Joe, did you really say that Palestinians do not want a state, or did I
> misread that? Maybe I am out of date, but when I was there in 1998 it was
> what everyone I spoke to wanted.
"A" state, or "the" state? The question isn't semantic.
Many do, but there's no national consensus around the basic questions of statehood - territory, citizenship, etc. Witness the current jostling between Fatah and some other PLO factions, and the rest of the Palestinian political spectrum, on the current UN bid. And many do reject it as a goal ( http://pechterpolls.com/?p=957), see it as insufficient ( http://www.bdsmovement.net/2011/before-and-after-september-7154), etc.
Where in Palestine were you? The West Bank under Arafat had a little more local consensus on it then, I think, especially if you stayed closer to Ramallah and further from Hebron. (Of course, it's worth remembering that two-thirds of Palestinians aren't in Palestine at all.) And if I relied excessively on the things my personal contacts here say, my perception would be a bit skewed.
> For them, there would have been no obvious difference between ending the
> military occupation and setting up a state.
>
As Abulhawa says, the struggle she proposes "sounds a lot like" statehood, "but it differs in that it is simply a call for basic rights." Her argument - and I think it's a compelling one - is that rights are both points of national consensus, and capable attracting support from people elsewhere in the world who already enjoy them, in ways that questions of state simply are not.
I guess that there might be some ideological confusion sown by the problems
> the Palestine National Authority has had since then, and also by the
> confusion between the demands 'two states' and 'democratic and secular state
> of Palestine' (i.e. embracing both occupied territories and currently
> Israeli territory), but I am still surprised.
>
Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying there's a consensus against statehood; I'm saying there's no consensus around it.
> On the question of ‘natural rights’, that seems to me to be a dubious
> concept, if we are speaking political science, but not really objectionable
> in popular rhetoric.
I generally agree with you. That said, engaging in popular rhetoric that I don't really support, for the exclusive benefit of others, is a skill I badly need to develop. ;-)
Generally speaking, national rights have a priority over civil rights,
> because without a national polity there is no institutional structure that
> can defend civil rights.
I don't funderstand this part. The only successful struggles for civil rights by a nationally oppressed majority - black and other non-white South Africans - that springs to my mind, succeeded without national partition, at least to the extent that we can expect it would have with it, no?
> I can appreciate that Israeli Arabs should wish to defend their rights
> within the Israeli state, but the record is that Israel is structurally
> incapable of protecting the rights of its Arab citizens.
Which leaves the outstanding question: What, then, for 1.3 million Palestinian citizens of Israel? More ethnic cleansing? Permanent subjugation? I'm not challenging you to propose a solution, but any settlement to the broader conflict omitting them won't get very far.
-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."