@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit i think this is right. but even those for whom states feel most artificial have to ask themselves whether wearing a costume for a while isn’t better than ripping it apart in the name of authentic expression. a pan-Islamism could peacefully emerge from the politics of artificial states. an Arabian EU might quickly thrive in ways the European one has not, as in Europe people’s identities are national. 1/

@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit but simply casting off states as colonial impositions, however accurate the characterization may be, means a lot of war, internally against incumbent elites, also externally against all the powers—not just “the West”—for whom militarily assertive emergence of a nonterritorially founded entity vying for allegiance of a globally dispersed umma would seem dangerously destabilizing. 2/

@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit i may be wrong, but in actual practice my sense is the claims associated with pan-Islamist identity are narrower than they might be in theory. people in the Arab world view Baghdad and Cairo and Mecca as capitals of a community to which they belong, but do not view Jakarta in the same way. (Tehran is perhaps an intermediate case?) 3/

@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit a pan-Islamist superstate that is formed from a voluntary association of territorially circumscribed, internationally recognized Westphalian states could emerge peacefully and compatibly with the existing, currently uncomfortable order, and become something much more consistent with lived identities. 4/

@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit i’m obviously a not disinterested outsider, so boulders of salt, but that’s the path i hope they’ll choose. 5/

@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit oddly, this version of pan-Islamism could eventually be compatible with Israel’s existence. as Thomas Friedman (more boulders of salt) likes to put it, Israel has been aspiring with its Abraham Accords and flirtations with the Saudis to join the contemporary Middle East. 6/

@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit if one thinks of the Abbasid caliphate as an Islamic dominion under which diverse other communities who accepted that dominion could also thrive, one might imagine Israel as kind of the superstate analog of a prosperous Jewish quarter of Baghdad.

of course anything like this will remain impossible while millions of Palestinians remain stateless and hopeless under Israeli military occupation. /fin

@Alon @asayeed @BenRossTransit i wonder whether the discriminator here might not be more when rather than how many. Jordan naturalized many Palestinians before the conflict curdled into something quite so bitter and nihilistic and apocalyptic as it has now become. it did the most important work a state does, made that population not stateless, gave people a state which defines enforces certain rights. 1/

@Alon @asayeed @BenRossTransit Jordan’s Palestinian population is obviously pro-Palestinian and in deep, painful sympathy with their stateless brethren. But they have much more to lose, and are less bitter and radical than those who’ve spent 40 years in the desert hoping for Canaan. 2/

@Alon @asayeed @BenRossTransit Over time, naturalization could offer some degree of contemporary normalcy to migrants to, say, Egypt from Gaza or the West Bank. But if you were governing Egypt, and well aware of your precarity doing so, you might wonder how long it might take for bitter, defiant grievances to fade, whether that population would consent to mix and assimilate as much as Jordan’s much earlier wave did. 3/

@Alon @asayeed @BenRossTransit Putting aside questions of justice or the human rights surrounding “ethnic cleansing”, I think naturalization in neighboring states will be a hard-sell due to these very realist concerns. Of course leaders will say, as Sisi does, that they won’t accept them because they must remain steadfast in their noble cause. But that serves both as pretext + to mollify the passions of their publics. On practical grounds, it’s just dangerous./fin

@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit i think Hamas’ position is more ambiguous. it is the inheritor of Palestinians mimetic Westphalianism, like Fatah, sure. But it is also founded from the Muslim Brotherhood and allied with Iran, both of which in different ways (of as yet indeterminate compatibility) represent anti-Westphalian traditions. 1/

@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit it is a national liberation movement and a canny political actor so, sure, when it interacts with governing elites in Turkey and Qatar it is happy to confine its ambitions to the territory between the river and the sea. but i think at its roots it’s allied with the broader pan-Islamist cause, the Zionist entity is a sharp foreign object that must be removed before the wound to the greater umma can be healed. 2/

@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit i think particularly Egyptian elites, who struggle (very illiberally) to suppress pan-Islamist yearnings—it’s the Muslim Brotherhood that wins elections—are sensitive to this aspect of Hamas. /fin

@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit to the degree Palestinian identity is anti-Westphalian pan-Islamist, Israel and Egypt’s elites potentially share a common concern. but Palestinian identity is also has nationalistic strands, hostile both to Israel and to assimilation as Egyptian in ways analogous to—and I think mimetic of—Israeli identity and Judaism’s proud, arguably reactionary, claim to be primary and indissoluble. 1/

@asayeed @Alon @BenRossTransit both strands are bad news for Palestinians who just want to live, as they are both reasons why contemporary states of the region, however legitimate or not, have to fear Palestinians’ potential to affect domestic stability. /fin