Ghassan Kanafani: You Don’t Mean Exactly “Peace Talks” ... Conversation between the Sword and the Neck

“Well, if there are no swords and no guns in the room, you could still talk.” And if there are?

The “negotiations” adhering to the Netanyahu/Trump ultimatum may produce a lower level of violence for Palestinians in the short term, but may well produce another Oslo as I and others have warned, see recent pieces by Mouin Rabbani and Alon Mizrahi.

Oslo of course was the backdoor deal that Arafat entered into in 1993 with Clinton and Israel rather than insist on the application of international law.

A critical juncture was when Hamas “welcomed” the Biden assault on the ICJ orders last year. That could have been stopped. This wasn’t inevitable.

The prophetic Ghassan Kanafani in his infamous interview with Australian journalist Richard Carleton achieved another level of irony recently when Israel targeted the negotiating table, killing several, including Hamas leader Khalil Al-Hayya’s son, Humam. Carleton had said: “Well, if there are no swords and no guns in the room, you could still talk.”

I’ve kept this broken table on my back porch for the last year, where I had typically done my art, which I’ve had little time for, calling it “Negotiating Table”.

The Mossad of course killed the remarkable author Kanafani with his niece Lamees in 1972.

Kanafani’s isn’t an argument for mass killing.

It’s an argument for being rigorous in your analysis so you ensure your rights when dealing with obviously falsifying, genocidal forces.

If — err, when — the US and Israeli establishments again escalate the genocide: X will be more repressed; and thanks to Larry Ellison, CBS and CNN will be more genocidal, TikTok will be propagandized. They will have a new set of distractions. They will likely determine the timing. This is no time to take our eyes off the prize.

The Mossad killed Kanafani precisely for being exacting and discerning. And that’s just what’s called for now.

Why won’t your organization engage in peace talks with the Israelis?

You don’t mean exactly “peace talks”. You mean capitulation. Surrendering.

Why not just talk?

Talk to whom?

Talk to the Israeli leaders.

That’s kind of conversation between the sword and the neck you mean?

Well, if there are no swords and no guns in the room, you could still talk.

No. I have never seen any talk between a colonialist case and a national liberation movement.

But despite this, why not talk?

Talk about what?

Talk about the possibility of not fighting.

Not fighting for what?

No fighting at all. No matter what for.

Yaʿnī, people usually fight for something and they stop fighting for something. So you cannot tell me even why should we speak about what — Or talk about stop fighting, why?

Talk to stop fighting to stop the death and the misery, the destruction and the pain.

The misery and the destruction the pain and the death of whom?

Of Palestinians. Of Israelis. Of Arabs.

Of the Palestinian people who are uprooted, thrown in the camps, living in starvation, killed for twenty years and forbidden to use even the name “Palestinians”?

Better that way than dead though.

Maybe to you. But to us, it’s not. To us, to liberate our country, to have dignity, to have respect, to have our mere human rights is something as essential as life itself.