Palestinian Collective Memory and National Identity

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Palestinian Collective Memory and National Identity

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Palestinian Collective Memory and National Identity Edited by

Meir Litvak

PALESTINIAN COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND NATIONAL IDENTITY

Copyright © Meir Litvak, 2009. All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States – a division of St. Martin's Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978-0-230-61306-5 ISBN-10: 0-230-61306-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Palestinian collective memory and national identity / edited by Meir Litvak.—1st ed. p. cm. ISBN 0-230-61306-3 (alk. paper) 1. Palestinian Arabs—Politics and government. 2. National characteristics, Palestinian. 3. Nationalism and collective memory—Palestine. I. Litvak, Meir. DS113.6.P33 2009 305.892’74—dc22

2008043018

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Macmillan Publishing Solutions First edition: June 2009 10

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Printed in the United States of America.

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: Collective Memory and the Palestinian Experience Meir Litvak

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1 The Evolution of a Founding Myth: The Nakba and Its Fluctuating Meaning Esther Webman

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2 The Memory that Never Dies: The Nakba Memory and the Palestinian National Movement Michael Milshtein

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3 Memory “from Below”: Palestinian Society and the Nakba Memory Michael Milshtein

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Constructing a National Past: The Palestinian Case Meir Litvak

5 Historical Discourse in the Media of the Palestinian National Authority Sariel Birnbaum

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Palestinian Women and Collective Memory Hanita Brand

7 A Dream of Severance: Crisis of Identity in Palestinian Fiction in Israel Mahmud Ghanayim

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Bibliography

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Notes on Contributors

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Index

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Acknowledgments

It is my pleasant duty to thank those who have enabled this project to come to fruition; first and foremost, the contributors themselves, for their efforts and patience in the arduous process of producing the volume. The former director of the Moshe Dayan Center, Professor Asher Susser, initiated the project and relentlessly made sure that it would move forward. The current director of the center, Professor Eyal Zisser, provided crucial moral, financial, and organizational support, which made the publication possible. The Institute of Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem offered me generous hospitality and a stimulating intellectual environment. Thanks are due to the members of the institute’s study group on nationalism and religion, which met in 2005, particularly Professor Emmanuel Sivan and Professor Yisrael Gershoni, for their constructive input and incisive advice in the editing process. My colleagues at the Dayan Center, Professor Ofra Bengio and Dr. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, read and commented on earlier drafts. The center’s administrative officer Ilana Greenberg was instrumental as always in the production process. Belina Neuberger successfully struggled with the nonnative English of various contributors to produce a unified style. Special thanks are due to the efficient team of Palgrave Macmillan, which was instrumental in producing the book, and to Rachel Kanz of Tel Aviv University, who prepared the index. I am indebted to all and of course take full responsibility for any errors. I owe a special debt to my brother Nathaniel, for his selfless support and immeasurable help, and last but not least my deepest gratitude to my wife, Nava, my son, Omri, and my daughter, Adi, who have endured the trials of my academic life. Meir Litvak Tel Aviv

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A Note on Transliteration We have followed the standard rules of the International Journal of Middle East Studies. For the sake of simplicity, however, we dispensed with diacritical notes on the long vowels a, i, and u. For Anglicized names, such as Cairo or Yasser Arafat, we have used the standard American practice.

Introduction: Collective Memory and the Palestinian Experience Meir Litvak

he essays in this book analyze the evolution of modern Palestinian collective memory and its role in shaping Palestinian national identity. No group identity exists without memory as its core meaning; the sense of continuity over time and space is sustained by remembering, and what is remembered is defined by the assumed identity. Every group develops the memory of its own past and so highlights its unique identity vis-à-vis other groups. These reconstructed images of the past provide the group with an account of its origin and development and thus allow it to develop a historical identity. The past the group prizes is domestic: the histories of foreign lands are alien and incompatible with its own past. National identity requires both having a heritage and believing it to be unique.1 While true for every nation, these observations are particularly appropriate for the Palestinians as a semidiasporic people still engaged in a struggle for statehood and a process of nation building. Moreover, while collective memory is the basis of every national identity, it seems to play a more substantial role in shaping the self-perception and culture of peoples that have suffered historical defeats (such as the Serbs, the Jews, and the Palestinians) than of victorious nations (such as the Americans). In the words of Ernest Renan, “suffering in common unifies more than joy does. Where national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than triumphs, for they impose duties, and require a common effort.”2 Palestinian nationalism—the belief that the Arab population of Palestine forms a collectivity distinct from that of the surrounding states

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while being part of the broader Arab nation—is the product of modernity, modernization, and contingent political developments, like all other nationalisms in the Arab world. Under Muslim rule (638–1917), Palestine as defined by its present borders never constituted a single political, administrative, socioeconomic, or cultural unit. Geographically, it was part of Bilad al-Sham, or geographic Syria. Moreover, notwithstanding the country’s small geographical area, the local Arabic-speaking population (about 340,000 in 1850) was divided along religious, regional, economic, ecological, factional, and clannish lines, as was the case throughout the region. Islam served as the major focus of identity for the majority of the Muslim population, manifested in its allegiance to and support of the Ottoman Empire (1517–1918). The smaller Christian population was divided along various denominational lines. Clan and village served as additional pillars of identity, alongside religion.3 Concurrently, both the religious importance of Jerusalem, which served as the capital of a distinct district (sanjak), and the country’s sanctity to Christianity contributed to the creation of a vague regional identity in parts of Palestine, albeit without political ramifications. When nationalism emerged in Palestine prior to World War I, it was in the form of Arabism rather than as a distinct Palestinian identity. The few dozen nationalist activists from Palestine did not set up their own organizations, nor did they call for a separate Palestinian entity. Rather, they joined the secret Arab associations, al-Fatat and al-‘Ahd, alongside activists from (future) Syria and Iraq. These associations advocated Arab autonomy within the Ottoman Empire.4 Most scholars agree that a specifically Palestinian national identity emerged only in the wake of World War I as a result of several interlinked processes and political upheavals: the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire, the failure of an indigenous successor-state to unite ex-Ottoman Syria, the escalating Zionist challenge, the establishment of British rule over a territorially distinct Palestine, and the corresponding politicization of Palestinians due to unsettled conditions between 1914 and 1923. Historians differ, however, as to the relative weight of these factors.5 Although the establishment of the British Mandate and the struggle with Zionism intensified the evolution of a distinct Palestinian national identity, Palestinian society was less successful than the Zionist movement in building a political and socioeconomic institutional infrastructure. The first recognized leadership, the Palestinian Executive Committee, disintegrated after the death of its chairman, Musa Kazem al-Husayni, in 1934. Its successor, the Arab Higher Committee, was banned by the British following the outbreak of the 1936 Rebellion, and its leader, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, fled the country. The rebellion, which continued till 1939,

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ended in internal Palestinian strife, which cost the lives of approximately 3,000 Palestinians, more than the number killed by the British and the Jews. So divided were the Palestinians that the Arab League had to determine the composition of the newly established Arab Higher Committee in 1945.6 Two other important indications of the weakness of Palestinian national identity and cohesion were the sale of land to Jews by Palestinian landlords and the clandestine cooperation of a large number of Palestinians with the Zionists, mostly for financial benefit.7 The Palestinians’ failure at institution building and the internal social pressure brought about by Zionist immigration were important factors in their defeat in the war that they launched on the morrow of the adoption of the 1947 UN Partition Resolution, which stipulated Palestine’s partition into a Jewish and an Arab state.8 While the Palestinians were unanimous (aside from the very small communist party) in their rejection of partition and the establishment of the State of Israel, they did not fight as a coherent national movement. They failed to present a united front, and their armed militias hardly ever cooperated or even extended help to each other. Despite outnumbering the Jews—by 1.2 million to 600,000—they mobilized fewer fighters in most crucial battles. Equally important is the fact that the Palestinian social services, which depended heavily on the British administration, broke down when the British left the country, thereby accelerating the disintegration of Palestinian society and contributing to Palestinian military defeat.9 The defeat resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel on about 78 percent of historical Palestine and the uprooting of about 650,000 people—either during battle or by expulsion—leading to the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem.10 While the formation of a distinct Palestinian national identity was the outcome of a series of developments, there is no doubt that the 1948 defeat, or Nakba (catastrophe) in Palestinian terminology, is the major event or issue on which Palestinian identity now stands. According to Rosemary Sayigh, who conducted a sociological survey on Palestinian identity in refugee camps in Lebanon in the 1970s, most Palestinians would have defined themselves prior to 1948 either as Arabs or on the basis of their local regional origin, both identities superseding their Palestinian identity.11 ‘Aziz Haidar went even further when he wrote that until 1948 the Palestinians did not constitute a distinct group “that had any sort of ethnic identity,” adding that “the differences between the Palestinians and the bordering peoples of the region were less obvious than the differences within the Palestinian population itself.” Nor, he said, did the Palestinians note any distinguishing traits to differentiate themselves from other Arabs.12

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In contrast to other Arab states that engaged in concerted nation building after gaining independence, the defeat and displacement dealt a heavy blow to the Palestinian national movement, which remained leaderless and without any effective institutions. Palestinians were dispersed throughout four communities: those who had left Palestine altogether and resided in refugee camps, mostly in Lebanon and Syria; those who had remained in geographic Palestine—that is, both the original inhabitants and the refugees—and were divided among the Jordanian-ruled central area that became known as the West Bank of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (about 700,000 people); the Palestinian community in the Egyptian-controlled Gaza Strip (about 200,000 people); and the Palestinian community in Israel proper (about 130,000 people). Two of these communities—those under Jordanian rule and those in Israel—experienced a systematic and coercive attempt at de-Palestinization, mainly through harsh political control and educational attempts to reconstruct their collective identity. The Hashemites imposed a “Jordanian” identity, while the Israelis created an “Israeli Arab” identity. Indeed, only with the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964 and the official emergence of Fatah in 1965 did a national movement reemerge. Yet, it was the bitter encounter with, and rejection by, the neighboring Arab societies that finally fostered a distinct Palestinian identity among the refugees.13 The Palestinians were resented by other Arabs for a combination of political, social, and economic factors, and were considered intruders and disruptive outsiders, thereby revealing the disparity between the ideal and the reality of Arab unity.14 The crystallization of ethnic identity within the Palestinian communities throughout the Middle East was therefore, and to a large extent, the result of their inferior economic, social, and political status in the host communities, rather than of basic cultural differences between them and the other populations of the region.15 A Fatah publication in the 1960s boldly asserted that “the persecution of the Palestinians in the Arab lands” contributed to the “perpetuation of the Palestinian personality and prevented its assimilation.” Reacting to their treatment by other Arab societies, the Palestinians developed a sense of alienation from and hostility toward other Arab regimes and peoples. Moreover, their experience with Israeli rule and their status as a minority in a Jewish state sharpened the Palestinian identity of those who had become Israeli citizens.16 The major formative element of Palestinian identity, however, was the Nakba. Since language had never been a distinctive component of Palestinian identity, and the territory was partly lost and divided, the third constitutive element of national identity, collective memory, became the major force of preserving and cultivating Palestinian nationalism.

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Palestinian Identity in Light of the Literature on Nationalism As the study of nationalism has developed considerably in recent years, it raises the question of the extent to which the various theoretical approaches, ranging from the primordialist-perennialist to the radical modernist, advance our understanding of the birth and evolution of Palestinian national identity and of the role collective memory played in its development.17 As in most cases in the world, Palestinian nationalists too adopted the primordialist argument, asserting the existence of a distinct Palestinian-Arab people dating back to the ancient Canaanite period. The vast majority of scholars of nationalism do not subscribe to this type of primordialist argument, which does not take into account the dynamics of historical development and change. It can be shown that the Arabic-speaking inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire retained the notion of a distinct identity based on language, on shared memories of an early Arab-Islamic past, and on territorial concentration. However, these feelings pertained to a much broader identity than the Palestinian one, pointing to latent Arab ethnicity, and encompassed greater territories and groups than the future political and national units of the Middle East.18 Considering the great historical upheavals that have taken place in Palestine, involving population migrations as well as linguistic, religious, and cultural changes, it is practically impossible to establish direct continuity from the Canaanite period to the present.19 Furthermore, aside from the periods of Jewish presence in the land, which the Palestinians exclude from this narrative, there is no historical indication that the inhabitants of Palestine developed a sense of distinct identity or acted politically upon it prior to the twentieth century. The Weaknesses of the Mechanistic Approach Ernest Gellner and Eric Hobsbawm, who stand at the other extreme of the primordial approach, see national identity as a purely modern phenomenon, a product of social engineering, and a “contingent, artificial, ideological invention.” Gellner views industrialization and its related development of urbanization as the main force in the creation of nationalism. The modern state’s need for an industrial workforce and a modern military could only be met by the nation state whose centralized system of education would facilitate the creation of a uniform mass culture that is literate and specialized or, in other words, a “high” culture. These developments erode the traditional ties among people and bring about a new set of social relationships whose linchpin is nationalism. In Gellner’s words, “[Nationalism] invents nations where they do not exist.”20

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Hobsbawm goes further in describing nationalism as a fabrication of elite groups. According to Hobsbawm these elites seek to manipulate the masses by inventing traditions. They link the masses to the past, in order to legitimize their hold on power and to divert the social grievances of the masses against foreign states, thus foiling both revolutionary processes and democratization. However, whereas Gellner accepts the sociological reality of nations and nationalism once they have been formed, Hobsbawm dismisses this reality as purely artificial.21 Undoubtedly, modernization—and the spread of modern education following Ottoman reforms and foreign missionary activities—played a crucial role in the evolution of nationalism in the Middle East. Yet Gellner’s approach, as various historians have pointed out, is too mechanistic and leaves no room for human agency in history. Moreover, as far as Middle Eastern nationalisms are concerned, his emphasis on the creation of nationalism by states for the purpose of industrialization has little relevance to the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Middle Eastern agrarian societies. Ottoman centralization efforts during the nineteenth century were aimed at creating an Ottoman imperial identity, not a modern nationalist one. If they contributed to nationalism, it was only indirectly and unintentionally, by eroding the religious basis and raison d’être of the Ottoman Empire. But more importantly, reaction and opposition to Ottoman centralization and Turkification policies actually engendered an Arab, not a separate Palestinian, nationalism.22 Gellner’s approach may be more applicable to the postindependent era when various Arab states, most notably Iraq, sought to forge a uniform national identity out of disparate religious and sometimes ethnic groupings. However, it is of little use in the Palestinian case, since there is no Palestinian state as yet. Moreover, there is no need to forge an industrial workforce and an army of soldiers who are able to read training manuals for machines and weapons in one written language, instead of in a variety of vernaculars. Indeed, Palestinian industrialization is minimal and is in any case not supported by a state; nor are there any minorities that use different vernaculars. The common written language, literary Arabic, is not unique to the Palestinians but is shared by other Arab states, and emphasizing its role does in fact enhance a broader Arab identity over a distinct Palestinian nationalism. Hobsbawm’s emphasis on the artificiality of nationalism and on what he sees as a purely cultural artifact does not account for its success in inspiring the loyalty and self-sacrifice of a great many people—the Palestinians included. Nor does it account for the failure of authoritarian states like the former Soviet Union or Yugoslavia to create a Soviet or Yugoslav nationalism that would bridge the cleavages between ethnically diverse populations.

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Ironically, the Marxist Hobsbawm portrays the masses as a purely passive collective, which lacks any clear perception of its culture, identity, or memories of its past, and is easily manipulated by the elites. Nor, maintains Anthony Smith, do Gellner and Hobsbawm explain why elites or people in general feel the need to refer back to “their” ancestral traditions or “invent” traditions that are linked with them. According to Smith, it is very likely because these traditions are still powerful, so that many people continue to follow them, however irrelevant they may seem to some scholars and to theorists of modernity.23 There is no doubt, as the various chapters of this book will show, that the past, real or imagined, plays a crucial role in Palestinian identity and nationalism. Whatever its roots, Palestinian national identity is genuine, and many Palestinians are willing to sacrifice their lives for it. Dismissing these feelings as mere products of manipulation not only reflects a patronizing attitude but also ignores the complexity of the historical processes that took place in the territory of the former British Mandate of Palestine. The Palestinians as “Imagined Community” and as “Ethnie” The emergence of Palestinian nationalism is best explained by combining elements from the two seemingly opposing approaches to the study of nationalism advocated by Benedict Anderson and Anthony Smith. Anderson, one of the leading advocates of the modernist school, focuses on the dynamic modes of identity construction and emphasizes the creative and contingent character of national identity as well as its adaptability to a myriad political and social contexts in the modern world. The process is intimately tied to modernity, secularism, and capitalism, all of which triggered the diffusion of the written word through what Anderson terms “print capitalism,” thus facilitating the development of collective political mobilization. The two major tools of print capitalism, namely, the newspaper and the novel, created new concepts of space and time, generating a new sense of community. The diffusion of print and the transformation of oral vernaculars into written languages coincided with a process of secularization, the declining sanctity of imperial dynasties, and the fragmentation of Europe. Both the people and their language gained in importance, and the printed word became the hallmark of the new communities.24 While Anderson emphasizes the centrality of the ceaseless process of identity building, “the imagining of the community,” he does not imply that nations are fictitious or imaginary. On the contrary, they are a genuine phenomenon rooted in historical processes. However, unlike the much smaller traditional communities, members of the modern nations will never know all their fellow members

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personally, and can therefore only relate to their nation through their imagination. Although there are some major differences between the Middle Eastern historical scene and Anderson’s description of the European one, his model contains some points that may be very useful for explaining the emergence of Palestinian nationalism. True, Arab nationalism did not evolve out of the breakdown of an older, sacred language (Latin, in the European case) and the transformation of oral vernaculars into written languages, but it came about through the vehicle of literary, not spoken, Arabic—that is, classical Arabic, which has always retained a significant cultural and symbolic role. Furthermore, unlike the vernaculars in Europe, the various Arab vernaculars never evolved into written languages. The central and sacred role of literary Arabic as the language of the Qur’an stands in the way of such a process, thereby slowing down the evolution of distinct identities within a broader Arab nationalism.25 Yet, the development of print capitalism produced a modern “middle Arabic,” which became the dominant vehicle of written cultural production in the Arab Middle East. Equally important, the Arab cultural revival provided the cultural and historical repertoire on which the twentiethcentury Arab nationalists could fall back when they were looking for new frameworks of identity to replace the Ottoman one. It is this cultural storage that explains why Arabism was chosen by these elites over other potentially competing ideologies and identities.26 While the development of the modern Arab press definitely facilitated the growth of Arab nationalism, the diffusion of the modern press in Ottoman Palestine fulfilled a particularly important role in laying the foundation of a distinct Palestinian identity. Newspapers create a sense of community and territory by focusing on issues especially relevant to a perceived community and by drawing a distinction between local, territorial, national, and foreign news. The most prominent example was the biweekly Filastin, which was founded by the Christian al-‘Isa cousins, ‘Isa and Da’ud, in Jaffa in 1911 and became the Arab newspaper with the largest circulation in the country. Although the boundaries of the geographical region envisioned by the name “Filastin” (Palestine) were not clear, the paper’s categorizations or distinction between local and foreign news, and particularly its vocal opposition to Zionism, played a key role in instilling the notion of Palestine as a geographical and sociopolitical entity, whose various social groupings were threatened by Zionism.27 Another major contribution of Anderson, based on the case of Latin America, concerns the role of colonial boundaries in shaping modern national consciousness. In postcolonial societies, territory carved by colonial powers often defines the nation.28 Under the Pax Ottomanica, the historian

