Time heals many wounds, but not those of displaced peoples. A friend recently told me the illuminating story of a Palestinian refugee whose ancestors fled from Galilee in 1948 and were forced to relocate to the infamous Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus. After experiencing horrendous violence in the Syrian Civil War, this man risked a perilous, extended journey through Syria and Turkey, ending up in the modally-Palestinian Zervou refugee camp on the Greek island Samos. In this respect, he was not alone; descendants of Palestinians displaced from their homes in 1948 continue to reside in refugee camps, some of them for the past 75 years.
The Palestinian case demonstrates marked similarities to the subjugation of indigenous peoples in the colonial era. Indigenous Americans, for example, have suffered in many ways similar displacements, being limited to ever-diminishing reservation lands, with over 1.5 billion acres of land expropriated by US governments. Yet, my immediate moral intuition is quite different depending on whether it is in response to the occupation of Palestinian lands or the continued territorial marginalisation of Indigenous Americans. With respect to the former, I believe that Israel should be held to account for its repeated violations of international law in its treatment of Palestinians. In particular, I would intuitively support stringent international action in response to Israel’s continued settlement activity and military practices which fail to protect civilians and arguably constitute war crimes through entailing collective punishment, alongside its failure to productively engage with legitimate Palestinian claims in peace talks. Withdrawn aid and economic sanctions, akin to the treatment of apartheid South Africa, seems appropriate, or at least reasonable. My intuitive response differs significantly with respect to the latter case, however. Whilst the historical treatment of Indigenous Americans is undoubtedly reprehensible, rendering the USA an international pariah until it provides compensation satisfactory to Indigenous Americans intuitively feels like an impractical, unnecessary overreaction.
Undoubtedly, one reason for my intuition is that Israel-Palestine has been a more active conflict in my lifetime. I have seen far more images of dead Palestinian children lying in the rubble of obliterated homes than I have of Indigenous American internment camps. Regular news exposure has provoked me to educate myself on the relevant issues, and with such knowledge comes greater sympathy for the Palestinian cause. By contrast, conflict between European settlers and Indigenous Americans is often presented as banished to the past, resolved by the incorporation of Indigenous Americans as citizens in the early 20th century. On reflection, the reality is perhaps more that the USA has been successful in depoliticising the issue and also that Indigenous Americans, unlike Palestinians, have somewhat resigned themselves to their inability to negotiate a better settlement. After all, the experience of Indigenous Americans was analogous to that of the Palestinians, and was the result not equally unacceptable in each case? Both groups saw their populations gradually decimated, such that it was effectively risk-free for the United States and Israel, respectively, to partially include them (as permanent minorities) into the state on diminished lands.
In essence, it has become clear to me that my differing intuitions do not originate in substantive differences in the content of the actions carried out by the United States and Israel. To be sure, these actions occurred under very different international contexts, and therefore their respective legal statuses are distinct. However, the violent expropriation and internment of indigenous peoples constitute an objective moral wrong in both cases, regardless of whether international law recognises it as such. In fact, the only meaningful difference between the two cases is the length of time that has elapsed since the original injustice. This raises the possibility of time itself serving to excuse American expropriation of indigenous land legitimately; perhaps the moral imperative to right territorial injustice dissipates over time. In one sense, this appears blindingly obvious, for surely there are limits to how far we can descend into history in our efforts to correct for territorial injustice. It is difficult to conceive of what, exactly, might constitute a ‘territorially just’ Europe given the region’s numerous historical conflicts. Yet, this is an uncomfortable idea, because it is difficult to conceive of a mechanism by which the simple passing of time could legitimately excuse horrific injustices. One possibility is that time absolves current individuals from the initial wrong committed, such that legitimate claims can only relate to current injustices. But when injustices are committed by states and have such long-term consequences, separating past from current injustices seems like a fallacious distinction.
A more plausible way through which time influences moral intuitions is through its interaction with memory. Absent reminders, political actors consistently forget about injustices over time, and this is likely essential for understanding periodic re-escalations by the oppressed despite the consequences of retaliation that we currently observe in Gaza. More profoundly, however, the passing of time entails the passing of generations. Whilst Indigenous Americans and Palestinians are constantly reminded of their predicament by their circumstances (including overhead Israeli bombers in the latter case), oppressors forget the processes by which the status quo arose. Those without personal experience of historical injustice are more vulnerable to mythology, effectively utilised by American and Israeli governments to construct ‘independence ahistories’ which focus on bravery, honour and liberation rather than ethnic cleansing and colonialism. This mechanism also functions at the international level; the ahistorical self-portrayal of the US as a bastion of liberal democracy, defender of self-determination, and virtuous leader of the international community serves an important role in obscuring America’s tainted domestic history.
Highlighting the centrality of memory raises a rather haunting spectre. Namely, if displaced peoples are those who retain memories of injustices over extended time, then the most effective way to prevent the demand for reparations is to silence displaced peoples. Reducing the populations of victimised peoples means that injustices will likely be viewed in the future as relatively insignificant. This strategy has proved devastatingly effective in Australia, New Zealand, much of Latin America, and the United States, places which have witnessed the near extermination of indigenous peoples. This mechanism is perhaps also behind our relative lack of moral qualms as to historic warmaking. When victimised national groups are subsumed into expanded territory, their voice is more likely to disappear than in the case of maintained separation as in Palestine, and hence we forget. The temporal role of memory is thus sufficiently strong that we effectively ignore some of the greatest atrocities in world history simply because few victims remain to remind us.
The idea that the passage of time is not by itself a source of territorial legitimation has the potential to open up a ‘Pandora’s box’ of radical theoretical and policy questions. One such question refers to whether its logical conclusion is that all colonially occupied land ought to be returned to indigenous peoples, resulting in a very crowded Europe alongside a rather empty Americas. I don’t think this is strictly necessitated. It seems plausible that, at least in principle, displaced people can voluntarily permit time to act as a legitimising force. While arbitrary colonial borders were undoubtedly instances of territorial injustice, the decision of postcolonial states to embrace such borders in attempts to prevent conflict means that they are now rightly understood as legitimate international borders. This logic can arguably be transposed onto our cases. Indigenous Americans, now a small population group, would perhaps consider a small independent state with compensation, or even significant reparations only, as genuinely acceptable outcomes, removing the need for mass exodus. Similarly in Israel, there is no obvious illegitimacy in a one- or two-state solution accepted by Palestinians absent threat or coercion.
Such a logic remains fraught with danger, because of the difficulties of distinguishing between permission and coercion in light of asymmetric power dynamics. To the extent that some limited degree of Indigenous American identification with the US state is produced by deliberate attempts to gradually win ‘hearts and minds’ as a tool of pacification, are Indigenous Americans actually making decisions from a position of autonomy? Separating coercion from permission in contexts which are saturated with colonising attempts to shape the norms and ideas of the colonised is a perilous exercise. Still, this should not prevent us from accepting input from relevant displaced peoples, not least because the longer historical injustice continues, the more pervasive and unresolvable the power dynamics become. Hence, it is vital that territorial injustice is condemned and rapidly combated through innovation solutions. The passage of time may serve to bury the crime, but it does not permit an international ‘statute of limitations’ in the case of either the Palestinians or Indigenous Americans.
This article was originally published in OPR’s Issue 11: Time.
Jed Michael is a third year undergraduate reading PPE at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford.