Palestinianism is a kind of Islamism

The modern Palestinian political identity is not a nationalist one, but an Islamist one. It is time to end the denialism about this.

Islamism is the real cause of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, not the Jewish state’s recreation in 1948. Grasping that Palestinianism is a particular strain of Islamism is crucial to understanding why the conflict is so intractable.

Read news reports on the Israel-Palestinian conflict and you would think that there are two groups of people - Jews and Palestinians - fighting over the same land.

You might further think that Palestinian politics is divided between Islamist extremists, such as Hamas, and more moderate groups such as Fatah, which runs the Palestinian Authority (PA).

In this presentation, there is a clear distinction between being Palestinian and being Islamist. Yet, Islamism is core to the Palestinian identity.

Many in the West who say that they are “pro-Palestinian” but against Hamas do not seem to know this, or understand that the Palestinian “cause” is an Islamist cause created to destroy Israel and Jews.