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Haim Gerber maintains, the empire was subdivided into provinces whose names and borders kept changing over time. The borders did not hinder movements, and therefore no psychological barriers between areas were created.29 The situation changed drastically with the post–World War I colonial division, mandated by the Great Powers, which created new territorial entities with fixed borders under different foreign administrations and political centers, and governed by different political systems—monarchies in Iraq and Transjordan under the British Mandate, republican systems in Frenchruled Syria and Lebanon, and Palestine with its own distinct administration. These new entities, artificial as they might initially have been, shaped different political, social, and cultural communities, which gradually acquired lives of their own. The importance of colonial boundaries in shaping national identities is particularly pertinent to Palestinian nationalism. In the immediate post–World War I period, Arab nationalists and the Muslim population of Palestine opposed the separation of Palestine from the newly emerging Arab kingdom in Syria and adopted the identity and political program of southern Syria (Suriyya al-Janubiyya) as the best means to foil the looming Zionist threat. During Faysal’s short-lived rule in Damascus, thousands of Palestinian notables, teachers, professionals, and intellectuals signed petitions to the British government, asserting their conviction that the territory was a part of Syria. The First Palestinian Arab Congress, held in Jerusalem at the beginning of 1919, stated in its resolution: “We consider Palestine nothing but part of Arab Syria and it has never been separated from it at any stage. We are tied to it by national (qawmi), religious, linguistic, moral, economic, and geographic bonds.”30 Although the southern Syrian collective identity almost completely disappeared from the local political scene following the fall of Faysal’s kingdom, Palestinian writers continued, well into the late 1940s, to denounce the carving of the artificial border between Palestine and Syria as a negative byproduct of British imperialism and Zionism. Yet, in the course of time, the new border marked the distinctly different historical courses that the two societies experienced in Britishmandated Palestine and French-mandated Syria with all their concomitant administrative, economic, and political ramifications. Likewise, the carving of the Emirate of Transjordan from the territory of Mandatory Palestine, and the 1922 British White Paper, which excluded Transjordan from the area in which the Jewish national home was to be established, were the decisive factors in the creation of two increasingly different identities, Palestinian and Jordanian. Equally important is the fact that Palestine west of the Jordan River henceforth became the contested territory between the Palestinian and the Jewish national movements.31

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Another manifestation of the impact of borders on the evolution of consciousness is found in Mahmud Ghanayim’s chapter on the crisis of identity of Palestinians inside Israel as reflected in literature. The post1948 borders and subsequent political, administrative, and socioeconomic developments shaped the consciousness of Palestinian Israelis as a distinct subgroup of the Palestinian people. Using literary analysis as his main tool, Ghanayim shows the successive tribulations of that identity formation over the past 60 years—belonging to the Arab nation and the Palestinian people, while living as Israeli citizens and as a distinct minority within the State of Israel, itself in a state of nearly constant hostility with the Arab world and the Palestinian people. A corollary to the boundaries was the drawing of maps that transformed the new “imagined community” into a visualized and concrete reality. The importance of maps of Palestine with its mandatory borders is evident since they serve as the sole basis for the definition of the territory of Palestine for both the nationalist PLO and the Islamic Hamas, as shown by Meir Litvak and Sariel Birnbaum in this volume.32 Moreover, Birnbaum also illustrates that in the Palestinian case the map is designed to preserve the spatial reality that was lost in 1948. Hence, while the Palestinian discourse frequently refers to maps of Mandatory Palestine, even marking Arab villages that no longer exist, these maps patently ignore existing Jewish localities inside Israel. The continuous use of these maps signifies the gap between a political reality that requires territorial compromise and the Palestinians’ unfulfilled national aspirations. The Palestinian case provides a good example of Anderson’s observation that nationalist mythmakers sometimes engage in a process of “modular transfer” by ascribing to their own national movement the characteristics of other, previously successful movements.33 Not only did Palestinians adopt myths of ancient descent, borrowing from Western scholarship and models, but on occasions they even emulated Zionism. Most conspicuous on the symbolic level is the Palestinian 1988 Declaration of Independence, which exhibits substantial, and very likely intentional, resemblance to the 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence.34 Another case in point, discussed in Esther Webman’s essay, is the application of the Holocaust discourse and vocabulary to the Palestinian national disaster, the Nakba. Illustrating the same process is the Palestinian institution-building effort, which—whether consciously or not—followed various Zionist models, apparently in the belief that these models played a key role in the success of Zionism and in the Palestinians’ own defeat in 1948.35 Anthony Smith accepts the modernity of nationalism as an ideological movement. However, he departs from the modernist camp by maintaining that there is an essential ethnic core to almost all modern nations.

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He borrows the French term ethnie and employs it to define specific populations with shared ancestry myths, historical memories, and common cultural traits, associated with a homeland and having a sense of solidarity, at least among the elites. He argues that modern political nationalisms cannot be understood without reference to these earlier ethnic ties and memories, and, in some cases, to premodern ethnic identities and communities.36 Smith’s approach is particularly helpful for analyzing the rise of Arab nationalism and explaining the Arab component in the various territorial nationalisms in the Middle East. Unlike in the European case, the old elite culture in the Arab provinces did not disappear with modernization, but was adapted, expanded, and spread to form the modern national Arab high culture. Likewise, the Arab past, particularly the association of the glorious early days of Islam with Arabism, played an important role in Arab political and national revival. However, these elements are less helpful in explaining Palestinian nationalism because they do not differentiate between the Palestinians and other Arabs. What sets the Palestinians apart are the more recent developments to which Smith points. The first is the evolution of a particular identity as a result of a conflict between two groups over territory; in Smith’s words, “the frequency, intensity and duration of wars between rival polities is itself a significant factor in crystallizing ethnic sentiments among an affected population.” Confrontation with an “other” always leads to enhancement of the “self ”—in this case a distinct Palestinian identity.37 Modern communication, in Glen Bowman’s perspective, could suffice to create a sense of community, but it is the matter communicated that transforms this abstraction into something one can identify with and fight for.38 The imagined community is, to use Anderson’s term, supraterritorial— that is, Arab. However, the immediacy and proximity of the Zionist challenge distinguished the Palestinians from other Arabs. Equally important, the Zionist challenge has politicized broader strata of society and driven them into a prolonged and incomplete process of developing and articulating a common sense of identity, manifested in aspirations for Palestinian-Arab statehood. The major goal of the newly formed Palestinian nationalism was to resist or expel the source of the threat. In a similar vein, the political geographer Oren Yiftachel shows how, due to the inconclusive struggle with Zionism over the land, Palestinian nationalism evolved as ethnonational in character in which territory became the main—though by no means sole—shaper of the nation. Taking the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence as a prime example, he argues that it places great importance in grounding Palestinian national identity and claims in a specific territory, which would embody its history, memories, culture, religion, and future.39

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In this context, an additional valuable point in Smith’s writings is his stress on the quest of every national movement to establish a common historical past, based on a sense of common identity and shared history. Smith cautions that this does not mean that this history is necessarily academically valid or cogent—indeed, he asserts, many nationalisms are based on historically flawed interpretations of past events and tend to overly mythologize small, inaccurate parts of their history. Nevertheless, while modernists like Gellner and Hobsbawm dismiss this search for the past as irrelevant or as an outright fabrication, Smith contends that the past does matter, as many people “appear not only to believe they have navels; they believe in the reality of the situation which gave them navels, and which their navels symbolize.”40 Primordialist claims, according to Levinger and Franklin-Lytle, function both to construct identity and to build a highly effective rhetorical strategy for popular mobilization. They serve as a critical element of a “common triadic structure of rhetoric,” which juxtaposes idealized images of the nation’s past and future conditions with a degraded present. This narrative pattern not only motivates political action but also diagnoses the causes of national predicament and prescribes the actions required for the community’s redemption.41 In view of the gloomy picture of the Palestinian present, this formula plays a central role in Palestinian national discourse. For Palestinian society, three periods of the past are relevant in the search for a golden age and for drawing inspiration and political motivation for present-day action: the ancient Canaanite past, highlighted by the PLO and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA); the golden age of Islam, to which the Islamist movement Hamas resorts; and pre-1948 Palestine, to which both parties cling. Significantly, as Litvak, Birnbaum, and Webman show, only the latter two periods serve mobilizational purposes; in other words, while Palestinian nationalism claims primordialist roots going back to Canaanite times, this past does not resonate with the masses, either because it is too mythical or because it goes against powerful religious sentiments. By contrast, the early Islamic past is much more deeply embedded in Palestinian Arab culture and religious life, while the pre-1948 past is still a living past, both because it is still part of some people’s personal biographies and because its effects, both the dispersion and the remnants of the lost villages, are still visible. Collective Memory and Palestinian Nation Formation Broadly defined, collective memory is “how members of society remember and interpret events, how the meaning of the past is constructed, and how it is modified over time.” It refers to the dissemination of beliefs, feelings, moral

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judgments, and knowledge about the past, both for self-understanding and for winning power in an ever-changing reality.42 According to Maurice Halbwachs, the first social scientist to provide a systematic analysis of this concept, collective memory is a social construction that develops and unfolds in specific social contexts, and as such is located within what he terms “the social framework (cadres sociaux) of memory.”While only individuals possess the capacity to contemplate the past, they do not know the past singly but as part of a collective, social group. It is a collective phenomenon, but it only manifests itself in the actions and statements of individuals. It is imbedded in the social structure and changes when social bonds weaken or dissolve, or when new bonds replace them. Consequently, the social group to which the individuals belong influences and conditions their memories of the past. The work of group memory, Halbwachs adds, is to respond to the needs of present action, and these needs function as a filter, which “chooses between forgetting and transmitting traditions, so that traditions are modified as groups change.”43 Each group or community develops a collective memory of its own past, which faces or confronts the collective memories of other groups. The social function of collective memory is to reconstruct the past as well as to legitimize the present and a much-coveted future.44 As such, it is “as much a result of conscious manipulation as unconscious absorption, and it is always mediated.”45 Although collective memories have no organic basis and do not exist in any literal sense, and though they involve individual agencies, the term is not simply a metaphorical expression. The decisions by individuals to act in public, by creating associations or by writing memoirs, are profoundly personal; nevertheless, they are not purely private matters, since they exist in a social framework of collective action. Collective memory originates from shared communications about the meaning of the past, anchored in the lives of individuals who partake in the communal life of a specific collective.46 This observation is particularly apt in the Palestinian case, where, in the absence of a state, first individuals and later on group agencies have played a key role in cultivating collective memory. In his influential study, Pierre Nora explains the preoccupation with memory in modern times as a product of rapid social changes that erode and all but obliterate genuine, spontaneous, and unpremeditated forms of memory that prevailed in the past. Nora maintains that modernity compels human societies to produce manufactured forms of memory, or “sites of memory” (lieux de mémoire ), that serve as the reference points of collective memory to compensate for the elimination of more natural forms of remembering. Their purpose is “to stop time, to block the work of forgetting. They all share ‘a will to remember.’”47 Sites of memory are artificial and deliberately fabricated. They exist to help us recall the past, which

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is perhaps necessary in order to make living in the modern world meaningful. These sites include almost all social products and cultural artifacts such as archives, museums, cathedrals, palaces, cemeteries, and memorials; concepts and practices such as commemorations, mottos, and rituals; and objects such as inherited property, commemorative monuments, manuals, emblems, basic texts, and symbols.48 Israel Gershoni criticizes Nora for drawing too sharp a dichotomy between the environments of memory found in the past and the sites of memory that characterize the modern era. He further maintains that Nora is not sufficiently sensitive to the persistence of the past, in the sense that older memories do intrude into modern reality, and to the possibility that the manufacturing of modern memory takes place alongside the perpetuation of traditional memories.49 As this book demonstrates, the Palestinians are in a transitory phase as far as Nora’s categorization stands. On the one hand they have experienced major historical changes and dislocations in the past century, culminating in the 1948 Nakba, which has largely eliminated an old way of life. On the other hand, the living memories of 1948 are still alive—even though those who have actually experienced these events are gradually passing away. It is because of the current political status and living conditions of many individuals in the refugee camps and the proximity to the lost villages in what is now Israel that these memories are kept alive. Yet, in view of the increasing distance from the Nakba, the national struggle with Israel, and the continuing, albeit disjointed, process of nation building, the cultivation of collective memory has become a major Palestinian national enterprise. Nationalism is one of the most forceful agents for the construction and reconstruction of collective memories. The producers of nationalism shape collective identity by the recovery, reconstruction, or invention of a collective national past. Nationalism identifies the available repositories of the past and selects fragments or elements of past periods, events, symbols, or heroes from which it creates a new unified collective past. The national past is, in fact, memory rather than historical past. It is planned and constructed by the engineers of national identity, who pick from history those “great moments” in whose recovery or renewed identity the promise of national revival is found. The strong and interdependent links between nationalism, identity, and memory materialize in the sites and rituals of commemoration, where the national movement fuses and molds the collective memory into collective identity.50 Collective memory provides an overall sense of the group’s development by offering a system of periodization that imposes a certain order on the past. Like other aspects of this process, periodization involves a dialogue between the past and the present, as the group reconstructs its own

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history from current beliefs and needs. Its power does not lie in its accurate, systematic, or sophisticated mapping of the past, but in establishing basic images that articulate and reinforce a particular ideological stance.51 Collective memory highlights certain periods as representing important developments of the group while defining others as historical setbacks. Yet, as Wulf Kansteiner observed, collective memories often have a strong bias toward the present, inasmuch as they dedicate disproportionate amounts of time, space, and resources to communications about events that happened within the lifetimes of its producers and consumers.52 In the Palestinian case this periodization may be divided into three major periods: the pre-Islamic past, which the Palestinian elites have sought to promote and instill, ever since the 1970s, in the minds and consciousness of ordinary Palestinians as an integral and important component of Palestinian collective memory and of the dispute with Zionism; the Arab-Islamic period from the seventh century until the advent of Zionism; and finally, the modern period, overshadowed by the struggle with Zionism, particularly the 1948 Nakba. Societies preserve memory of the past mainly by means of chronicling and recording. However, although there is no trace left of the greater part of history, and only a fraction of what happened can be reconstructed, the fragments from the past that do exist are incredibly numerous, albeit only a small part of these reminders can be put to use. Hence, societies are engaged in a constant process of remembrance and forgetting, which is closely interlinked with the construction of collective memory.53 The events selected for chronicling, as Barry Schwartz asserts and as is shown in the following chapters, are not all evaluated in the same way. To some of these events we remain indifferent; others are commemorated, that is, invested with extraordinary significance and assigned a qualitatively distinct place in our conception of the past. Thus, commemoration serves as the active agent behind both memory and identity as it lifts from an ordinary historical sequence those extraordinary events that embody our deepest and most fundamental values. Public commemoration is also a medium for transmitting messages to a broader public. Participation in rituals of public commemoration reinforces a sense of shared national identity based on a common collective memory. New nations, which are fragile and feel that their national identity is threatened, tend to intensify the commemorative effort. Indeed, both new nations and old states require an ancient past.54 In revolutionary France and in the United States, the need to commemorate arose out of a desire to break with the past.55 For the Palestinians, the opposite is true: collective memory and commemoration have assumed particular importance in order to overcome the break with the past caused

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by the 1948 Nakba. In Europe, the dead were the subject of considerable efforts of commemoration. For the Palestinians, it was mainly the shattered old way of life that stood at the center of commemoration; rather than cemeteries or monuments for fallen soldiers, the ruined or abandoned villages were the main sites of memory, not only physically, but also in poetry, literature, and the fine arts. In recent years, however, partly in response to Jewish or Christian sanctification of cemeteries or due to the adoption of various Western modes of commemoration, the Islamic movement inside Israel has directed much effort toward rebuilding old cemeteries, an action quite foreign to Sunni Muslim tradition. Likewise, the glorification of the martyrs (shahid, pl. shuhada’) during the 1987–93 intifada and the 2000–2006 confrontation has assumed a major role in Palestinian commemorations, particularly with the advent of Hamas.56 Each act of commemoration reproduces, in Yael Zerubavel’s words, a commemorative narrative—a story about a particular past that accounts for this ritualized remembrance and provides a moral message for the group members. Each commemoration reconstructs a specific segment of the past and is, therefore, fragmentary in nature. Yet, taken together, these commemorations contribute to the formation of a “master commemorative narrative” that focuses on the group’s distinct social identity and highlights its historical development. It serves as a basic “story line that is culturally constructed and provides the group members with a general notion of their past.” Since collective memory highlights the group’s distinct identity, the master commemorative narrative focuses on the event that marks the group’s emergence as an independent social entity. Through the construction of the past, the commemorative narrative creates its own version of historical time as it elaborates, condenses, omits, or conflates historical events. By using these and other discursive techniques, the narrative transforms historical time into “commemorative time.”57 The Palestinian master commemorative narrative is, according to Birnbaum, formulated as a cyclical process in which the Palestinian people inhabited its land, confronted foreign invasions and occupations, waged a struggle against the foreigners, gained its liberation, and subsequently faced other invasions, thus repeating the cycle. As Litvak shows, it seeks to mark the emergence of the Palestinians as a people during the Canaanite period, while reaching its apogee with the 1948 Nakba as the event that most conspicuously shaped modern Palestinian identity and memory. The mapping of the past through the construction of a master commemorative narrative also designates its “commemorative density,” that is, the importance that society attributes to different periods in the past: while some periods enjoy multiple commemorations, others attract little attention, or fall into oblivion. The commemorative density thus ranges

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from periods or events that are central to the group’s memory and are commemorated in great detail, to others that are left unmarked in the master commemorative narrative.58 Again, these differences are highly evident and significant in the Palestinian case. The period with the highest commemorative density is the modern one, culminating in the 1948 Nakba, for the obvious reason that this is the most traumatic event in Palestinian history, whose ramifications touch upon the life of every Palestinian. Concurrently, the lack of density in the earlier periods indicates the late emergence of a distinct Palestinian nationalism, as these earlier periods were either regarded as part of the broader Arab-Islamic history or, in the case of the pre-Islamic period, had little or no resonance for most Palestinians. The different density of various periods in the Palestinian master narrative points to an important issue in the study of collective memory, namely, its relationship with history. In his seminal study Halbwachs draws a sharp line between collective memory and historical memory, that is, the construction of the past by historians whose craft leads them to deviate from or question accepted values. Both collective and personal memory, he writes, are primarily a design of the present and its structure, composed of contents and symbols from the here and now. As such it is by virtue of its definition a “monumental” history, based on symbolic structures. In contrast to historical memory, collective memory “is completely insensitive to the differences between periods and qualities of time; it is shallow in terms of chronology; it is completely topocentric. In the collective memory of the past, people, events and historic institutions serve as prototypes and are not recognized for their uniqueness. They are links in an ongoing past.”59 Pierre Nora goes even further, describing memory as being in a state of permanent evolution, open to the dialectics of remembering and forgetting, unconscious of its successive deformations, vulnerable to manipulation and appropriation, susceptible to being long dormant, and periodically revived. History, he says, is the reconstruction, always problematic and incomplete, of what no longer is. Memory is a perpetually actual phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present. Memory, insofar as it is affective, only accommodates those facts that suit it; it nourishes recollections that may be out of focus or telescopic, global or detached, particular or symbolic, responsive to each avenue of conveyance or, to use Nora’s terminology, “tangible” scene, to every instance of censorship or projection. History, because it is an intellectual and secular production, calls for analysis and criticism.60 In making such a sharp distinction between collective memory and the work of the historian, or historical memory, Halbwachs and Nora, espousing a rather crude positivist approach, disregard the influence of the

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period and society in which the historian is active, and even the impact of the his community’s collective memory upon his work. They also disregard the possibility that historians of various ideological persuasions may seek to shape or influence collective memory through their work. These factors often play a crucial role in the rise of national movements. Taking a more refined view, David Lowenthal maintains that when national identity is at stake, heritage supersedes history. The specific national quest and crisis supplant comparative insight. History, co-opted by heritage, overstates or denies accepted facts in order to assert a primacy, an ancestry, or continuity. It underwrites a founding myth to exclude others.61 For Yael Zerubavel, history and memory do not operate in totally detached, opposite directions; rather, their relationships are underlined by conflict as well as interdependence. “The past cannot be literally construed; it can only be selectively exploited,” as collective memory continuously negotiates between available historical records and current social and political agendas.62 Palestinian historiography and collective memory serve as a good test case for this discussion. As the Palestinians are still engaged in a struggle for statehood, Palestinian historiography, particularly that written in the Middle East, can be depicted as a mobilized historiography, devoted to promoting the national cause. In other words, it is still in the uncritical and unreflecting phase in which only those elements that serve the national cause are selected. Established maxims and truths remain unchallenged, and evidence that runs counter to the cause is often ignored, or dismissed, as false or hostile. This is not to claim that Palestinian historiography is groundless or based on fabrications, but that the dichotomy between history and collective memory, as elucidated by Halbwachs, hardly exists, as Palestinian historians are actively engaged in promoting collective memory and national identity. On the other hand, the evolution and cultivation of Palestinian collective memory, particularly as far as the modern period is concerned, are tightly linked to historical reality. Its major themes are clearly drawn from historical developments that shaped the history of the Palestinians as a collective and as individuals. This explains both the powerful influence of the recent past and the far less successful efforts to inculcate memories of images related to the more distant past—a past for which the empirical evidence is far less substantiated or, as in the case of the Canaanite period, is sometimes closer to myth than to actual history. At the same time, collective memory and politics are inextricably intertwined. According to Halbwachs, the way in which the past is recalled depends on the power of the group that frames its memory. Traditions reinforce present politics, and time is colonized through the traditions of

