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The human rights lawyer, Raja Shehadeh, recently joined a group walking in the West Bank to view what “an anachronistic colonial project in a postcolonial age” looks like on the ground. He ponders the illegally constructed colonies that litter the landscape, their construction since 1967 unhindered by the international community. At one point, he writes,
we stood on a hill opposite the town of Sinjil, where we could see how the settlements were encircling every one of the Palestinian villages in the area, depriving the Palestinians of contiguous land. We were told that this policy of confinement and fragmentation was in accordance with plans set by the Israeli government as early as 1980.
The Palestinians, Shehadeh notes, have no expectations of the US or other western governments: “Instead, they place their hope in the solidarity offered by people sympathetic to their cause” (Shehadeh, 2019).
What is the relationship between “their cause” and the ethics underlying psychoanalysis as a profession, a discipline, and a therapeutic process? There has been no hesitation amongst psychotherapists in condemning the turn—for example in the United States—toward racialized nationalisms. It is readily conceded that here (as, for example, in Myanmar, India, and several East European countries), governing ideologies espouse values that run contrary to the philosophical basis of human rights law, destroy social inclusivity, and foment violence targeted at ethnic minorities.
It is therefore a critical period in which to focus on the Palestinian case, concerning a territory in which the dynamics of domination and subordination have characterized inter-community relationships for over 70 years. There is a global significance to work that deepens appreciation of the human implications of ethnic nationalist movements, and to focus on Palestine is particularly pertinent in the aftermath of President Trump's self-proclaimed “deal of the century”—signaling an intention to consign future gener