectuals, so it works on Blurring the scene and shuffling the papers, creating "creative" intellectual chaos in the people's mind, imagining retreat as progress and defeats as victories.

It is the illusion that occurs in the absence of a strategy that defines the supreme goals of the Palestinian people, and allows those who benefit from the situation to present their "achievements" to the people, by choosing the goals that they set according to their interests, and market them as the people's goals.

Healing the people from the illusion in which they live, as well as depriving their "investors" of their weapons, requires the courage to make revelations that redraw the real goals, rearrange "things" and create the appropriate mechanisms to achieve them.