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national or local groups by way of locating significant dates within a commemorative chronology, just as space is colonized by way of commemorative architecture with which it shapes topography. Simply stated, the issue is “who wants whom to remember what and why.”63 In essence, there is no single collective memory, but rather a multiplicity of overlapping and interwoven communities of memories in any society. The coexistence of a multiplicity of memories is especially true in the case of large collectivities, such as the nation, which can be described as a conglomeration of opposing and at times contradictory memories. National identity is constructed through the interaction of these variants of collective memory. Different collective memories may be in conflict, but may also influence one another, maintaining a relationship of dialogue, negotiation, or exchange among different communities of memory. Commemoration of the past can become a contested territory in which groups engaged in political conflict promote competing views of the past in order to seize control of the political center.64 Within the multiplicity of conflicting memories, it is possible to speak of a hegemonic collective memory, cultivated and promoted by dominant elites and challenged by countermemories, that is, by the discursive practices through which memories are perpetually revised.65 Yet, even in dictatorships, it is not clear how long the state’s monopoly over the construction of memory can last. Like any other society, Palestinian society is also not immune to social and political divisions, which produce multiple opposing memories. Moreover, since 1948 and at least till 1967, Palestinian collective memory has evolved in the absence of a state, among a population dispersed between geographically separate communities. Still, from the early 1970s onwards, the PLO has played the role of surrogate state and fashioned a dominant, or even hegemonic, narrative. One can speak of several types of different Palestinian communities of memory or of rival and competing memories. The refugees and those who have become Israeli citizens formed two distinct communities of memory, as shown in Milshtein and Ghanayim’s chapters. As long as participants in the pre-1948 and 1948 events are alive, one can speak of distinct memories, or actually remembrances, of the past in different communities, such as villagers or urban dwellers, who experienced these events differently or in different rival political groupings. Moreover, as part of the effort to prove the antiquity and longevity of Palestinian identity and its chronological precedence over Zionism, various towns (both inside Israel and in the PA territory) also cultivate their local histories and heritage. As the Palestinians are still engaged in a national conflict, and their collective memory is formulated and constructed against the Zionist one,

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there is a concerted effort to shape a unified collective memory among all Palestinian communities. Thus, while many or most Palestinians did not experience displacement in 1948, this feeling has become the hallmark of modern Palestinian identity. In addition, as time passes and the distance between past events and the present increases, distinct memories of various groups tend to coalesce into one unifying collective memory. Thus, as Birnbaum’s and Litvak’s chapters show, there is a high consensus if not identity of opinion between the PLO and Hamas on the historical narrative of the past. Points of disagreement appear only when related to the more recent past, as they have a direct bearing on the current political struggle between the two movements. An important, though often neglected, area of dispute between the hegemonic and alternative narratives of Palestinian collective memory is the topic of Hanita Brand’s chapter, which deals with the evolution of a distinct female collective memory in Palestinian society, concomitant with the efforts of Palestinian women to incorporate their voice and role in the Palestinian collective memory. Brand follows the distinctive part of the Palestinian women’s collective memory, sometimes referred to as the “social” rather than the “political” story, tracing the various phases through which the women’s recounting of their history has gone: from a tacit acceptance of the general narrative with small variations of tone, style, and nuance to a more vigorous collective tale beginning after the start of the first intifada. Traditionally in Western countries, national commemorations were largely the preserve of male elites. It was only after World War I that they underwent democratization by encompassing acts or events related to all social groups, including a conscious effort to disseminate revised collective memories among them.66 As the traditional Palestinian elites were entirely discredited after the 1948 defeat, the cultivation of a distinct Palestinian collective memory aimed at nonelite groups from the start. Moreover, since Palestinian collective memory focused on the lost, pre-1948 way of life, and since most of those who were displaced after the war had been villagers, both villager and village became the focus of Palestinian memory. The only exception to the more democratic nature of Palestinian memory was women, who are to a large extent still excluded from the memorialization process. A crucial element in the interplay between the hegemonic collective memory and other conflicting memories is the question of their reception by the projected constituencies. To make a difference in society, it is not enough for a certain past to be selected; it must be capable of arousing emotions, motivating people to act, and being received favorably by the majority.67 The essays presented in this book seek to analyze memory and identity on both the promotional and the receiving ends. The chapters by Milshtein, Webman, Birenbaum, and Ghanayim demonstrate the broad

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endorsement of hegemonic memory, especially the two key components of Palestinian collective memory: the Nakba and the premodern Islamic past. Palestinian women, as Brand’s chapter shows, do not reject the hegemonic memory, but only seek to partially modify it by adding their particular voices to it. Litvak’s chapter argues for a more accurate perception of the rational-instrumentalist adoption of the pre-Islamic Canaanite past by most Palestinians, and its lack of success in steering a deep identification of emotions. Yet, no countermemory or myth has arisen to challenge this past. While Palestinian political divisions, mainly between Fatah and Hamas, have escalated since the outbreak of the violent confrontation with Israel in 2000, the continued national struggle served to preserve the unity of Palestinian collective memory and to discourage any challenges to it. As the Palestinian state-building effort suffered a severe setback during this period, collective memory has remained a crucial component in maintaining a unified national identity. Concurrently, these factors may also have inhibited critical self-reflection, particularly among intellectuals, on the shaping of a national historical narrative largely subordinated to present-day political considerations. Palestinian politics and memory continuously influence each other. The persistence of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict continues to play a dominant role in shaping Palestinian collective memory and national identity. As long as the Palestinians remain stateless and the refugee problem remains unresolved, Palestinian collective memory will in all likelihood continue to be dominated by the memories of the 1948 trauma and by the narrative of struggle. At the same time, however, the memories of the past seem to impose certain limitations to the freedom of action accorded to Palestinian leaders. How the evolving relations between Palestinians and Israelis will lead to changes in the representation of the past remains an open question. Notes 1. John R. Gillis, ed., Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 3; David Lowenthal, “Identity, Heritage, and History,” in Gillis, Commemorations, p. 47; Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995), p. 4. 2. Ernest Renan cited in, Lowenthal, “Identity,” p. 50. 3. Haim Gerber shows that the term “Bilad al-Sham,” which Arab writers used to denote greater or geographic Syria, encompassed Palestine. Biographical dictionaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries mentioned areas with the qualifier “land,” such as bilad Nablus (Muradi 1883, 1: 11, 2: 10) or bilad Safad (ibid., 2: 254), indicating their distinct identity and difference from “Filastin,” which referred to the southern part of the country. Haim Gerber, “The Limits

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4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

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of Constructedness: Memory and Nationalism in the Arab Middle East,” Nations and Nationalism 10, no. 3 (2004): 256–58. The great early-nineteenthcentury Egyptian historian ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti referred to the inhabitants of al-‘Arish in the Sinai Peninsula as Syrians; see ‘Asim Muhammad ‘Ali Hasani, “Judhur al-dawla fi al-ta’rikh al-filastini,” Ru’ya, no. 29 (February 2006), http://www.sis.gov.ps/arabic/roya/29/page10.html See C. Ernest Dawn, From Ottomanism to Arabism: Essays on the Origins of Arab Nationalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973); Eliezer Tauber, The Emergence of the Arab Movements (London: Frank Cass, 1993); Daniel Pipes, “The Year the Arabs Discovered Palestine,” Middle East Review 21, no. 4 (Summer 1989): 38. On the emergence of Palestinian nationalism, see Yehoshua Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian Arab National Movement, 1918–1929 (London: Frank Cass, 1974); Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); Muhammad Y. Muslih, The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Musa Budeiri, “The Palestinians: Tensions between Nationalist and Religious Identities,” in Rethinking Arab Nationalism, ed. Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 191–206; Baruch Kimmerling. “The Formation of Palestinian Collective Identities: The Ottoman and Mandatory Periods,” Middle Eastern Studies 36, no. 2 (April 2000): 48–81. On the politics and institutional weaknesses of the Palestinian national movement under the British Mandate, see Yehoshua Porath, The Palestinian National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion, 1929–1939 (London: Frank Cass, 1977); Issa Khalaf, Politics in Palestine: Arab Factionalism and Social Disintegration, 1939–1948 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991). For land sale to Jews, see Kenneth Stein, The Land Question in Palestine, 1917–1939 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984); for the depth of collaboration with the Jews, see Hillel Cohen, The Shadow Army: Palestinian Collaborators in the Service of Zionism, 1917–1948 (Jerusalem: Ivrit, 2004, Hebrew). For an analysis of these processes, see Khalaf, Politics in Palestine. For the Palestinian failure to mobilize and organize as a national movement, see Yoav Gelber, Palestine, 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2001). The origins and causes of the Palestinian refugee problem have produced a voluminous literature and polemics. Among these are Benny Morris’s The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Nur Masalha, A Land without a People: Israel, Transfer and the Palestinians, 1949–96 (London: Faber and Faber, 1997). Rosemary Sayigh, “The Palestinian Identity among Camp Residents,” Journal of Palestine Studies 6, no. 3 (Spring 1977): 21. Aziz Haidar, “The Different Levels of Palestinian Ethnicity,” in Ethnicity, Pluralism, and the State in the Middle East, ed. Milton J. Esman and Itamar Rabinovich (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 96.

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13. Palestinian frustration with and resentment against the rejection by other Arabs is amply reflected in fiction and memoirs. See Shimon Ballas, Arab Literature under the Shadow of War (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1978, in Hebrew), pp. 44–47. See also Fawaz Turki, The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian in Exile (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), which describes how he never regarded himself as a Palestinian or knew he was one, even though he grew up in his own village, and how he only realized this after his family had left their village and settled in Lebanon. 14. Hassan Hasan al-Yacoubi, The Evolution of Palestinian Consciousness (PhD thesis, Colorado University, 1973), p. 156. 15. Haidar, “Palestinian Ethnicity,” p. 118. 16. Haidar, “Palestinian Ethnicity,” p. 103; Fatah, The Link of the Palestinian Revolution with Arab and World Revolutions, cited in Yehoshafat Harkabi, The Palestinians and Their Awakening (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1979, in Hebrew), p. 19; Ballas, Arab Literature, p. 52; Sayigh, “Palestinian Identity,” p. 21. 17. For useful analyses of these approaches, considering the ever-growing volume of theoretical literature on the topic, see Anthony Smith and John Hutchinson, eds., Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Anthony Smith, The Nation in History: Historiographical Debates about Ethnicity and Nationalism (Cambridge: Polity, 2000); as well as the various sections of the Nationalism Project, http://www.nationalismproject.org/what.htm 18. Gerber, “Limits of Constructedness.” 19. The Canaanite language, which belongs to the northern Semitic languages, is closer to Hebrew than to Arabic, which is one of the southern Semitic languages. 20. Ernest Gellner, Thought and Change (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964), p. 168; Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 55–56. 21. Erik Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); E. J. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 1–14. Ironically, Hobsbawm’s theory could have been applied to Palestinian nationalism in claiming that the Palestinian landowners diverted socioeconomic tensions from themselves against the Zionists, or by “inventing” a national history. Yet, Hobsbawm supports Palestinian nationalism, primarily because he is more critical of Zionism. 22. For more salient works on the emergence of Arabism as a response to Ottoman policies, see Dawn, From Ottomanism to Arabism; Rashid Khalidi and Reeva Simon, eds., The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley: California University Press, 1997). 23. Anthony Smith, “Memory and Modernity: Reflections on Ernest Gellner’s theory of Nationalism,” Nations and Nationalism 2, no. 3 (1996): 371–88. 24. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), chapters 2 and 3. 25. Gerber, “Limits of Constructedness,” p. 261ff. For the role of the Salafi movement, see David Commins, Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

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26. For the role of this literary revival in facilitating Arab nationalism, see Albert Hourani,“The Arab Awakening Forty Years after,” in The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981), pp. 193–215. 27. Rashid Khalidi, “The Role of the Press in the Early Arab Reaction to Zionism,” Peuples Méditerranéens , no. 20 (July–September 1982): 105–24; for the role of the Palestinian press, see Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, p. 119. 28. Anderson, Imagined Communities, chapter 4. 29. Gerber, “Limits of Constructedness,” (see note 3), pp. 264–65. 30. Muslih, Origins of Palestinian Nationalism, p. 181; Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, pp. 162–67. 31. For the creation of Transjordan and the evolution of Jordanian identity, see Muhammad Ahamd Sulayman Muhafaza, Imarat Sharq al-Urdun: nash’atuha wa-tatawwuruha fi rub‘ qarn, 1921–1946 (Amman: Dar al-Furqan, 1990); Joseph A. Massad, Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); Linda L. Layne, Home and Homeland: The Dialogics of Tribal and National Identities in Jordan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). 32. After its foundation in 1964, the PLO claimed Jordan as part of the Palestinian homeland. The radical PFLP and DFLP made similar claims after 1967, and well into the mid-1970s. 33. Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 156–57. 34. For the Israeli declaration, see http://www.knesset.gov.il/docs/eng/ megilat_eng. htm. For the Palestinian declaration, see http://www.palestine-net.com/politics/ indep.html 35. The Palestinian National Fund (al-sunduq al-qawmi), both in its first failed phase in 1946 and its successful attempt in 1964, emulated the Jewish National Fund. Likewise, the national tree holiday was probably drawn from the Israeli holiday. 36. Anthony D. Smith, “The Problem of National Identity: Ancient Medieval and Modern?” in Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), particularly pp. 102, 105. See also his “Gastronomy or Geology? The Role of Nationalism in the Reconstruction of Nations,” in ibid, particularly p. 164; and Ernest Gellner and Anthony D. Smith, “The Nation: Real or Imagined? The Warwick Debates on Nationalism,” Nations and Nationalism 2, no. 3 (1996): 359–65. 37. Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), p. 38, and Smith, “Nation and Ethnoscape,” in Myths and Memories, p. 149. 38. Glen Bowman, “Constitutive Violence and Rhetorics of Identity: A Comparative Study of Nationalist Movements in the Israeli-Occupied Territories and Former Yugoslavia,” Social Anthropology 11, no. 3 (December 2003): 38. 39. Oren Yiftachel, “Territory as the Kernel of the Nation: Space, Time and Nationalism in Israel/Palestine,” Geogpolitics 7, no. 2 (Autumn 2002): 216. 40. Smith, Ethnic Origins, p. 183; Smith, “Nation and Ethnoscape,” p. 151ff.; “Memory and Modernity: Reflections on Ernest Gellner’s Theory of Nationalism,” http://www.members.tripod.com/GellnerPage/SmithLec.html.

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41. Matthew Levinger and Paula Franklin Lytle, “Myth and Mobilization: The Common Triadic Structure of Nationalist Rhetoric,” Nation and Nationalism 7, no. 2 (2001): 177. 42. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, pp. 3, 5; Pierre Nora, “Mémoire collective,” in La Nouvelle histoire, ed. Jacques Le Goff, Roger Chartier, and Jacques Revel, (Paris: Retz, 1982), p. 398; David W. Blight, “Historians and ‘Memory,” www. common-place.org, 2, no. 3 (April 2002). 43. Maurice Halbwachs, Les Cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1925), p. 358. 44. Maurice Halbwachs, La Mémoire collective (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), pp. 1–35. 45. Wulf Kansteiner, “Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies,” History and Theory 41 (May 2002): 180. 46. Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan, “Setting the Framework,” in War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 9; Kansteiner, “Finding Meaning,” p. 188. 47. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les lieux de mémoire,” Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 19. 48. Odo Marquard, “Über die Unvermeidlichkeit der Geisteswissenschaften,” in his Apologie des Zufälligen , pp. 98–116. (Stuttgart: Ph. Reclam jun, 1986), cited in “Sites of Memory,” https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/citd/holtorf/2.6.html 49. Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, Commemorating the Nation: Collective Memory, Public Commemoration, and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Egypt (Chicago: Middle East Documentation Center, 2004), p. 4. 50. Israel Gershoni, Pyramid for the Nation: Commemoration, Memory and Nationalism in Twentieth Century Egypt (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2006, in Hebrew). 51. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, pp. 5–6. 52. Kansteiner, “Finding Meaning,” p. 183. 53. Ehud Toledano, “Forgetting Egypt’s Ottoman Past,” in Cultural Horizons: A Festschrift in Honor of Talat S. Halman, ed. Jane L. Warner (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2001), p. 151. 54. Barry Schwartz, “The Social Text of Commemoration: A Study in Collective Memory,” Social Forces 61, no. 2 (December 1982): 377; Gillis, Commemorations, p. 9. 55. Gillis, Commemorations, p. 8. 56. For the Palestinian cult of martyrs and martyrdom, see Meir Hatina, “Theology and Power in the Middle East: Palestinian Martyrdom in a Comparative Perspective,” Journal of Political Ideologies 10, no. 3 (October 2005): 241–67; and Meir Litvak, “Religious and National Fanaticism: The Case of Hamas,” in Fanaticism and Conflict in the Modern Age, ed. Matthew Hughes and Gaynor Johnson (London: Frank Cass, 2005), pp. 156–74. 57. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, pp. 6–7, 9. 58. Ibid., p. 8. 59. Halbwachs, La Mémoire collective , pp. 35–79. 60. Nora, “Between Memory and History,” pp. 8–9. 61. Lowenthal, “Identity,” p. 53.

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62. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, p. 5. 63. Patrick Hutton, History as an Art of Memory (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1993), p. 128; Alon Confino, “Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method,” American Historical Review 102, no. 5 (December 1997): 1393. 64. Gershoni, Commemorating, pp. 11–12; Confino, “Collective Memory,” p. 1391. 65. Hutton, History, p. 113. 66. Gillis, Commemorations, p. 10. 67. Confino, “Collective Memory,” p. 1390.

