Palestine Think Tank

Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance

The Palestine Strategy Study Group strongly urges fellow Palestinians to seize their destiny in their own hands by refusing even to enter these other discourses until it is appropriate to do so and to focus all their energies on explaining and promoting the prior Palestinian discourse. The appropriate discourse uses the language, not of peacemaking or statebuilding, but of national self-determination, of liberation, of emancipation from occupation, of individual and collective rights, of international law. This must be the primary discourse. Only when the priorities defined within the primary Palestinian discourse of emancipation are recognised can the hitherto rightly subordinated discourses of peacemaking and statebuilding move properly into the foreground.

It is essential in strategic thinking to take constant account of how the chessboard
looks from the perspective of the opponent. This is fundamental. A player who does not do this – who only looks at the board from its own perspective – will never be a grandmaster. Such a player will lose. The strategic purpose is to exert mounting pressure on the opponent to act as we want. This can only be done if we understand what the opponent desires and fears, and the sources and limits of the opponent’s power. The same applies to inducing third parties to behave in the ways we want them to.