Abstract

Taking “capitalism itself as the ultimate horizon of the political situation” enables us to reframe binationalism and the Palestinian question. It helps to underscore binationalism as a universalist project, engaged in a fight against domination and exploitation. Seeking economic justice at home invariably links the Palestinian plight to other labor movements in Israel and elsewhere in the region. The solidarity of workers can effectively challenge the interests of the few, de naturalize their exploitation, and foreground binationalism as a socio-economic project, not limited to its own particularist interests, but “grounded in the ‘part of no-part,’ the singular universality exemplified in those who lack a determined place in the social totality, who are ‘out of place’ in it”. If decoloniality and others fetishize the enemy, over-emphasizing his or her exceptionality, and thus always risk reifying the antagonism, binationalism, if it is to be transformative, must embrace its role as a supplement to the Palestinian/Israeli antagonism, taking the task of co-existence, of living together with each other’s neighbor, as an urgent ethico-political challenge, fully cognizant that there is no guarantee of success. And each is killing the other by the window.