1

The Evolution of a Founding Myth: The Nakba and Its Fluctuating Meaning Esther Webman

Introduction When Israel celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1998, the Arab world, and especially the Palestinians in the Palestinian territories and abroad, marked the commemoration of what is perceived as a parallel event in Palestinian history—namely, the Nakba (the catastrophe). In the Palestinian national narrative, the establishment of the State of Israel indicates the moment of defeat and displacement of the Palestinian people. Whereas the events of 1947 and 1948—the partition and the War of Independence, respectively—indicate a national rebirth after the Holocaust and a cause for national celebration for Israeli Jews, for Palestinians “the same events are seen as an unmitigated disaster and are the focus of national mourning.”1 “What has been a success for one party has been a failure for the other party,” explains Ibrahim Dakkak, a leading PLO activist from Jerusalem.2 For the first time since its occurrence, the Nakba was officially commemorated in 1998, in public assemblies, seminars, processions, and exhibits in the major towns of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, triggering a public debate on its meaning, and its significance for Palestinian national identity. These events and the many related publications and articles in the Palestinian and Arab press shed light on a process of change in the discourse on the Nakba and serve as a vantage point for our discussion of the term, and its evolution over the years. Although the Nakba had

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always played an essential role in the Palestinian public agenda, the barrage of writing in 1998 was unprecedented and denoted a crossroads in its perception. Epitomizing Palestinian suffering, the Nakba was reconstructed as a founding myth of Palestinian national identity. As such, it points to an inspiring and patriotic story, whether real or imagined, and has become a national symbol shaping national collective memory. Wittingly or unwittingly, a striking similarity to the role and perception of the Holocaust, the epitome of Jewish suffering, was established. This chapter contends that the discourse on the Nakba, which (like founding myths in other societies) was designed to serve national, political, social, and private interests, was manipulated and that different aspects of the discourse were emphasized at different times and in changing circumstances. It also argues that there has been no essential change in perception throughout the generational transition between “the generation of the nakba” (jil al-nakba), which experienced the trauma, eviction, and dispersion, and “the generation of the revolution” (jil al-thawra), which was born in the tragic circumstances of the nakba, whether in exile or in refugee camps. The antonymous motifs of pain and hope, longing and resistance, fantasy and revolution, surrender to despair and drive to rebuild, which are intertwined in the public discourse, do not constitute a generational dividing line, but emerge simultaneously at the outset. Leaders, intellectuals, journalists, writers, and poets who lived and were active in Palestinian population centers—in refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria; in major cities in the West Bank; in other Arab countries, and in the West—took part in the reconstruction of the discourse. Israeli Arabs also contributed to the shaping of a general national Palestinian narrative, at the same time developing their own discourse based on a unique political, economic, and social situation; the Israeli-Arab narrative is, however, beyond the scope of this paper.3 The Origins of the Term and Its Meaning The coining of the term “Nakba” is attributed to the Syrian scholar Qustantin Zurayq, who used it in his book The Meaning of the Nakba, published in August 1948, that is, even before the real dimensions of the Arab defeat in Palestine had become evident.4 However, perusing Egyptian papers from 1945 reveals that Egyptian intellectuals were already using the term to describe the evolving political situation in Palestine. Indeed, Ibrahim ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini blamed British policy for the catastrophe befalling Palestine and other Arab countries,5 and

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Mahmud ‘Izzat ‘Arfa reflected on the evolving Palestinian tragedy, comparing it to the historical Arab Nakba in Spain—a comparison that was to be made frequently in the discourse of the Arab-Israeli conflict.6 In 1936, on the eve of the 1936–39 Arab revolt, Sulayman Taji al-Faruqi, the editor of the daily al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya, disseminated a leaflet warning Muslims that Palestine’s fate might be similar to that of Spain if they did not unite to confront the dangerous situation evolving there.7 Although words such as ma’asa, karitha, naksa, hazima were also used to describe the 1948 defeat, the term “Nakba” took root in the Palestinian and Arab discourse to mark the uniqueness of the Palestinian tragedy. It is perhaps symbolic that the term, which more than any other was to represent this tragedy, was not coined by Palestinians. The fact that Arab countries had expropriated the conflict in Palestine by declaring war against the nascent State of Israel determined the fate and national discourse of the Palestinians, reflecting the chaotic situation in which the Palestinians found themselves at the time. The Nakba represented the defeat, displacement, dispossession, exile, dependence, insecurity, lack of statehood, and fight for survival of the Palestinians. Traditionally, Arabs used the word “Nakba” in reference “to strong misfortunes caused by external forces they could not confront,” explains the Egyptian sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim.8 The connotative significance of the term and its Arabic synonyms, adds the Palestinian columnist Hassan Khadr, is “firstly, a deference to nature, with all its latent violence and its impetuosity; secondly, resignation to the vicissitudes of fate; and thirdly, relinquishment of responsibility for the catastrophe.”9 Indeed, the term “Nakba” expresses the enormity of a disaster that was inexplicably and unexpectedly inflicted on the Palestinian people (and its Arab allies) by an outside force—a catastrophe or cataclysm that “led to the dual injustice of dispossession and exile,” thus exonerating the Arabs and the Palestinians from any responsibility for its occurrence.10 However, it also provided the ground for the development of a special Palestinian narrative and a vast body of literature of longing and return to a “lost paradise,”11 and played a crucial role “in shaping and expressing a separate Palestinian identity,”12 a process intensified by the sense of alienation the Palestinians had to cope with in refugee-hosting Arab countries. Attempts to clarify “the meaning of the catastrophe” are still continuing, as the Israeli Arab scholar and politician ‘Azmi Bishara wrote in 2004: “This is our stone of Sisyphus, and the task of pushing it has been passed on from one movement to another, and in each case no sooner has a movement’s ideologues exclaimed, ‘I found it!’ than the stone comes rolling down with a resounding crash . . . Our definition of the nakba has changed with every new ideology and every new definition that necessitated a change in means.”13

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From an All-Arab Nakba to a Palestinian Nakba The Palestinian Nakba was not confined to Palestine but was perceived as “a historical event of major importance to the Arab nation,” which “touches the core of the struggle—now as in the past—for Arab dignity, identity and justice in the face of power.”14 However, despite the continuous representation of the Nakba as a catastrophe of all Arabs, it gradually turned into an exclusively Palestinian tragedy, especially since the bankruptcy of Pan-Arabism in the mid-1960s. The trauma of 1948 “reinforced pre-existing elements of identity, sustaining and strengthening a Palestinian self-definition,”15 and created the proper conditions for the formation of a new kind of national imagining. According to the Palestinian historian Issam Nassar, within the framework of Palestinian national discourse the Nakba resulted in a rhetorical shift rather than the beginning or end of an era. “The identity that seemed so clear before 1948, finessed and expressed by the intellectuals of the city elite, was terminated with the end of cities. Further, the destruction of more than 400 Palestinian population centers led to the loss of old local traits and their replacement by a new kind of belonging.”16 The shared story helped reconstruct a collective identity that was expected to replace persistent old identities and loyalties such as family, religion, village, or region.17 It shaped the impoverished personal and national consciousness of an older generation of Palestinians, while the encounter with “other” Arabs in Arab countries that had given shelter to Palestinian refugees sharpened a unique Palestinian identity and exacerbated the feeling of “otherness.”18 The June 1967 War, a landmark in the development of Palestinian identity, further contributed to this trend by inflicting a defeat even worse than that of 1948 upon the Arab states. It led to growing Palestinian disappointment and disillusionment with the capacity of Arab countries to salvage Palestine, as well as with Arab culture and society. However, bolstered by the emerging Palestinian liberation movements, this awareness created a new sense of optimism and determination, which became a source of inspiration and pride for Palestinian refugees and intellectuals. Researchers agree that a deep sense of despair was emblematic of Palestinian literature after 1948. It frequently described the suffering and longing of refugees for their land and emphasized their depression, lack of identity, and moral decadence.19 The Palestinian writer Ghasan Kanafani claimed that in the first years after the Nakba, “there was muteness, as a result of the bewilderment and confusion, but then a thundering enthusiastic poetry burst in reaction to the popular conscience that had awakened from its sleep.” The fervor of this kind of poetry, which tended to deny the defeat, was typical of the early 1950s; later on, it gave rise to deep feelings

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of mourning.20 The preoccupation with the Nakba in those years was intensive, and the Palestinians, as the PLO activist Shafiq al-Hut described, were baffled by the question, “How should Palestine be liberated?”21 Gradually, however, despair was overtaken by resistance to a cruel fate, a call to take up arms, and dreams of victory. These were reflected in “the literature of return” (adab al-‘awda) that concentrated mainly on revenge as a way to retrieve a lost Arab dignity. After the establishment of the PLO, and especially after 1967, this type of literature was replaced by a “literature of resistance” (adab al-muqawama), and the dispirited refugee was replaced by the image of a fighting fida’i. In a play written in 1970, Acre my homeland [Watani ‘Akka] a middle-aged refugee urges the youngsters who are mourning the death of their friend in a guerrilla operation to wipe away their tears and resume their underground activity because the “new Palestine does not want your tears.”22 A number of motifs recurred frequently in the Palestinian discourse until the June 1967 War: Palestinians perceived as victims of an abominable crime and of a Western conspiracy; betrayal of the military in Arab countries; demonization of the Zionist enemy; the wish to return to lost homes; rage and a determination to take revenge and overcome humiliation; the glorification of Palestinian heroes such as ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam and ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni; aversion to mourning; a desire for actions that would dictate a new history; longing for and idealization of a Palestine lost, but remembered as a vibrant center of economic, social, cultural, and spiritual life. Alongside these motifs, a number of symbols—such as orange trees, olive branches, the key to a deserted house, or pillows— emerged, preserving both private and national collective memories. All these became intertwined in literature, poetry, publicist writing, and a vast amount of publications on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Israeli/Zionist enemy, the ultimate “other,” who helped crystallize Palestinian self-identity. Palestinian cinema also played a role in this process by preserving the past through a portrayal of Palestinian folklore and culture, describing the present through depictions of events in the “occupied homeland,” and projecting a future relieved of shame.23 The emphasis on a unique Palestinian identity gave rise to the ideal of “self-reliance” (al-i‘timad ‘ala al-dhat), which had been lacking in the previous generation. The “generation of the revolution,” claimed the Israeli scholar Mati Steinberg, “expressed intent to resume responsibility, to initiate and to become active instead of being activated.” Liberation is not only that from Israel, but the liberation of Palestinians and Palestinian identity from the Arab burden.24 This trend was reinforced after the October 1973 War, when Arab states became resigned to negotiating with Israel. The Arab-Israeli conflict became a conflict between states and governments,

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while the readiness to recognize Israel was perceived as forsaking the Palestinian cause. Still, the “generation of the revolution”, which raised the banner of activism and self-reliance, did not claim responsibility for the Nakba events. These continued to be considered a catastrophe and a historical injustice that befell the Palestinians and led to their expulsion and to the denial of their right for self-determination. In their attempt to deal with its consequences, the new revolutionaries had to construct a new revolutionary ethos into which the Nakba did not fit. It was hence removed from the PLO covenants, from the Palestinian independence declaration of 1988,25 and even from some Palestinian textbooks. The PLO declaration of 1965 referred to the landmarks of resistance and return to the homeland, but failed to mention the Nakba, as if it were a shameful event.26 May 15 was marked as “the black day of disgrace and shame” during this period, but ceremonies of commemoration went hand in hand with calls for the renewal of an “alliance of jihad” as a means to erase the traces of the Nakba. Many editorials in Jordanian and Egyptian newspapers between 1949 and 1967 avoided using the term “Nakba” altogether or placed it in the subtitle.27 They emphasized the idea that the refugee camps were only temporary and that the Palestinian refugees would eventually return to their villages or towns of origin; they retold acts of heroism and jihad of Palestinian heroes during the British Mandate, the Arab revolt of 1936, and even the 1947–48 revolt, but refrained from describing the misery, hardship, and humiliation of refugee life. The “generation of the revolution” was keen to stress the disparity between them and their forefathers, obscuring the fact that the latter had not limited the discourse on the Nakba to a mere listing of grievances. The outbreak of the first intifada in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip on 9 December 1987 also contributed to the suppression of the emotive connotation of the Nakba, replacing desperation with resistance against the Zionist occupation. Ahmad Sidqi al-Dajjani, a member of the Palestinian Central Council of the PLO, wrote about “the time of uprising” (zaman al-intifad),28 and the intifada turned into a symbol of the Palestinian struggle, essential to Palestinian identity. The tension between the ethos of struggle and activism and the ethos of victimhood and exile may be seen as a reflection of the immaturity of the Palestinian national movement, and its inability to cope and come to terms with diverse aspects of the Nakba. From Nakba to Revival The Nakba made the headlines once again in 1998, with the clear goal of shaping it as a springboard to a better future. In the mid-1990s, in light of the peace process, the return of the PLO, and the establishment of the

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Palestinian Authority, the Palestinians entered a postrevolutionary era, which enabled them to take a new look at the Nakba and reassess its place and meaning in the overall framework of nation and identity building. Whereas the emergence of the concepts of revolution and armed struggle went hand in hand with the repression of a humiliating memory of the Nakba, reemergence of the memory came with political institutionalization and a certain degree of independence. Acceptance of a new reality and attempts to erase the negative effects of the Nakba resulted in a changed perception of both the Nakba and the Palestinian self, indicating a process of national recovery.29 The Palestinian sociologist Salim Tamari described this process as the “demystification” of both ideological discourse and nostalgic narrative and their substitution by political realism and a new discourse of normalization.30 The first national commemoration of the Nakba in 1998 gave further impetus to the debate on its history, meaning, and significance for the future, simultaneously revealing continuity and change in its perception and themes. “Testimonies commemorating the 50th anniversary of the nakba, the collective tragedy, in the spring of 1998 flowed in a manner that confounded both narrators and listeners. The former were perplexed at having kept silent for what seemed like an eternity before releasing their concealed stories. The latter were confused at having failed to explain those stories—whether they were expressions of divine retribution or because they demonstrated a collective inability to face a superior enemy.”31 In contrast to the past, political activity did not exclude preoccupation with the traumatic events of the Palestinian tragedy and with the question of responsibility for it. It was from this tragedy that Palestinians aspired to draw strength for a more promising future. The Nakba was being reconstructed as a founding myth to shape the memory of the past while serving as a springboard to a more hopeful future. However, it should be noted that from the very beginning the discourse on the Nakba incorporated motifs of grief and distress with hopes for national revival. The potential of the Nakba to turn into a cathartic experience leading to reform and reconstruction was already discussed by Qustantin Zurayq in 1948 as well as in Jordanian and Egyptian newspaper editorials (every 15 May, from 1949 to 1967) and in political and historical publications; it was also reflected upon by Arab leaders such as Egyptian President Jamal ‘Abd alNasir. Despite the rage, “there was an expectation that the disintegration [of Palestinian society], epitomized in the Nakba, would bring about recuperation and restoration through revolutionary actions.”32 Yasser Arafat’s address to the “march of the millions” on 14 May 1998 connected the return of refugees with the creation of a Palestinian state. “We ask only that the page on the Nakba be turned over forever, that the

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emigrant return to his homeland, and that we build our Palestinian state on our land,” he said, thus emphasizing the Palestinian search for normality and focus on reality.33 The official Palestinian People’s Appeal, issued on 14 May 1998 by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and read by the Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish at the end of the march commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Nakba, speaks for itself: “We do not seek to be captives of history or victims of the past. The Palestinian people have launched a redemptive journey to the future. From ashes of our sorrow and loss, we are resurrecting a nation celebrating life and hope.”34 Used in the Judeo-Christian religious sense, the term “redemptive” implies salvation and freedom from subjugation of an individual or a group of people. Like the Israeli discourse on the Holocaust, which perceives the transformation from a life of persecution in the diaspora to a life in an independent Jewish state as redemptive, Palestinians believe that after their suffering and struggle for liberation they are approaching statehood and the realization of their national hopes. “In the construction of identity, both Arabs and Jews have used the leverage of very similar arguments, projecting an image of themselves that refers to the same stereotypes and putting into practice strategies of the same kind,” wrote Ada Lonni.35 The comparison between the tragedies of the Jewish and Palestinian peoples became compelling from the Arab, and particularly the Palestinian point of view in the mid-1940s, when immigration to Palestine emerged as the solution to the problem of displaced Jews in Europe. The Palestinian activist Ata Qaymari admitted that many Palestinians perceived the Holocaust through the prism of their Nakba, “the counterpart of the Holocaust in Palestinian history, in which their whole social, economic and cultural fabric was destroyed and uprooted.” Therefore, there are significant similarities in the ways in which both communities address their catastrophe, in commemoration and historiography; “the Palestinians are trying, just as the Jews did and are still doing, to gather a kind of collective memory that preserves their own social, cultural and historical fabric.”36 Rashid Khalidi went even further, seeing the Holocaust as “our benchmark for man’s inhumanity to man,” claiming that if it has any universal relevance, ‘it teaches that we should not be allowed to forget or forgive wrongs committed against a whole people.”37 The discourse on the Holocaust highly affected the Palestinian debate on the Nakba. In the preface to the Arabic translation of the articles of the French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, published in Beirut in 1988, the translator Majid Hillawi bitterly complained that the Arabs and Palestinians used the Holocaust terminology for much of their political, cultural, and artistic discourse. They appropriated “the Zionist lies in order

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to gain international sympathy,” and described the suffering of the Palestinian people in terms Hillawi claimed had been invented by the Jews—terms such as “Holocaust,” “massacre,” “victimhood,” “diaspora,” and “memory.”38 Even before 1948, the tragedy inflicted on the Jews by the Germans was used as a point of reference to the tragedy that might result from the establishment of a Jewish state. “The imposition of a Jewish state on Palestine is an act that supersedes the aggression of the worst crimes perpetrated by the Axis states,” asserted the Egyptian intellectual Muhammad ‘Awad Muhammad in April 1945.39 Zionist attempts to evict people from their homes, scatter them, and ruin their lives, the argument ran, cause “the same catastrophe (ma’asa) that the Jews experienced.”40 The analogy between what befell the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs was a major motif in the Palestinian and Arab discourse on the Holocaust. Whereas the wrongdoings toward the Jews were minimized, the injustice toward the Palestinians was magnified.41 The Nakba became a sanctified symbol of identity—a unique and “unprecedented historical experience” that is “a scar on the forehead of the world and a calamity for humanity.”42 In a virtual scale of suffering the Palestinian tragedy was graded higher than the Jewish suffering. “It is a mark of disgrace on the forehead of the twentieth century,” was a recurrent assertion,43 and Israel was accused of committing the “biggest crime history has ever known.”44 The Palestinian flight or exodus from Palestine in 1948–49 is defined as “emigration” (hijra)—a term charged with religious connotations, evoking the emigration of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina and bearing the promise of subsequent conquests.45 With the changing meaning of the “Nakba,” other aspects of Holocaust terminology had been incorporated into the Palestinian discourse. Terms such as “destruction and redemption” (shoah u-geula) and “Holocaust and rebirth” (shoah u-tehiya) became “nakba and resistance” (nakba wa-muqawama) and “perseverance and resistance” (israr wa-nidal).46 The issue of victimization and victimhood, which was crucial for the representation of Jewish experience and identity, also became a major component of the Palestinian narrative. Scholars of history and memory point to the development of a “culture of victimhood,” as part of an ethnic and national identity that involves both the recognition of and the need to rectify past evils, among others by their inclusion in the national memory and by compensation for past and present suffering.47 The Palestinian discourse on victimhood preceded this trend, which had evolved in the 1980s and 1990s. The Palestinians considered themselves “the victims of the greatest act of horror of the twentieth century”48 and strove to gain recognition of their tragedy and of their “status of victimhood.” Hazim Saghiya, the liberal Lebanese editor of the daily al-Hayat,

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contended that the Palestinians were “envious” of the Jews, who had become a “model of victimhood,” and resented their “profitable” tragedy.49 A comparison between the sufferings of the two peoples became dominant in the discourse on German reparations to the Jews and the State of Israel. The Arab countries tried to link this with compensation to be paid to Arab refugees who had lost their property in Palestine. The demand was that German reparations be frozen until Israel pay her dues to the Palestinians according to UN resolutions, or at least be made over in part to the Palestinian refugees, considered to be more entitled to compensation than were the Jews.50 The Palestinian and Arab discourse on the ArabIsraeli conflict juxtaposed the settlement of the Jews in Palestine with the deportation of the Arabs. Writers and spokesmen argued that the Jews complained about the cruelty and oppression against them and the world compensated them with money and sympathy, while the Palestinians received neither fair treatment nor compensation. The London-based Palestinian scholar Ghada Karmi emphasizes the “striking contrast” between the moral attitudes and practical steps taken toward resolving the issue of compensation for Jewish victims of Nazism and those toward “rectifying outstanding Palestinian losses from 1948 onwards.”51 In her discussion of this issue, she raises another aspect of the problem: the denial of the Nakba. For the Palestinians, too, she asserted, the issue is a moral one, and material compensation is but one aspect of this. “The essence of the Palestinian grievance is not only that they lost their homeland, but that the perpetrators have consistently refused to make reparation or even to acknowledge their responsibility in the matter.”52 Rashid Khalidi also points to the “unremitting pressure from the Israeli side for more than 50 years to ignore, diminish and ideally to bury the whole question of the Palestinians made refugees in 1948,” and says that “the key requirement for a solution is not so much compensation (important as it is), as acceptance of responsibility and some form of atonement.”53 Denial of the Palestinian tragedy is similar to denial of the Holocaust, “with all the allowances necessary when making comparisons between situations which are inherently dissimilar,” he concluded.54 Joseph Massad compared the “obscene number games on the part of holocaust deniers” to Zionist Jewish denial of the Palestinian Nakba and to the continued Zionist effort to play down the number of Palestinian refugees. “While the nakba and the holocaust are not equivalent in any sense,” he contended, “the logic of denying them is indeed the same.” He claimed that the PLO and most Palestinian intellectuals have expressed their solidarity with Jewish Holocaust victims since the 1960s and have attacked those who deny it, contrasting this with the official and unofficial Israeli denial of the expulsion of the Palestinians.55 The argument that the Palestinian Nakba is being ignored by the

