AndrewV69 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 11, 2018 3:11 am
I am not aware of any comparison. Someone could have and I could have very easily missed it. So many things to do and only 24hours in a day.
I hear ya, #metoo, but in the meantime, I did some googling and apparently the comparison was made... and rejected.
https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comme ... r-homeland
How Palestinians came to reject Kurdish demands for a homeland
The Kurdish independence referendum is going ahead, despite widespread international opposition [AFP]
Date of publication: 25 September, 2017
After months of preparations, expectations in Erbil are high.
On September 25, millions of Kurds in northern Iraq will finally vote in a referendum that touches a raw nerve in the history of nations - do the Kurds deserve a state of their own?
The question to which the Kurds will give an answer in the ballot is not short: "Do you want the Kurdistan region and the Kurdistani areas outside the region's administration to become an independent state?" The ballot will, in a sign of its complex reality, be available in four languages - Kurdish, Arabic, Turkmen and Syriac.
This is asking for trouble.
Baghdad has called the referendum "unconstitutional", and said it would take "all means necessary" to prevent it. Both Turkey and Iran, who both have large Kurdish minorities, have threatened military action. Syria, weakened after six years of civil war, cannot make a viable threat, but instead poses as an example of what ethnic and religious strife can lead to.
Realpolitik
However, the Kurds seem tired of paying the price of the ever-relevant "realpolitik" in the region, or for that matter the considerations of the greater powers like the US and Russia, and will go ahead with the referendum. Many Kurds hope for a historic game-changer, a Krexit, if you will.
But few reactions have been more surprising than that of the Palestinian government - the representatives of another people fighting for independence and a state of their own.
Palestinian diplomats even travelled to Erbil in the semiautonomous area of the Kurdistan Regional Government in order to tell the Kurds that their aspirations would not fly.
...
Dissonance
Despite the Palestinian struggle for freedom, the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah has decided to oppose a Kurdish independent state, regardless of the similarities of their historic struggles. Many Palestinians, however, are aware of the dissonance, and several have sought to distance themselves from the government's decision.
"Purely on a personal level, I understand the Kurds, and believe they do deserve a state," Ghassan Khattib, a former minister and adviser to the late Arafat, told The New Arab. "If you ask ordinary Palestinians, you will also hear the same sentiment."
Still, the Palestinian position on Kurdish independence is not new. In 2015, before the issue of the referendum hit the wider Arab agenda, the Palestinians said no.
"Kurdish independence would be a poisoned sword against the Arabs," Saeb Erekat, a long-time peace negotiator and an adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas, told Al Arabiya. But the Palestinian leadership could not have approached this any differently, says Khalil Shikaki, a renowned political analyst and the leading pollster in Palestine.
"It is unthinkable that the Palestinians would go against a decision of the Arab League and support the break-up of an Arab state," Shikaki told The New Arab.
Shikaki also rejected any comparison between the Palestinian and the Kurdish struggles: "If we were talking about a hostile military occupation in Iraq, I would imagine the Palestinian people would be against it. But the perception here is that the Kurdish region is not controlled by an occupying army."