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international community while much attention is paid to the Holocaust was dominant in the Arab debate over the UN decision to commemorate (in 2005) the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps and the resolution to designate a Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January (the day Auschwitz was liberated).56 In the public debate on the Nakba in 1998, the general call was to turn the motif of victimhood into a worldwide appeal for recognition of the world’s responsibility toward the Palestinians, and for the Palestinians to be added “to the list of Holocaust victims,” and hence their entitlement to restitution. This recognition entailed the acknowledgment by Israel and by the West of their responsibility for the Nakba. The West was accused of relieving its conscience after the Holocaust by granting a state to the Jews. The Palestinian People’s Appeal called upon the world “to undertake not only recognition of guilt and admission of culpability in relation to the Palestinian people, but also to undertake an active and massive process of rectification to secure the implementation of Palestinian rights.”57 Moreover, an explicit apology by Israel and Britain to the Palestinians is anticipated, parallel to the apologies made to the Jews by Spain, France, and Portugal, and by Pope John Paul II in his 16 March 1998 document, “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah.”58 More militant Palestinians called for the establishment of a special tribunal to sentence those they consider Israeli “war criminals” for crimes committed against Palestinians.59 A number of Palestinians were convinced that the ongoing discussions on the Nakba called for a revision of the Palestinian historical narrative in a more critical light, and for the deconstruction of the 1948 events, so as to rewrite Palestinian history, freeing it from its ideological burden and romantic aura. Reflecting on the Nakba, the Palestinian historian Yezid Sayigh wrote about the “necessity of rethinking, de-coupling and reclaiming 1948,” whereas others spoke of the need to erase the traces of the trauma from national and political thought and pave the way for independence. This process, it was argued, should also entail asking difficult questions about the past, the causes of the Nakba and Arab policies, without shunning responsibility for the events leading to it.60 The narrator in the beautiful epic Bab al-Shams by the Lebanese author Elias Khouri, which was published in 1998 and thus coincided with the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Nakba, urges a dying Palestinian warrior to tell him about “that black hole.” He does not want to hear about the deeds and the Arab military betrayals in the war of 1948, but to know “what you have done, and why you are here and they are there?”61 Hassan Khadr believed that “the backlash against the sign nakba is proof that the Palestinian narrative has reached the age of maturity,” and that “the way in which we narrate our stories is determined by the end we want to hear.”62

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The Palestinian approach to historiography and the creation of a national identity thus confirms the perception of historiography “as an arm of collective memory” and that “history writing, like other dimensions of state building, is a practice that is directed outward as much as inward.”63 The 1998 commemoration of the Nakba seemed to provide an appropriate point of departure for the documentation and memorialization of the Palestinian story. Both scholarly accounts on the 1948 war and personal testimonies of survivors were published during the early months of 1998 in a series of articles in Palestinian periodicals and dailies such as al-Hayat al-Jadida and al-Quds, and in the London-based independent dailies al-Sharq al-Awsat and al-Hayat in a special section entitled “alnakba.” Al-Ahram Weekly dedicated a page in every issue during the entire year to commemorate “50 Years of Dispossession.” Special sections on the Web sites of the PNA and the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre were devoted to events and testimonies of 1948, and young Palestinians in refugee camps produced films and video diaries about refugee camp life.64 The historian Walid Khalidi, who was one of the first to embark on a project documenting Palestinian history, published a new book All That Remains—entitled Kay la nansa [Lest we forget] in Arabic—in which he surveyed 418 Palestinian Arab villages destroyed during the war. Although these efforts continued the post-1948 historical documentation initiative of Palestinian historians such as ‘Arif al-‘Arif and Mustafa al-Dabbagh,65 there was a clear shift in the publications and films of 1998 from collective memory and high rhetoric to more personalized recollections, which also typified Israeli historiography of the Holocaust. Cinema, for instance, reflected the shift from national to private memory as well as from a masculine to a feminine point of view.66 Oral history became part of a history recording that included personal accounts, especially of Palestinian refugees and even of Palestinian camp women.67 The idea of return to Palestine and the emphasis on the temporary character of life in exile (ghurba) have always been a central theme in Palestinian national narrative, despite a growing uncertainty as to the feasibility and extent of the return. The concept of “the right of return” (haq al-‘awda) is mirrored by its Jewish Israeli counterpart, “the law of return,” which recognizes the legitimate right of each and every Jew to immigrate to the ancestral homeland. “There is no authoritative Palestinian definition of what constitutes the right of return,” explained Rashid Khalidi. Since the expulsions of 1948, the right of return has been taken to mean many things, ranging from the right of all Palestinians or their descendants to return to their former homes and places of origin in Palestine, to a return of some Palestinians currently in exile to some limited parts of Palestine.68 Unlike the central place it was accorded in the revised charter

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of 1968, the right of return was not emphasized in the Palestinian National Charter of 1964. The objectives of the Palestinian struggle were defined as the liberation of the homeland and “the return to it.” The Provisional Political Program, adopted by the twelfth session of the PNC in 1974, for the first time used the formulation “right of return” and considered it at the forefront of the Palestinian people’s rights.69 The peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians intensified the preoccupation with this issue. The Palestinians feared that if it was left out of a negotiated settlement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, it would be doomed to remain unresolved, especially in view of the Israeli consensual rejection of the right of return of Palestinian refugees.70 As a result, the right of return was presented as a sacred and legal human right, never to be relinquished. A center for Palestinian return was established in London, headed by Salman Abu Sitta. Its goals are defined as follows: to document and publish material on the legal and moral aspects of the refugee problem and the right of return, and to highlight the linkage between the suffering caused by the occupation and the suffering inflicted on the refugees since 1948. Only by understanding the centrality of the catastrophe of politicide [the destruction of a political entity] and expulsion that befell the Palestinian people . . . is it possible to understand the Palestinians’ sense of the right of return. For in an abstract sense, if this expulsion were an injustice to the Palestinian people in national as well as in humanitarian terms, and marked the beginning of a period of disasters for them, then it follows that as far as the Palestinians are concerned, the wrong done to them can only be righted, and the disasters ended, through a return to the homeland.71

Abu Sitta’s approach seems to reflect the predominant view among Palestinians. Yet, few believe that the question of return is a moral issue rather than one of legal rights.72 Palestinians are also aware that there is no museum or memorial that records their suffering, and are therefore seeking to build a national museum to restore the heritage and formulate the national ethos, both as a political tool for preserving the national entity and as an effective way to mobilize the people into a process of national struggle. Palestinians stress folklore, costumes, and marriage rites, and preserve symbols of the Nakba, such as the keys of what had once been the refugees’ houses and the original names of their villages and towns. “All of these and other forms of identification recall the Israeli attempts to create part of their national ethos out of the Holocaust,” according to Qaymari.73 Some writers suggested that a Palestinian center for the commemoration of the Palestinian

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catastrophe and heroism or an Arab museum for “Zionist victims” be erected as a suitable answer to the Jewish memorials, which are said to have been “used effectively by the Israelis and Zionists to keep the world’s conscience agitated and troubled.”74 A major effort was made by a group of Jews and non-Jews in 1995 to launch a project called Deir Yassin Remembered, aiming at building a permanent memorial at the site of the former village, and within sight of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center. “Deir Yassin Remembered has grown out of the voice and vision of those who, like Elie Wiesel, extol the virtues of remembering and never forgetting the suffering of any people,” wrote Daniel McGowan in the preface to his book Remembering Deir Yassin, in which he defined the goal of the project as “the resurrection of . . . [an] important piece of Palestinian history as a way to create a future where Israelis and Palestinians can live together in a just and equitable way.”75 Deir Yassin, which over the years evolved into a symbol of the Nakba and “a key element in the Palestinian transformation of the events of 1947–49 into a cosmic injustice,”76 became the focus of memorialization and one of the manifestations of a changing perception of the Nakba. The Palestinian Jordanian writer and commentator Rami Khouri considered the proposed venture as part of a necessary process of mutual rehumanization and of the transformation of a cycle of mutual denial into “a more morally responsible and historically constructive cycle of acknowledgement of the past, understanding, compassion and ultimately, forgiveness and reconciliation.”77 Al-Aqsa Intifada, which erupted at the end of September 2000, and the subsequent low-intensity war between Israel and the Palestinians, awakened the old myth of Deir Yassin and inflamed the memories of the 1948 Nakba. It created new symbols that recaptured the Palestinians’ status as victims and radicalized the discourse on the “other,” the Zionist enemy. The Palestinian media again criticized the impotence of the Arab countries, but unlike in the past they now emphasized that the Palestinians of 2002 were not those of 1948, and that even a dozen “Deir Yassins” would not break their will and national identity. “The first nakba’s memory returns, carrying the lessons of the past joined with the experience of the present,” wrote an editorial in al-Bayan. The fierce battle that took place in the refugee camp of Jenin in mid-April 2002 was presented on the one hand as a massacre and on the other hand as a demonstration of heroism and perseverance, “despite the climate of submission and the illusions of peace.”78 In the film Jenin Jenin, the Arab Israeli producer Muhammad Bakri described the trauma of the destruction of Jenin in terms taken from another trauma—that of the 1948 Nakba; the house, the street, and the environment of the camp became “a transparent window which reflects the old pre-1948 house.”79

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Conclusion The Arab Israeli author Anton Shammas wrote in his endorsement of Elias Khouri’s Bab al-Shams that the book breaks the silence that surrounded the Nakba—“the silence of those who felt ashamed during five decades to tell the story of humiliation,” and the silence of those who were not ready to listen to the story “raging in their sub-consciousness.” It is difficult to agree with this statement, considering the ongoing preoccupation with the Nakba in Palestinian discourse. In their research on the Palestinian cinema, Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi agree that there was no pervasive silence, yet the feeling among researchers and writers is that the history of the Palestinians after 1948 has not yet been told. Tamari points to “an astounding absence of an overall picture . . . Thus in these narratives, the siege of Jaffa and Lydda, the massacres of Deir Yasin and Dawaiymeh, and the exodus from Safad and Haifa—they happened as disparate incidents, unconnected to the general saga of war.”80 Several writers attribute the lack of historical narrative to the state of exile, in which all events are accidental and temporary. The problematic historical sequence is manifested in the Palestinian tendency to ignore the present and exchange it with the past, and a fixation with history, manifested along three axes: memory of a lost paradise, mourning of the present, and description of the forthcoming return. In this sense, the Palestinian history is no different from other histories of exile and displacement, in which life is experienced through nostalgia for the past, through the disassociation of the historical native landscape from the nation, and through the utopia of a homeland unaffected by the present. The history of traumas shows that “the trauma remains a vivid event, extant and unchanged, as if it is fully present and not represented in memory.”81 This is the reason why history cannot be told as a narrative, a chronology of events, or a rational sequence of cause and effect. The traumatic events of Palestinian history have, however, acted as a unifying national factor. It is the adhesive glue that has enabled the population to overcome differences, controversies, and segmentation, and create one history around one unifying shared memory.82 “The trauma of Al-Nakba, as Salman Abu Sitta concluded, is imprinted on the psyche of every Palestinian, on those that witnessed it as well as those that did not.”83 Notes 1. Rashid Khalidi, “Truth, Justice and Reconciliation: Elements of a Solution to the Palestinian Refugee Issue,” in Ghada Karmi and Eugene Cotran, eds, The Palestinian Exodus, 1948–1998 (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 1999), p. 224.

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2. “1948–1998 in the Eyes of Two Peoples: A Roundtable Discussion,” PalestineIsrael Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture 5, no. 2 (1998): 24. See also Joseph Samaha, salam ‘abir. Nahwu madd ‘arabi lil ‘mas’ala al-yahudiyya’ [A passing peace: Toward an Arab extension of “the Jewish Question”] (Beirut, 1993), p. 28; al-Sharq al-Awsat, 7 April 1998. 3. For a comparison of the Arab Israeli and the Palestinian discourses on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Nakba, see Hillel Frisch, “Ethnicity or Nationalism? Comparing the Nakba Narrative among Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza,” Israel Affairs 9, nos. 1 and 2 (Autumn/Winter 2003): 165–84. 4. Qustantin Zurayq, ma‘na al-nakba [The meaning of the Nakba] (Beirut, 1948). 5. Ibrahim ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, “Nakbat Filastin,” al-Risala, 5 November 1945. 6. Mahmud ‘Izat ‘Arfa, “Nakbat al-‘Arab fi al-Andalus,” al-Risala, 19 August 1946. 7. The Zionist Central Archive, 525/22051, Jerusalem, Israel. 8. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, “Intelligentsia: Time to Give Up the Ghost,” Civil Society 7, no. 77 (May 1998): 4. 9. Al-Ahram Weekly, 2 April 1998. 10. Ibrahim Abu Lughud, “From the Nakba to the Defeat, Two Terms for Big Events,” in Y. Harkabi, ed., The Arabs and Israel (a collection of translations from Arabic), no. 1 (Tel Aviv, 1975, in Hebrew), p. 34. See also Ibrahim Abu Lughud, “The Nakba: This is What Happened,” Alpayim, no. 16 (1998, in Hebrew, Tel Aviv, Israel), pp. 152–57; Fawwaz Turki, “To be a Palestinian,” Journal of Palestine Studies 3, no. 3 (Spring 1974): 4; The Palestinian People’s Appeal on the 50th Anniversary of the Catastrophe “al-Nakba ,” http://www.pna.org/ mininfo/nakba. On the evasion of responsibility see also Sadiq Jalal al-‘Azm, al-naqd al-zati ba‘d al-hazima [Self-criticism after the defeat] (Beirut, 1969), p. 20; for a Hebrew translation see Yehoshafat Harkabi, ed., Arab Lessons from their Defeat (Tel Aviv, 1969), pp. 71–115. See also Yehoshafat Harkabi, The Arabs’ Position in their Conflict with Israel (Tel Aviv, 1968, in Hebrew), p. 345. 11. A. L. Tibawi, “Visions of the Return. The Palestinian Arab Refugees in Arabic Poetry and Art,” Middle East Journal 17, no. 5 (1963): 507–26; Reuven Snir, “‘One Wound of his Wounds’—The Palestinian Arab Literature in Israel,” Alpayim, no. 2 (1990, in Hebrew), pp. 244–68; Ray Hanania, al-Nakba: The Reality of a Dispossession, http://www.hanania.com; Danny Rubinstein, The People of Nowhere: The Palestinian Vision of Home (Jerusalem, 1991). 12. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York, 1997), p. 19; Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal, Palestinians: The Making of a People (New York, 1993), p.182. 13. Al-Ahram Weekly, 13 May 2004. 14. Frisch, “Ethnicity,” p. 173, quoting Palestinian PM Abu ‘Ala’ in al-Ayyam, 13 May 1998; al-Ahram Weekly, 13 May 2004. 15. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, p. 22. 16. Issam Nassar, “Reflecting on Writing the History of Palestinian Identity,” Palestine-Israel Journal 8, no. 4 and 9, no. 1 (2001–2): 34–35. 17. Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi, Landscape in Mist: Space and Memory in Palestinian Cinema (Tel Aviv, 2006, in Hebrew), p. 57.

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18. Mati Steinberg, “A Generation Goes and a Generation Comes: The Nakba and the Generation of Armed Struggle,” in Wars, Revolutions and Generational Identity, ed. Joseph Mali (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2001, in Hebrew), p. 123. 19. Trevor Legassick, “Some Recent War-Related Arabic Fiction,” Middle East Journal 5, no. 4 (1971): 491–505; Avraham Sela, “The Jew and the Israeli in Modern Arabic Literature,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 2 (Winter 1977): 125. 20. Ghasan Kanafani, Adab al-muqawama [The resistance literature] (Beirut, 1966), p. 10. 21. Yehoshafat Harkabi, ed., The Arabs and Israel 5 (Tel Aviv, 1970, in Hebrew), p. 65. 22. ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sharqawi, Watani ‘Akka [Acre my homeland] (Cairo, 1970), p. 191. 23. Gertz and Khleifi, Landscape, p. 55. 24. Steinberg, “Generation,” p. 124. 25. “Declaration of Palestinian Independence, November 15, 1988,” PalestineIsrael Journal 3, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 119–23. 26. See Y. Harkabi, The Palestinian Covenant and Its Meaning (London, 1979), pp. 113–24. 27. See for example al-Difa‘, 15 May 1949, 15 May 1957, 15 May 1960, 16 May 1965; al-Jihad, 15, 16 May 1963, 16 May 1965. 28. Ahmad Sidqi al-Dajjani, al-intifadha al-filastiniyya wal-tahrir [The Palestinian intifada and liberation] (Cairo, 1988). 29. “Reflections on al-Nakba,” Journal of Palestine Studies 28, no. 1 (Autumn 1998): 5–35. 30. Salim Tamari, “Narratives of Exile,” Palestine-Israel Journal 9, no. 4 (2002): 107–8. 31. Ibid., 101. 32. See for instance Zurayq, Meaning of the Nakba; Walid Qamhawi, al-nakba walbana`. nahwu ba‘th al-watan al-‘arabi [The Nakba and the construction: Toward the resurrection of the Arab nation] (Beirut, 1956); Nadim al-Bitar, al-fa‘aliyya al-thawriyya fi al-nakba [Revolutionary efficiency in the Nakba] (Beirut, 1965); Harkabi, Arabs’ Position, pp. 346–47; Harkabi, ed., Arab Lessons, p. 15. 33. Frisch, “Ethnicity,” p. 181. 34. “The Palestinian People’s Appeal on the 50th Anniversary of the Catastrophe ‘al-Nakba,”’ http://www.pna.org/mininfo/nakba. 35. Ada Lonni, “Parallel Strategies in Israeli and Palestinian Experiences,” Journal of Palestine Studies 8, no. 4 and 9 no. 1 (2001–2): 71–83. 36. Ata Qaymari, “The Holocaust in the Palestinian Perspective,” in Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue, ed. Paul Scham, Walid Salem, and Benjamin Pogrund (Jerusalem: Yakar Center for Social Concern, 2005), p. 149. 37. Rashid Khalidi, “Truth,” in Karmi and Cotran, Palestinian Exodus, p. 227. 38. Robert Faurisson, al-ukzuba al-tarikhiyya: hal fi‘lan qutila sitta malayin yahudi? [The historical lie: Were six million Jews killed?] (Beirut, 1988), p. 18; Hazim Saghiya, difa‘an ‘an al-salam [Defending peace] (Beirut: Dar al-Nahar lil-Nashar, 1997), p. 69. 39. Al-Thaqafa, 10 April 1945, p. 391. 40. Al-Ahram, 4 November 1945, 11 January 1946.

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41. For a discussion of the representation of the Holocaust in the Palestinian discourse, see Meir Litvak and Esther Webman, “Perceptions of the Holocaust in Palestinian Public Discourse,” Israel Studies 8, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 123–41. 42. Al-Quds, 15 May 1998. 43. See for instance Muhammad Safwat, Isra’il al-‘aduw al-mushtaraq [Israel the shared enemy] (Cairo, 1952), p. 187. 44. See for instance Muhammad Fayiz al-Qasri, harb filastin, ‘am 1948. al-sira’ al-siyasi bayna al-sahyuniyya wal-‘arab [The war in Palestine: The political conflict between Zionism and the Arabs] (Cairo, 1961), p. 41. 45. Al-Hayat al-Jadida, 7 May 1998; Rosemary Sayigh, “Palestinian Camp Women as Tellers of History,” Journal of Palestine Studies 27, no. 2 (Winter 1998): 46. 46. Al-Hayat, 19 April 1998; al-Quds, 15 May 1998. 47. Charles S. Maier, “A Surfeit of Memory? Reflections on History, Melancholy and Denial,” History and Memory 5, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 1993): 136–37; Guli Neeman-Arad, “A History of Memory: The Changing Status of the Holocaust in the Conscious of the Jews in the United States,” Zmanim, no. 57 (Winter 1996–97, in Hebrew): 19; New York Review of Books, 8 April 1999, p. 6. 48. Rashid Khalidi, “A Universal Jubilee? Palestinians 50 Years after 1948,” Tikkun 13, no. 2 (March/April 1998): 54–56; Edward Said, The Politics of Dispossession (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), p. 121; al-Ahram Weekly, 14 May 1998. 49. Saghiya, Defending Peace, pp. 67–68. A similar argument was introduced by Ata Qaymari in “The Holocaust,” pp. 150–51, 159. 50. Al-Ahram, 12 September 1951, 16 November, 15 December 1952. 51. Ghada Karmi, “The Question of Compensation and Reparations,” in The Palestinian Exodus, 1948–1998 , ed. Ghada Karmi and Eugene Cotran (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 1999), p. 197. 52. Ibid., p. 201. 53. Rashid Khalidi, “Truth,” in Karmi and Cotran, Palestinian Exodus, pp. 221–22. 54. Ibid., pp. 225–26. 55. Al-Ahram Weekly, 9 December 2004. 56. See for example al-Hayat, 24 January 2005; al-Babil, 3 December 2005. 57. Palestinian People’s Appeal; see also al-Hayat, 20, 21 January, 15 May 1998; al-Ahram Weekly, 14 May 1998; Jordan Times, 9 May 1998; al-Sharq al-Awsat, 27 January (Mideast Mirror); 11, 18, 25 May 1998; al-Quds, 16 February, 15 May 1998; “1948–1998 in the Eyes of Two Peoples,” pp. 24, 31, 33. 58. Al-Ahram, 22 March 1998; al-Quds, 24 April 1998; Interview with Rashid Ghannoushi, MSANEWS, 10 February, 12 February 1998. 59. Al-Hayat, 28 April 1998; al-Hayat al-Jadida, 11 May 1998. 60. Yezid Sayigh, “Reflections on al-Nakba,” Journal of Palestine Studies 27, no. 1 (Autumn 1998): 23; al-Hayat, 17 February, 19 April, 11, 14, 15, 16, 18 May, 28 June 1998; al-Quds, 15, 20, 27, 29 May 1998; al-Hayat al-Jadida, 5, 13–19, 23 May 1998; al-Ahram Weekly, 15 April 1998; al-Bilad, 26 January 1998; Rashid Khalidi, “A Universal Jubilee,” p. 55. 61. Elias Khouri, Bab al-Shams (Tel Aviv, 2002, in Hebrew), p. 180. 62. Al-Ahram Weekly, 2 April 1998.

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63. Anita Shapira, “Politics and Collective Memory: The Debate over the ‘New Historians’ in Israel,” History and Memory 7, no. 1 (1995): 33; Robert Vitalis, “Crossing Exceptionalism’s Frontiers to Discover America’s Kingdom,” Arab Studies Journal 6, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 25. 64. Al-Ahram Weekly, 19 February 1998; Rosemary Sayigh, “Dis/Solving the Refugee Problem,” Middle East Report, no. 207 (Summer 1998): 19–23. 65. On the early Palestinian historiography, see Beshara B. Doumani, “Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine: Writing Palestinians into History,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, no. 2 (Winter 1992): 13–17. 66. Gertz and Khleifi, Landscape, pp. 69–76. See also Qaymari, “The Holocaust,” pp. 150–59. 67. Rosemary Sayigh, “Palestinian Camp Women as Tellers of History,” pp. 42–58; “Reflections on al-Nakba,” Journal of Palestine Studies 28, no. 1 (Autumn 1998): 5–35; Palestine Times, no. 84, June 1998; Jordan Times, 20 April 1999; Haaretz, 16 November 1999. 68. Rashid I. Khalidi, “Observations on the Right of Return,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, no. 2 (Winter 1992): 29. 69. Ibid., p. 34. 70. For a Palestinian analysis of the right of return, see Badil Resource Center, The 1948 Palestinian Refugees and the Individual Right of Return: An International Law Analysis (Bethlehem, 2001). 71. For Abu Sitta’s views see http://www.al-awda.org; al-Ahram Weekly, 9 March 2000, 16 May 2002; al-Hayat, 11 July 2000. 72. See for instance Rahsid Khalidi, “Observations,” pp. 30–32. 73. Qaymari, “Holocaust,” pp. 151, 159. 74. Al-Hayat, 4 February 1998; al-Ahram, 27 May 1998; Rashid Khalidi, “A Universal Jubilee,” p. 56. 75. Daniel A. McGowan and Marc H. Ellis, eds., Remembering Deir Yassin: The Future of Israel and Palestine (New York: Olive Branch, 1998). 76. Kimmerling and Migdal, Palestinians, p. 152; Walid Khalidi, “Deir Yassine: Autopsie d’un massacre,” Revue d’études palestiniennes 17, no. 69 (Autumn 1998): 20–58. 77. Jordan Times, 22 April 1997; Haaretz, 24 April 1997. 78. Al-Bayan (UAE), 15 May 2002 (Mideast Mirror). 79. Gertz and Khleifi, Landscape, p. 132. 80. Tamari, “Narratives,” p. 102. 81. Gertz and Khleifi, Landscape, p. 8. 82. Ibid., pp. 9, 56–57. 83. Al-Ahram Weekly, 22 September 2005.

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The Memory that Never Dies: The Nakba Memory and the Palestinian National Movement Michael Milshtein

Introduction The 1948 war—or the Nakba (the disaster, catastrophe) in Palestinian terminology—is the central event in modern Palestinian history and the core around which the Palestinians’ national identity crystallized.1 The Palestinians lost about 77 percent of the territory of Mandatory Palestine and witnessed the destruction of 418 Palestinian settlements2 and the displacement of 500,000 to 650,000 of their fellowmen, who fled or were deported.3 The Nakba embodies a bipolar symbol of concurrent destruction and building. It severely shocked the Palestinians and has, in their view, almost brought about their disappearance as a people. It did, however, also consolidate their fledgling national identity. The Palestinians describe the Nakba as a tremendous and startling explosion that has ripped up a deeply rooted Palestinian society, away from its natural and harmonious historical course, and imposed on it a life of displacement or exile. They view it as a national disaster, not only because it was accompanied by military defeat and loss of territory, but principally because it embodied an unprecedented threat to their existence as a people, resulting in the dispersion of almost half the Palestinian population. The Nakba also went hand in hand with loss of hope for national sovereignty; destruction of the social, economic, political, and cultural fabric; and above all, with the fading and near disappearance of Palestinian national identity. Consequently, the refugee problem is described as a “living site of memory” for

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perpetuating the reminiscence of the Nakba as the heart of the Israeli-Arab conflict in general and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular. The memory of the Nakba evolved as a central national myth that elucidated three issues: the way in which their past evolved, the course in which their present is conducted, and the goals they must strive for in the future. It has become a powerful tool, shaping and disseminating Palestinian national consciousness and mobilizing the community. Hence, the memory of the Nakba was never merely the object of grief and longing, nor an idea encouraging passivity, but a means of stimulating Palestinian activism, inter alia, by enhancing the yearning for return (al-‘awda). The Palestinians never portrayed the Nakba as a story of the distant past, but as a living, continuous event, integrated into the present and spanning several generations, different sectors of the population, and geographic origins. The Nakba is thus presented as the culmination of a protracted historical movement, aimed at blurring the national identity of the Palestinians and dispossessing them of their lands. As a result, Palestinian society has crystallized as a “community of memory,” that is, a group that perceives its existence as part of a broad historical framework. This society has lived with a sense of constant threat and, for that very reason, has been committed to continue the struggle and correct the historic injustice that they suffered. The memory of the Nakba and the way it has been shaped reflect the uniqueness of the Palestinian national project in the Arab world, transforming the defeat, dispersion, and loss of territory into a core around which the Palestinian territorial bond and national identity have crystallized. The Nakba was perceived as an experience reflecting a common national fate, since it crossed every class, religious, political-ideological, and regional distinction that prevailed in Palestinian society. The Palestinian author Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, who went into exile in Iraq after 1948, described this complex situation as follows: “The sense of belonging to Palestinian soil, instead of fading, continued to grow stronger in the period of exile.”4 Thus, it became engraved in the collective consciousness of the Palestinian people, including those who did not experience displacement as the most prominent national symbol. Concurrently, it should be pointed out that in the Palestinian view, the Nakba was not a founding event of Palestinian national identity, which they maintain existed long before 1948. Rather, it is described as an unprecedented historical turning point that greatly enhanced Palestinian consciousness. Before analyzing the Nakba myth, it is necessary to elucidate the term “myth” itself. In this context, myths are usually defined as stories reflecting widely held beliefs about the history of a people, and explaining where it came from and where it is headed. As they are built on human memory, myths are created selectively and change according to the needs of the hour.

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Emanuel Sivan defines a myth as “a kind of political allegory which passes down in writing and orally from generation to generation.” Sivan maintains that a myth has a dramatic narrative structure intended to trigger emotions. Therefore, it motivates people to perform acts “of faith” rather than be moved by rational persuasion. On a practical level, Sivan identifies a double purpose in every myth: cognitive-interpretive and operational-behavioral. Initially, a myth interprets a specific experience a society underwent and places it on a wide historical continuum. A myth also contains a practical function, which is to mobilize people for a political goal and guide their actions.5 In this manner, people are moved to action by virtue of memory.6 According to these definitions, the Nakba can be defined as a myth. First, it provides an explanation as to the root or source of the reality in which Palestinians live today. This story is presented as a continuum between past and present, thus reinforcing the notion of continuity in the fate and destiny of the Palestinian people. Together with the interpretive dimension, the memory of the Nakba also contains a clearly operational dimension, as it consistently impels the Palestinians to action for the sake of a well-defined political goal, namely, return. Compared with political myths in other Middle Eastern countries— where states and political elites play the dominant role in constructing a collective memory that serves their political goals—the Nakba memory is unique.7 Having lacked a government for most of their existence as a national group, Palestinians identified themselves with the national leadership in exile, even though it had only an indirect impact on their lives. This situation created a unique situation in which various Palestinian groups—the “inside” (al-dakhil, Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip) and the “outside” (al-kharij, the diaspora)—interacted with the political leadership and took part in shaping national memories. In other words, the memory was shaped and preserved from “above,” that is, by the armed Palestinian organizations and the PLO, as well as from “below,” as spontaneous activities of ordinary Palestinians. (For this aspect of the Nakba, see Milshtein’s “Memory from Below” in this volume.) This study will analyze the transformations of the Nakba memory in light of the changing needs and circumstances of the Palestinian national movement. Part I “Lost Paradise”: Shaping the Nakba Memory, 1948–1994 The historical roots of the Nakba memory The description of the 1948 war as the Nakba is usually attributed to the renowned Syrian intellectual Qustantin Zuraq, who in August 1948 first

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used the term as the title of his book, Ma‘na al-Nakba [The meaning of the Nakba]. This work assesses the roots of the Arab (though not necessarily the Palestinian) failure in the fight against Israel, and was published even before the war ended.8 Many have since posed the question why this specific term took root, rather than any of the others that also express disaster or defeat (for instance, naksa or hazima). Arab social critics emphasized the literal meaning of the term, which expresses submission to the raging forces of nature and fate. The Egyptian sociologist Sa‘ad al-Din Ibrahim maintained that the use of the term “Nakba” as a description of an unforeseen disaster stemming from external forces relieved the Arabs in general, and the Palestinians in particular, from having to take responsibility for the events, and thus maintained their status as passive victims.9 According to Nimer Sirhan, general director of the Folklore Department in the Palestinian Culture Ministry, “the Nakba emerged as a result of external political developments that took most Palestinians by surprise.”10 The majority of Palestinian writers do not describe the Nakba as a distinct historical event. Instead, it is interwoven with a broader narrative, which comprises a long series of events—such as the First Zionist Congress in Basel, the Sykes-Picot Accord, the Balfour Declaration and the 1947 Partition Plan—the overall aim of which was dispossessing the Palestinians of their soil and erasing their national identity. This version, which fits similar narratives prevalent in the Arab world, views Zionism as part of a European colonialism that exploits Western capital and technology for the purpose of depriving the Palestinians of their land. Arabs insist that this was done by making use of a false counternarrative, according to which Zionist pioneers found uninhabited land when they came to Palestine (“a land without a people for a people without a land”).11 According to the Palestinians, the Nakba was the result of a well-prepared plan for ethnic cleansing, going back to the end of the nineteenth century.12 Moreover, it is not perceived as a passing historical event but as an ongoing process, so that consecutive generations of Palestinians are compelled to face identical trials and challenges. Palestinians claim that the Nakba has brought about an exchange of historical roles, and that the Palestinians have been transformed into “victims of the victims.” Jabra, for instance, claims that “the wandering Palestinians have replaced the wandering Jews.” He sees irony in the fact that those who pushed the Palestinians into a life of wandering were the very same people who had suffered a similar fate not long before.13 From a mark of shame to a symbol of pride The 1948 defeat dealt a heavy blow to the process of Palestinian nation building. Not only had the Palestinians lost most of their land and the

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chance for sovereignty, but they also found themselves refugees lacking leadership, dispersed over a broad region and subject to alien regimes, two of which—Jordan and Israel—were hostile to the Palestinian cause and sought to blur Palestinian national identity.14 Adding to the fear of loss of national identity was the lure for young Palestinians of supranational ideologies that were prevalent in the Arab world in the 1950s, primarily panArabism, led by Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasser, the Ba‘ath party, Communism, and fundamentalist Islam.15 Also significant on the social-psychological plane were the feelings of despair, frustration, and alienation felt by Palestinian refugees, and caused by the rigid, arrogant attitudes of their Arab “hosts,” who accused them of having betrayed their land.16 These feelings of loss of identity and of being uprooted were particularly traumatic in light of the traditional village background of most of the refugees; indeed, in most traditional societies, attachment to the soil and a close social fabric are perceived as essential parts of an individual’s identity. Violating these elements produces a powerful psychological rupture, to the point that it prevents people from fully integrating elsewhere.17 Concurrently, the socioeconomic and political situation in the refugee camps contributed to the formation of a common national identity, as members of nearly all sections of Palestinian society were mingled together, thereby blurring traditional class lines, regional differences, and the rural-urban divide. Still, at that time, many Palestinians feared that the refugee issue would become a merely humanitarian problem, and that they would thereby lose their national character. Toward the end of the 1950s the Palestinians experienced a national awakening, initiated by a new generation of leaders who promoted new ideas and established new national institutions. The change allowed for a clearer definition of national goals than ever before, in which the Nakba memory and the idea of return played a central role. At the focus of the transformations stood Fatah (acronym of Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini; the Palestinian National Liberation Movement), up to the 2006 elections the largest and most prominent Palestinian organization. Fatah was a product of the 1948 defeat, and particularly of the desire to rectify its repercussions. Ever since its foundation in 1959, Fatah has stood for protest or, as the movement called it, “revolution” (thawra) against the existing order. That revolution was not manifested in a new social or cultural message, but in national-political goals. Fatah’s pioneering calls for the promotion of a particularistic Palestinian identity (wataniyya) stood out at a time when most Arabs, including the Palestinians, followed ‘Abd al-Nasser in advocating a pan-Arab nationalism (qawmiyya). Fatah’s opposition to the current situation was also reflected in

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its call for Palestinian self-reliance and for armed struggle against Israel, thus curtailing any expectations of salvation coming from the Arab world. In addition, Fatah’s contribution was also prominent in defining clear national goals: return and total liberation. Attaining these goals, according to the movement, could be carried out only by armed struggle. The emergence of Fatah symbolized a generational and social change in the Palestinian leadership. Most members of the new leadership were relatively young, had an academic education, and belonged to the middle or lower strata of Palestinian society. Almost all of them had personally experienced the 1948 war and the humiliation of refugee life. They replaced the traditional leadership that consisted mostly of members of prestigious urban families, highlighting the contrast between the two groups. Indeed, they called themselves “the generation of vengeance and revolution,” in contrast to the preceding “generation of defeat.”18 The turning point in Fatah’s rise to power and national leadership occurred in 1969, when it took over the Palestine Liberation Organization (Munazzamat al-Tahrir al-Filastiniyya; PLO), which had originally been founded at the 1964 Arab League Summit as the new leading institution representing the Palestinian people. The memory of the Nakba and the idea of the right of return were powerful tools through which Fatah promoted the Palestinian cause and national consciousness. It fused individual longings with national aspirations, particularly in refugee camps in the diaspora. Fatah succeeded in taking the refugee’s private longing for a particular field, village, or tree, and reformulating it as a national yearning for a homeland and independence.19 The Palestinian national movement took the awareness of a common fate one step further by transforming the Nakba memory into a collective possession shared by the entire population, and the idea of return into a supreme national goal, even for those who did not experience displacement. A striking manifestation of Fatah’s success can be found in the words of the poetess Fadwa Tuqan of Nablus, who did not experience displacement personally: “I will return and then I will seal the story of my life.”20 The emphasis on the Nakba as the common fate of all Palestinians, and on return as a joint goal, helped transform these two concepts into the central axis of the Palestinian national movement. According to ‘Azmi Bishara, a former Israeli Knesset member for the Arab Balad party (National Democratic Alliance), the Palestinian effort to merge personal memories with a collective story creates a bridge between the individual’s feelings and the imagined notion of the nation. Today, Palestinian return, he adds, does not need to be directed toward a specific village or city, but should serve as “a return in ideas”—that is, to a sovereign state. This move,

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he says, would attest to national maturity and help consolidate a progressive national goal.21 Together with fostering national consciousness, Fatah used the Nakba to end the passivity that had been part of the trauma of the Nakba throughout the 1950s, and to transform its memory into a catalyst for activism. Sakhar Habash, one of Fatah’s leading ideologues, claimed that “the Nakba was the essence of the revolutionary activism which had pushed Fatah to set up an alternative to the flawed situation deriving from it and from the various plans that aimed at liquidating Palestinian existence.”22 The Nakba memory, in Fatah’s view, was no longer an object of grief and longing, but a constant reminder of shame and, concurrently, a stimulus to action. These measures helped Fatah develop a national narrative in which it was described as the heroic vanguard that saved the Palestinians from sinking into oblivion. The movement’s history and the nation’s history thus merged. Fatah’s military operations were crystallized into a national epic, reflecting the actions of the entire Palestinian people. For that reason, the Fatah founder and leader Yasser Arafat (d. 2005) often declared that by waging armed struggle the movement had transformed the Palestinians “from a people in exile into a revolutionary people.”23

Part II Memory in the Service of Power: How the Palestinian National Authority Shaped the Nakba Memory The establishment of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) marked the first time in history that a ruling Palestinian administration had been set up—even if it did not possess full powers—on the “inside.” Never before had a Palestinian administration had the means—namely, control over the media and education system—to shape and disseminate Palestinian national consciousness in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The cultivation of the Nakba memory, which the PNA sought to infuse as a national symbol, even among those who had not personally experienced displacement, was an important component of these efforts. It became one of the central elements through which Arafat sought to perpetuate adherence to the “1948 goals,” even at this juncture of emerging statehood. However, not only state instruments but also historical chance, or “the cunning of history,” helped the PNA foster the Nakba memory. This refers mainly to the symbolic meaning of the fiftieth anniversary of the Nakba (May 1998), a sad mirror image, both searing and provocative, of the celebrations of Israel’s fiftieth anniversary of independence, which were held

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at the same time. This date carries powerful emotional connotations and has greatly intensified the Palestinian memory of a collective past. At the same time, the serious repercussions of the Nakba memory derived, among others, from the gradual realization of the Palestinian public that the solution to the refugee problem was still far away, in view of the growing popular understanding that a political settlement would not include full return of the refugees to their original homes. The PNA chairman Yasser Arafat was shrewd enough to exploit the changes in the Nakba memory in 1998, to tighten the bonds between his government and Palestinian society, and later on to mobilize the public and incite it to violent confrontation with Israel. A major PNA aim in cultivating the Nakba memory was to enhance the individual Palestinian’s perception of a continuing Israeli threat— identical to the one his forefathers had felt—and hence stimulate commitment to a continued national struggle. Although the message was not new, the PNA leadership now had better means at its disposal to inculcate it directly and persistently. Thus, senior PNA officials stressed that, although the Nakba was an integral part of the history of the Palestinian people and would outlast a settlement with Israel, it was also manifest in present-day Israeli attempts to dislodge and displace the Palestinians.24 ‘Imad al-Faluji, a descendant of a refugee family from the Faluja village and former Palestinian post and communications minister, maintains that in the last fifty years, the Nakba has remained part of the Palestinians’ experience since they are still contending with numerous existential challenges. The Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) continued this line of reasoning with a special announcement published on the occasion of the Nakba’s fiftieth anniversary, claiming that “the Nakba has a presence in our consciousness in all aspects of our daily lives and in every home in Palestine.”25 Mahmud Darwish provided the most striking expression of this position in the letter he composed on the occasion of the fifty-third anniversary of the Nakba: Today is the greatest day of remembrance. We will not look at yesterday in order to bring before us facts about the crime taking place, because the present of the Nakba remains open and spreads to all the winds of time. We do not need anyone to remind us of our human tragedy that has continued for fifty-three years now, since we are still living it here and now . . . We have not forgotten the beginning, nor the keys to our house, nor the lanterns of our journey lit with our blood . . . We will never forget the yesterday, nor the tomorrow, because tomorrow begins now, out of our determination to continue following this path.26

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Cultivating the Nakba as “sites of memory” The new means of communication and education also helped the PNA construct “sites of memory,” or lieux de mémoire , in the words of the French historian Pierre Nora. These sites include memorials, symbols, rites, and days of remembrance, which in Nora’s view sum up the national memory at a time when the original human memory has become blurred or even obliterated as a consequence of rapid changes over generations. They create a continuum between past and present, and anchor the memory of the individual in an illusory link with a past not based on personal experience.27 Of these new sites, a few stand out: (1) Commemoration activities: Most important of these was the establishment of the state museum Dar al-Dhakira in 1999 to commemorate the Nakba. The site, located at Kafr Ayn Siniya near Ramallah, exhibits numerous data based on the Nakba in general and destroyed villages in particular. Another official commemorative project named governmental institutions, streets, town squares, or schools throughout the PNA after places lost to Israel in 1948.28 (2) Official commemoration days: In 1998 the PNA set up May 15 as the official Nakba Day, marking the date on which the establishment of the state of Israel was proclaimed (the actual date was May 14). This was, in fact, the first time the Nakba was marked officially by the PNA. Since then, the PNA has taken pains to mark this day annually in a series of ceremonies, including speeches by Arafat and Darwish; mass processions in which boys carry signs with the names of destroyed localities and giant keys; siren soundings for two to three minutes during which people stand at attention; and military marches and art shows.29 The PNA educational system has played a central role in the promotion and inculcation of the Nakba memory. Like states that have experienced a transitional phase, from struggle to statehood, the PNA views education, including education to cultivate a memory of the Nakba, as an important agent in shaping national consciousness sympathetic to and supportive of the regime. Textbooks and teachers’ guides have served as the principal means of perpetuating the memory of the Nakba and steering young people toward action. In these books, particularly those published by the Palestinian Ministry of Education, the Nakba and its aftermath receive comprehensive treatment, while the existence of Israel is patently ignored.30 A number of geography books portray Palestine as one geographic-political unit, including all heretofore Arab cities that became part

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of Israel—Jaffa, Beisan (Bet She’an), Beersheba—while disregarding Israel’s existence or any of the cities founded by the Jews.31 Books for the lower grades contain poems by Darwish and ‘Abd al-Karim al-Karmi, particularly poems that discuss displacement and return.32 Similarly, history books abound with expressions of longing for destroyed localities, such as “Jaffa, your spilled blood is still sprayed on the ancient walls, and the locusts and the robbers finished off the desolate fields . . . Jaffa, we will return to you tomorrow with the harvest.”33 The teachers’ guides usually instruct teachers to arouse feelings of anger among the pupils over the Nakba and to foster hostility toward the enemy responsible for it.34 An especially interesting case of inculcation of the Nakba memory is found in the book Our Beautiful Language, published in 2000 for the sixth grade. It describes the flight of the Palestinian historian Mustafa Murad alDabbagh from Jaffa in 1948. The narrative emphasizes the fact that the draft of his life’s work, Our Land Filastin—on which he had worked assiduously for more than ten years, and which contained more than 6,000 pages—was lost. According to this tale, the draft was lost when it was thrown overboard, together with the briefcase in which it had been placed, in order to lighten the boat on which al-Dabbagh and other refugees fled the Jaffa port on a stormy day. Yet al-Dabbagh did not despair, and when he arrived in Lebanon he again took up his study, maintaining that it was aimed at serving the Palestinian people “so that they would not forget their stolen homeland and would act to redeem it.” The story serves as an illustration of the nature of Palestinian existence: on the one hand, loss and fear of the erosion of historic memory and identity (the lost work), and on the other hand, the determination to persevere by preserving the past and bring about correction of an “historic wrong.”35 The PNA also employ extracurricular measures to promote the Nakba memory, such as summer camps that devote a substantial part of their time to studying the 1948 war. Some camps are even named after localities abandoned in 1948, such as Safed, Yavneh, and Jaffa.36 In addition, the PNA publishes youth magazines, including Majallat al-Ashbal wal-Zaharat, which discusses the refugee situation at length, as well as the ruined localities and yearnings for return.37 The PNA media also serves as an effective agency in shaping mass consciousness, particularly in connection with events marking the Nakba’s fiftieth anniversary, both as a tool for disseminating its memory and as an instrument for mobilizing the masses and encouraging them to take part in the various memorial events. Both PNA TV and Voice of Palestine radio devote much of their broadcasting time to covering the Nakba Day events. These programs proceed according to the “open wave” format and include, inter alia, documentary films about the 1948 war, pictures of and

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commentary on the remnants of destroyed localities, and special spots dedicated to testimonies by “survivors of the Nakba.”38 The semiofficial dailies al-Ayyam and al-Hayat al-Jadida take a similar approach, publishing extensive articles covering the various issues of the Nakba. In February 1998 al-Ayyam started publishing a daily column, “In Order Not to Forget” (kay la nansi), which presents photographs from the Nakba period as well as articles about it.39 Fatah has also played an important role in the PNA promotion of the Nakba memory. The movement, which became the ruling PNA party and retained a stronghold on the PNA institutions and armed forces from 1994 to 2006, held public events, seminars, art exhibitions, and research studies focusing on the Nakba,40 partly in order to tighten the bonds between the people and the PNA but also as a means of mobilizing the population for violent action against Israel. The Nakba memory as a motive for activism In addition to its educational role, the Nakba memory served as a tool for mobilizing the population for action. In a sense, Arafat followed the course he had set in the 1950s and 1960s, during which Fatah transformed the Nakba memory from an object of grief and longing into an instrument for activism and combativeness. However, in view of the changing political circumstances, a different practical translation of this memory was required. The accords with Israel prevented Arafat, at least during the PNA early years, from using the Nakba memory as a stimulus for armed action against Israel. Consequently, he used the maneuvering room available to him, and encouraged an alternative type of struggle in the form of clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and the Israeli army. Also illustrating the concept of the Nakba memory as a stimulus to action is a statement by Ibrahim Abu Naja, deputy speaker of the PLC, who argued that the Nakba memory should be expressed with fewer displays of sorrow and self-criticism and with more of an eye toward realizing Palestinian national goals and undoing the Nakba’s outcome.41 The Nakba memory as “an operating code” for the Palestinian public is so effective because of the powerful emotional grip it has on the Palestinian consciousness. It is no wonder that the first public events organized by the PNA on the anniversary of the Nakba elicited a relatively large response from the Palestinian public. The commemorations, mostly organized by a commission especially created for the event, namely, the Supreme National Commission for Commemorating the Nakba, included a long series of processions, chief among them the “million persons’

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march” (masirat al-milyun), which took place simultaneously in several locations throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.42 That the Nakba commemoration days from 1998 onward elicited violent clashes with Israeli troops is a clear manifestation of its operational impact. The background of the first clashes in May 1998, which resulted in the death of eight people and in which hundreds were injured, was the stalemate in the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Arafat, who apparently sought to exert pressure on Israel, succeeded in mobilizing the Palestinian public for a violent popular struggle, taking advantage of the passions aroused on the Palestinian street during the Nakba Day commemorations.43 Similar events occurred in later years, particularly in 2000.44 Significantly, ever since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada (September 2000), which signified the Palestinian return to armed struggle against Israel, the Nakba days have stood out, mainly because of the large numbers of violent clashes and terrorist attacks they triggered.45 A closer look at various theories in social psychology and mass behavior might shed light on the power of the Nakba memory in motivating the Palestinians to action. In The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931) contended that the crowd is motivated only by the power of the subconscious and is captivated by visual symbols and emotions that arouse instincts.46 Georges Sorel (1847–1922) advanced this theory in Réflexions sur la violence by focusing on the capacity of myths to stimulate violence and self-sacrifice when they have penetrated the subconscious of the masses.47 Notwithstanding the problematic nature of Sorel’s theories, which constituted the platform from which Fascist thought evolved, they may supply at least a partial explanation for the consistent and impressive success of the Nakba idea in motivating the Palestinians to resort to violence. The Palestinian Islamic camp and the Nakba memory The Islamic opposition, which rejected the Oslo Accords, denied the legitimacy and legality of the PNA, and refused (until the parliamentary elections in 2006) to join its institutions, developed its own way of commemorating the Nakba. Hamas (an acronym for Harakat alMaqawama al-Islamiya, or Islamic Resistance Movement), the armed political wing of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood and the leading Islamic opposition group, sought to become the political alternative to the nationalist leadership headed by the PLO. Consequently, it formulated an alternative political program and rejected the nationalist narrative propagated by Fatah and the PLO.48 The Islamists’ approach to the Nakba memory, and especially to the PNA attempts to shape it, reflects the ideological gap between the two

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camps regarding the desirability and price of an agreement with Israel. Essentially, members of the Islamic camp, like every sector of the Palestinian people, entertain deep-seated emotions on the Nakba. Most founding members of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad experienced displacement and refugee life personally, as did the founding generation of Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). It is no wonder, then, that both Islamic organizations were launched in the Gaza Strip refugee camps, where wretched living conditions and a powerful yearning for “the lost homeland” were merged with the growing despair over the political course pursued by the PLO leadership.49 The special emphasis the PNA puts on the Nakba memory confounds the Islamic movements. On the one hand, they value the preservation of the Nakba memory and aspirations for return, particularly as a means of propagating armed struggle against Israel; but at the same time, they recoil from participating in PNA activities, which might imply recognition of the legitimacy of the PNA, and consequently of the political accords with Israel, which they continued to oppose. As a way out of this dilemma, the Islamists, particularly Hamas, take part in the commemorative effort, which has encompassed the entire Palestinian people since 1998. Nevertheless, in contrast with the PNA’s nationalist presentation and interpretation of the Nakba, the Islamists emphasize the religious dimension of the 1948 tragedy. In Hamas’s view, the conflict is not just a struggle between Zionism and the Palestinian national movement, but rather a religious confrontation in which not only national territory has been lost but also, first and foremost, the holy endowed Islamic land (waqf). Thus, the Hamas organ Filastin al-Muslima has produced numerous descriptions of Islamic sites—mosques, cemeteries, and tombs of saints— that were either destroyed or put to other uses by Israelis after 1948.50 As a rule, the Islamists refuse to participate in Nakba commemoration events held by the PNA, organizing their own events instead. Likewise, they publicly ridicule the small number of participants in PNA events, compared with the larger crowds that they themselves draw.51 Following this course, the Islamist movements have managed to demonstrate the shared fate of the Palestinian people as a whole, while avoiding co-optation with the PNA or granting it any legitimacy.

The Nakba Memory and the al-Aqsa Intifada Precisely at the historic crossroads where it seemed to many that a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was drawing nearer, the memory of the 1948 events came to the fore. All Palestinian factions presented the

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al-Aqsa Intifada as stemming from the Palestinian refusal to make compromises with regard to the refugees and from the adherence of the Palestinian leadership and public to the idea of return. This occurred at a time when serious discussions were held between Israel and the Palestinians on the refugee question. The failure of the diplomatic talks in the summer of 2000 and the eruption of the violent confrontation were viewed by many as the end of a decade in which the Palestinians had seemingly moved toward the goal of establishing a Palestinian state and had given up—albeit for a limited time only—on their long-term national goals, in the first place, return.52 In fact, many Palestinians viewed the resumption of armed struggle as national salvation, in view of their fear that return would be abandoned in favor of the goal of statehood. One of them, Salman Abu Sitta, director of the Palestinian ‘Awda Return Centre, London, had complained of abandonment of the 1948 goals for years, ever since the 1970s, in particular after the shifting of focus of activity in the Palestinian sector to the “inside.” According to him, this move produced “preoccupation with secondary goals, such as a port, an airfield, and secure crossing points.”53 The Nakba was the very center of the al-Aqsa Intifada. In many respects, this struggle reflected an almost complete identity between Palestinian society and leadership. Standing on the verge of a historic decision was like touching a painfully exposed nerve in the Palestinian consciousness. The occasion signalled to the Palestinians that they needed to take a much closer look at their aims and objectives, a situation that once again immersed them in the past, and led them down a path lacking any clearly defined goals. The direction followed by the violent struggle further intensified the Nakba memory. As on many previous occasions, the combat was viewed as a continuation of the past, and as the outcome of an unending effort to dispossess the Palestinians of their land. The destruction of houses in the Rafah refugee camp, for example, was described as a “second Nakba.” Likewise, the fierce battle in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002 was described as the continuation of similar battles that had taken place in the area in 1948, and as additional evidence of Israel’s aim to expel and destroy.54 Conversely, the prolongation of the al-Aqsa Intifada, due to the steady erosion of power of the Palestinian administration, destroyed the political infrastructure that had been created with great effort while distancing the Palestinians from their historical goals—whether statehood or return. But the protracted intifada also led to the rise of other voices in the Palestinian camp, which called for sobering up from delusions about a close possibility of return and demanded instead that national sovereignty be promoted. A good many of these voices were of prominent personalities in the

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pragmatic Palestinian camp, who felt that the base of their strength, which rested on control of the political-diplomatic apparatus, was being eroded as the focus of power shifted from the Palestinian leadership to the common people. Mahmud ‘Abbas (Abu Mazen) stood out in this context. In the summer of 2002, he argued before a Palestinian audience in the al-Yarmuk refugee camp in Syria that there was no chance that the refugees would return to homes where generations of Jews had meanwhile been born and raised.55 Yasser ‘Abd-Rabbuh, the Palestinian minister of information and culture, claimed that as a reasonable politician he was “ready to take a painful diplomatic position” even though one should not expect him to forget his house in Jaffa.56 The Palestinian writer and journalist Hasan Khadr expressed the full acceptance of the idea of a state as follows: It is enough for me that I am in Palestine. I confess that I love Acre more than Khan Yunis, where I was born. Small things make me happy: raising a big Christmas tree in the Square of the Unknown Soldier . . . Besides, I wait impatiently for completion of work on the road linking Gaza and Deir alBalakh . . . It is no longer possible to recreate the lost paradise. The homeland is in our hands, crumbling and warped and looking forward to rescue. We have an ever-evolving identity; it will develop with every meter that we take away from the occupation, and every road that we pave, every book that we print, every woman that we embrace and every decision that we make in the domain of social and political organization, and of human rights.57

Conclusion The Nakba memory and its concrete representation—the refugee problem—constitute a central anchor of Palestinian collective identity and the chief political motivation of the modern Palestinian national movement. The Nakba memory, as Baruch Kimmerling has pointed out, is to a great extent similar to that of the Jewish Holocaust in that it contains elements that are at the same time debilitating and constructive.58 Thus, at its inception the national myth contained elements that induced passivity in the Palestinians. However, in view of a changed historical reality and of new needs, the Nakba has become the central axis of Palestinian national awakening, which has intensified the aspirations for change and channeled the Palestinians toward activism. Moreover, as it was unfolding, the Nakba memory became part of the public domain of all sectors of the Palestinian people, attaining the status of symbol or narrative for the entire population. It succeeded in unifying the dispersed communities of many subgroups (outside and inside, West Bankers and Gaza Strip residents,

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Muslims and Christians, nationalists and Islamists, city dwellers and villagers, and so forth). Following the establishment of the PNA and with the help of modern state mechanisms such as the state media and educational system, the status of the Nakba memory rose, both as a means of mobilizing public support for the PNA and as a tool for active struggle against Israel. The frequent and comprehensive use of memory in the Palestinian arena transformed the Nakba into a kind of “active past,” that is, a memory perceived by individuals and groups as a continuing experience. Those who carry this memory share with their fathers not only a common experience and a common sense of fate, but also a future destiny, which requires that they take action. The more problematic aspect of the Nakba memory is inherent in its role as “the Palestinian national complex,” which implies a lack of historical decision on the part of the Palestinians as to what their national goals are. In more practical terms, it refers to the vacillation between “the goal of statehood,” which entails painful national concessions but is realizable relatively quickly, and the goal of “revolution,” that is, return and full liberation, which calls for the Palestinians to be patient and determined for many years to come. In this context, the Nakba memory, as embodied in the past and the present, serves as “a historical ghost” that looms over the Palestinian community, embodying the humiliation of the past, aspirations for vengeance, and yearnings for return. Consequently, it tilts the Palestinians toward the goal of “revolution,” and against statehood. Concurrently, some Palestinians have sought creative solutions to the refugee problem, which is viewed by both sides as the very heart of the conflict. The historian Rashid al-Khalidi, the former PNA minister Ziyad Abu Ziyad, and Sari Nusseibeh, president of al-Quds University, proposed various solutions, based on an Israeli recognition of moral responsibility for the creation of the problem and acceptance of the principle of right of return for the refugees and their descendants. They stressed that realization of return would be to a Palestinian state and not to the original places of habitation, and called for a mechanism for financial compensations for the refugees: this would enable the resettlement (tawtin) in various Arab states of those Palestinians who do not want to return to the “inside,” as well as the limited return of several tens of thousands of Palestinians to Israeli territory in the framework of family reunification.59 The prevalent view in the Palestinian community, however, is that any solution other than full realization of the right of return, even at the price of postponing it for an indefinite period of time, should be rejected. This approach repudiates without discussion the idea of financial compensation, substitute real estate, or, in particular, naturalization in Arab states, which has become a pejorative concept among Palestinians.60

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At this point, it might be interesting to compare the Palestinian Nakba memory with that of other peoples in modern history who have experienced displacement and a life of exile—such as the Circassians and Chechens who chose to leave their homes, conquered by Russia, and migrated to the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century; the Turks and Greeks who were forced to leave their homes following the 1923 Turkish-Greek population exchange agreement; the millions of refugees on the Indian subcontinent following the 1947 partition; and the 15 million Germans expelled from their homes in Eastern Europe at the end of World War II. In none of these cases did the group of refugees maintain such strong and long-lasting aspirations regarding a possible repatriation as did the Palestinians. One explanation may be the obvious religious-cultural background of the Nakba. Accordingly, the intensity of the Palestinian memory of displacement is an inherent part of the perception of loss of Islamic land in the heart of the Middle East with its scores of Islamic holy places. This is especially traumatic when the enemy has for hundreds of years been viewed as an inferior “protected” minority (ahl al-dhimma). In a culture characterized by the very tight link between political control and religion, the memory of humiliation and loss is intensified manyfold, as the memory of the loss of al-Andalus in the fifteenth century, for instance, is still engraved in the consciousness of the Islamic world. Another explanation relates to the traditional nature of Palestinian society, in which possession of land constitutes a central component of an individual’s identity and status. Therefore, losing one’s land is perceived as a deep mark of shame, constantly reminding the person of what is missing and rallying him to restore his honor. Still, these arguments do not explain why equally active “return movements” do not exist among the Muslim groups mentioned above. All the refugee groups mentioned moved to “mother states,” which were anxious to absorb them, and did eventually integrate into the host societies. By contrast, the Palestinians after the Nakba remained stateless and were rejected by their host countries. For the most part, they resettled in refugee camps, which perpetuated their tragic fate. Their wretched everyday lives and the feelings of alienation from the surrounding society provided a constant reaffirmation of the Nakba memory. Refugees from other states accounted for only a small part of the host nations and could therefore be absorbed more easily. In the Palestinian case, the number of displaced people constitutes about half the population. This uniqueness has implanted in the Palestinians a stronger loathing for the reality in which they are entrapped, and has stimulated them more resolutely toward changing the course of history. The Palestinians do, in any case, emphasize the uniqueness of their

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national experience as an uprooted people. Most of the German refugees accepted German guilt and the concomitant price they had to pay, whereas the Palestinians regard themselves as victims of a systematic plan to dispossess them from their land, and to blur their national identity.61 The Palestinian leadership, too, has played a crucial role in this regard. Until his death in 2004, PLO and PNA Chairman Yasser Arafat embodied “the national schizophrenia” of the Palestinians. He saw himself as a living symbol of the Nakba (even though he did not experience it personally).62 He was the one who brought the Palestinian case to the “stage of statehood.” He was the one who, in fact, set up the modern Palestinian arena and developed a Palestinian national consciousness. And he was also the one who brought it down to extremely low depths. It remains to be seen whether a Palestinian leader will arise who, like David Ben Gurion of Israel or Michael Collins of Ireland, will prefer the “goal of statehood,” limited as it may be, over a continued holding onto vague nationalist utopian aspirations. Will such a leader be able to withstand the power of collective memory engraved in Palestinian consciousness and enable a new shaping of the Nakba memory, neutralizing its explosive character? Following eight years of bloody struggle between Israel and the Palestinians, the al-Aqsa Intifada increasingly appears as a violent eruption that has resuscitated, for both Palestinians and Jews, ghosts of the past that had seemed to have at least partially faded away. Thus, Palestinian yearnings for return and fears of “transfer” intensified, just as was the Jewish fear that return would totally destroy Israel as a Jewish state. Notes 1. For historical analyses of the Palestinian defeat, see Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Yoav Gelber, Palestine, 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2001); Issa Khalaf, Politics in Palestine: Arab Factionalism and Social Disintegration, 1939–1948 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991). 2. The Israeli version is that 290 villages were destroyed, while Palestinian researchers, such as Mustafa al-Dabbagh and Salih ‘Abd al-Jawad, counted 470 destroyed localities. Walid al-Khalidi claimed that out of 418 localities, 292 (70%) were totally destroyed, 90 (22%) were mostly destroyed, and seven (2%) were settled by Jews and therefore not destroyed. See Walid al-Khalidi, All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992), preface, pp. xvi, xix. 3. The number of Palestinian refugees is a subject of bitter dispute. United Nations estimates compiled shortly after the war put the number of displaced Palestinians at 700,000 to 875,000. Israeli estimates claim 550,000 to 650,000,

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while the Palestinians hold that the number is higher than 900,000. See Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal, Palestinians: The Making of a People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 147; Danny Rubinstein, The People of Nowhere: The Palestinian Vision of Home (New York: Times Books, 1991), pp. 3–5; Salman Abu Sitta, “Palestinian Right to Return . . . Sacred, Legal, and Possible,” The Palestinian Return Centre (London, 1 May 1999), http://www.prc.org.uk 4. Jabra I. Jabra, “The Palestinian Exile as Writer,” Journal of Palestine Studies 8, no. 2 (Winter 1979): 84. 5. Emanuel Sivan, Arab Political Myths (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1988, in Hebrew), pp. 9–11. 6. Harold Schimmel, “Treatise on Memory,” Teorya u-Biqoret, no. 4 (Fall 1993, in Hebrew): 20. 7. Edward Said, “al-Talfiq, al-dhakira, wal-makan,” al-Karmil (Ramallah), nos. 70–71 (Winter–Spring 2002): 95–96; Anthony Smith, “The ‘Golden Age’ and National Renewal,” in Geoffrey Hosking and George Schopflin, eds., Myths and Nationhood (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 37. 8. Ali E. Hillal Dessouki, “Arab Intellectuals and al-Nakbah: The Search for Fundamentalism,” Middle Eastern Studies 9, no. 2 (May 1973): 187–89. See the essay by Esther Webman in this book, which shows that the use of the term Nakba to denote the Palestinian predicament began in 1945. 9. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, “Intelligentsia: Time to Give Up the Ghost,” Civil Society 7, no.77 (May 1998): 4. 10. Nimer Sirhan, “The Nakbah in Palestinian Folk literature,” Palestine-Israel Journal 5, nos. 3–4 (1998): 153. 11.This phrase was mistakenly attributed to the Zionist activist Yisrael Zangwill but was in fact coined by the Scottish minister Alexander Keith in 1843, who believed that the small Arab population of nineteenth-century Palestine would not pose a problem to mass Jewish immigration. See Diana Muir, “A Land without a People for a People without a Land,” Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2008, 55–62. 12. Ibrahim Abu Lughod, “al-Yawm al-akhir qabla sukut Yaffa” al-Karmil, nos. 55–56 (Spring–Summer 1998): 118–19; Fathiyya Nasro, “al-‘Ibar al-mustafada khilal khamsin ‘aman ila nakbat Filastin,” al-Siyasa al-filastiniyya (Nablus), no. 18 (Spring 1998): 48; Sharif Kan‘ana, “Hatmiyat tard al-sukan al-‘arab al-filastiniyyin wa-tadmir qurahim,” al-mujtama‘ al-filastini—arba ‘in ‘aman ‘ala al-Nakba wa-wahid wa-‘ishrin ‘aman ‘ala ihtilal al-Diffa wal-Quta‘ (Jerusalem: Matba‘at al-amal, no date), pp. 135–42; Walid ‘Ud in al-Quds, 14 May 2002; Samih Shabib in al-Majlis al-Tashri‘i, no. 4 (April 1998), p. 4. 13. Jabra, “Palestinian Exile,” p. 77. 14. The Palestinian sociologist Jamil Hilal contends that from 1948 until the mid1960s, there was no Palestinian national elite. The void created after the disintegration of the national elite in 1948 was filled by a local leadership that acted on a tribal-clan basis; see his Takwin al-nukhba al-filastiniyya mundhu Nushu’ al-haraka al-wataniyya al-filastiniyya ila ma ba‘d qiyam al-Sulta al-wataniyya (Ramallah: Muwatin–al-mu’asasa al-filastiniyya lil-darasat al-dimakratiyya 2002), pp. 29–32.

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15. “Reflections of the Nakbah” (compendium of testimonies, in English), Journal of Palestine Studies 28, no. 1 (Autumn 1998): p. 7. 16. See for instance Fawaz Turki, who says that only after native Lebanese sneered, “Go back to the place from where you came,” did he become aware of his Palestinian identity. The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian in Exile (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), pp. 8–9. 17. Rosemary Sayigh, The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries (London: Zed Books, 1979), pp. 124–26. 18. See Harkabi, “The Palestinians and Their Awakening,” pp. 261, 276–77; Matti Steinberg, “A Generation Goes and a Generation Comes: The ‘Nakba’ Generation and the ‘Armed Struggle’ Generation,” in Wars, Revolutions, and Generational Identity, ed. Yosi Mali (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2001, in Hebrew), pp. 119–23; and Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 180. 19. Issa al-Shuaibi, “The Development of Palestinian Entity-Consciousness, Part I,” Journal of Palestine Studies 9, no. 1 (Autumn 1979): 77–79. 20. Rubinstein, People of Nowhere, p. 131. 21. ‘Azmi Bishara, “Fi al-dhakira wal-ta’rikh,” al-Karmil (Ramallah), no. 50 (Winter 1997): 45–48. 22. Sawt wa-Sura, no. 1, August 1998, p. 3. 23. See an example in Arafat’s remarks on the occasion of the twenty-fourth anniversary of the outbreak of the “armed struggle” of Fatah, ‘Risalat al-akh Yasser ‘Arafat—ra’is al-lajna al-tanfidhiyya li-munazzamat tahrir Filastin— al-qa’id al-‘am li-quwat al-thawra al-filastiniyya, fi al-dhikra al-rabi‘a wa‘l-‘ishrin lintalaqat al-thawra al-filastiniyya—1/1/89,” Shu’un Filastiniyya (Nicosia), no. 190. 24. See a good illustration of this claim in al-Sabah, no. 131, 18 May 1998. 25. Al-Karama, no. 173, 18 May 2000. 26. Al-Ayyam, 8 May 2001. 27. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les lieux de mémoire,” Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 19. 28. Department of Geographic Information, Gaza Municipality, Urban Map of the City of Gaza (1998); Yedi‘ot Ahronot, Supplement, 26 September 1999; al-Hayat al-Jadida, 12 January 2000; al-Ayyam, 5 October 1996 and 3 July 2000. 29. The 1998 ceremonies were organized for the most part by the National Committee for Commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the 1948 Nakba, and headed by Yasser ‘Abd-Rabbuh, the PNA minister of information and culture. Regarding its various activities, see al-Hayat al-Jadida, 20 February 1998, 27 March 1998, 6 May 2001; al-Quds, 17 March 1998. For a description of the regular ceremonies that take place every year on 15 May, see Voice of Palestine, 12 May 2000; Palestinian State Television, 12 May 2001; Haaretz, 16 May 2001. Israeli Television, Channel One, 15 May 2001. 30. Although schools in the West Bank were under direct Israeli administration, the textbooks followed the Jordanian curriculum, and the Egyptian curriculum in the Gaza Strip. With the creation of the PNA, new Palestinian curricula were prepared by the Center for Developing Palestinian Curricula, headed by

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31.

32.

33.

34. 35. 36.

37.

38.

39.

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Ibrahim Abu Lughod, under the sponsorship of UNESCO and the Palestinian Ministry of Education. ‘Umar Musallam, Faysal Ghawadra, Hilmi Hasan, and Maha Halas, Lughatuna al-jamila lil-saff al-awwal al-asasi – al-juz’ al-awwal (Al-Bira-Ramallah: al-Sulta al-Wataniyya al-Filastiniyya—Wizarat al-Tarbiyya wal-Ta‘lim, 2000), p. 7; Mahmud ‘Atallah, Safa' Bashir, ‘Abdallah ‘Abd al-Raziq, ‘Ali Dhiyab al-A‘war, Muhammad al-Sadiq, Yusuf Jum‘a, al-Tarbiyya al-wataniyya lil-saff al-sadis al-asasi (Al-Bira-Ramallah: al-Sulta al-Wataniyya al-Filastiniyya—Wizarat al-Tarbiyya wal-Ta‘lim, 2000), pp. 8, 9, 42; ‘Abd al-Karim Abu Khushan and Jamal Yunus, Zaynab ‘Ayyash, Nabil Rumana, Yasir al-Mallah, Lughatuna aljamila lil-saff al-sadis al-asasi—al-juz’ al-awwal (Al-Bira-Ramallah: al-Sulta alWataniyya al-Filastiniyya – Wizarat al-Tarbiyya wal-Ta‘lim, 2000), pp. 115, 120. Muhammad Jawad al-Nuri, Amin Badr al-Kakhn, ‘Ali Khalil Hamad, Zaynab Talab, ‘Ali Shihada Manasira, Ahmad Muhammad al-Khatib, Lughatuna al-jamila lil-saff al-sabi‘ al-asasi – al-juz’ al-awwal (Al-Bira-Ramallah: al-Sulta al-Wataniyya al-Filastiniyya—Wizarat al-Tarbiyya wal-Ta‘lim, 2001–2), p. 40. See The Book of Expression and Summarizing for Grade 8, p. 20, as quoted in Itamar Marcus, The New Textbooks of the Palestinian Authority for Grades 1 and 6 (Jerusalem: MICP, 2001, Hebrew). ‘Umar Mahmud Musallam, Ahmad Muhammad al-Khatib, Fatima Khalil Hamad, and ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Isma‘il Abu Hinna, Lughatuna al-jamila lil-saff al-thani al-asasi – al-Juz’ al-awwal (Al-Bira-Ramallah: al-Sulta al-Wataniyya al-Filastiniyya—Wizarat al-Tarbiyya wal-Ta‘lim (2001–2), p. 60. Itamar Marcus, The Palestinian Authority: Teachers’ Guides, March 2000 (Jerusalem: MICP, 2001), p. 12. Abu Khushan, et al., Lughatuna, pp. 110–12. See an example of such camps in al-Ayyam, 5 July 2000. Most summer camps were organized by the National Political Guidance Administration, a semimilitary institution of the PNA, which specializes in political indoctrination, especially among the Palestinian security. See examples in the “History of Palestine” feature in the same organ, which presents a comprehensive account of the village in Galilee, namely, Safuriyya (Sepphoris, Tsipori), and includes its own history and the story of its conquest in 1948, Majallat al-Ashbal wal-Zaharat, no. 18, March 2000, p. 8. Likewise, see the illustration of an old woman holding a key, which reawakens the memory of a lost house. Ibid., no. 20, May 2000, front page and last page. See for instance the program “Cities in Palestine,” broadcast on 10 August 1997 on PNA TV, and describing the transformation of Arab buildings in Acre, Haifa, Beersheba, and Jaffa into Israeli restaurants, business houses, and nightclubs. Toward the fiftieth anniversary of the Nakba, both the Voice of Palestine and PNA TV produced numerous programs on the war, such as “From the Nakba Memory,” “Names That You Will Not Forget,” “Pictures from the Nakba.” See Sawt wa-Sura, no. 1, August 1998, pp. 11–15. In 1998, Yasser ‘Abd-Rabbuh, the chairman of the National Committee for Commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Nakba, called for Palestinian newspapers to highlight the 1948 events in order to instill their memory in the

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40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49.

50.

51.

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younger generation, al-Hayat al-Jadida, 6 March 1998. For examples of detailed descriptions of abandoned localities, see: on the village of Dir Tarif (near Ramlah), the organ of the Palestinian Waqf Ministry, al-Minbar, no. 34, April 2001, pp. 39–43; on ‘Asqalan (Ashqelon), Watani (organ of the Palestinian General Security apparatus), no. 25, 1998, pp. 30–38; and personal testimonies of the Nakba in al-Sabah, 22 May 2000, p. 4, and Filastin al-Yawm, 19 May 2001, pp. 12–15 (both are organs of the apparatus for national and political guidance). Al-Karama, no. 174, 25 May 2000, p. 8; al-Quds, 25 March 2001; PNA TV, 27 April 2001. Al-Hayat al-Jadida, 13 May 1998. Al-Majlis, July 1998, pp. 43–44. Khalid Amayreh, “Nakba Day Ends with Bloodshed,” Middle East International, no. 575 (22 May 1998): 5–6. See for example the violent clashes on 15 May 2000, al-Karama, no. 173, 18 May 2000, p. 1. See for instance, Israeli TV, Channel One, 15 May 2001. Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (New York: Viking, 1960), p. 52. Ze’ev Sternhell, The Birth of Fascist Ideology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 57–68. For general studies on Hamas, see Ziyad Abu Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994); Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Meir Litvak, “The Islamization of the Israeli-Arab Conflict: The Case of Hamas,” Middle Eastern Studies 23, no. 1(1998): 148–63. For a social analysis of the Hamas movement, see Michael Milshtein, The Green Revolution: The Social Profile of Hamas (Tel Aviv: Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 2007, in Hebrew). For Fatah, see Idem, Between Revolution and State: Fatah and the Palestinian National Authority (Tel Aviv: Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 2001) and Rex Brynen, “The Dynamics of Palestinian Elite Formation,” Journal of Palestine Studies 95 (Spring 1995): 31–43. On Islamic jihad, see Meir Hatina, Islam and Salvation in Palestine: The Islamic Jihad Movement (Tel Aviv, Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 2001). See pictures of, among others, abandoned religious sites that changed their purpose, such as mosques in Ashqelon (al-Majdal), Beersheba, Safed, and others, in issues of the Hamas organ, Filastin al-Muslima, no. 9, September 1999; no. 10, October 1999; no. 3, March 2000; no. 4, April 2000; no. 5, May 2000; no. 7, July 2000; no. 8, August 2000. See for example claims in the organ of the Islamic National Salvation Party, which is identified with Hamas, that on Nakba Day in 1998 less than a tenth of the half-million Palestinians who had voluntarily attended the funeral of Yahya ‘Ayyash could be found on the streets of Gaza. ‘Ayyash was a senior Hamas activist killed by Israel in January 1996. Al-Risala, 21 May 1998.

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52. For an analysis of the failure of the Camp David summit, see Shimon Shamir and Bruce Maddy-Weitzman (eds.), The Camp David Summit: What Went Wrong? (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2005). 53. Abu Sitta, “This Land Is Mine,” p. 22. 54. See descriptions in this vein in al-Hayat al-Jadida, 11 January 2002 (with regard to Rafah); al-Quds, 14 May 2002 (with regard to Jenin). 55. As to Abu Mazen’s remarks, see Haaretz, 5 September 2002; for Sha‘ath’s, see Akiva Eldar, “Interview with Nabil Sha‘ath,” Palestine-Israel Journal 9, no. 2 (2002): 22. 56. Haaretz, 13 December 2001. 57. Khader, “Was I Here?” p. 269. 58. Barukh Kimmerling, “al-Nakba,” Teorya u-Biqoret, nos. 12–13 (1999), p. 37. 59. In regard to al-Khalidi’s ideas, see Tamari, Return, Resettlement, p. 38; for Nusseibeh, see Sari Nusseibeh and Mark A Heller, Without Drums or Trumpets: An Arrangement for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1992), pp. 69–70, 76; for the ideas of Abu Ziyad, Haaretz, 23 July 2002. 60. Arafat called the Tawtin a crime, and claimed that he was not willing to discuss a solution of this kind: see Yotam Feldman and Aluma Solnik, “Palestinian Thoughts on the Right of Return,” http://www.memri.org/, p. 1. 61. See an example of this argument: Yezid Sayigh, “The Politics of Palestinian Exile,” Third World Quarterly 9, no. 1 (January 1987): 29. 62. Arafat often stressed that he was “a refugee of a people of refugees.” His image became a symbol of the continuing Nakba, after his personal ordeals of being hunted and exiled. See Rubinstein, Arafat: A Portrait (Lod, Israel: Zemorahbitan, 2001, in Hebrew), pp. 30–35, 84–85. Arafat attests to his belonging to “the Nakba community,” relying (as he said) on the expulsion from Jerusalem that his mother’s family—Abu Sa‘ud—experienced in 1948. See Yedi‘ot Ahronot, Sabbath Supplement, 8 February 2002.

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3

Memory “from Below”: Palestinian Society and the Nakba Memory Michael Milshtein

he evolution of the Nakba memory refutes the popular conception that national myths are instilled and passed on only by ruling elites. In this regard, the Palestinians—both “inside,” in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, and “outside,” in the diaspora—are an exception, since they have never lived under sovereign Palestinian rule. (Palestinian refugees in Jordan in 1968–70 and in Lebanon throughout the 1970s lived under semisovereign PLO rule.) Under those circumstances, the way the Nakba memory is preserved by the common people and the dynamics between the society and the national leadership are of great importance. Throughout their daily lives, refugee communities have sought to preserve the Nakba memory and instill it in a younger generation that has not experienced it directly. This urge manifests itself in a system of practices and rituals, such as

T

1. keeping Ottoman land deeds or mandatory identity certificates as testimonies of ownership of property and real estate, and holding on to the keys to houses that were abandoned. These items are passed on from one generation to the next;1 2. naming schools and businesses after abandoned towns and villages;2 3. preserving primordial social and familial links, even in exile, including marriage ties, shared places of residence, and even separate, local burial plots. Ghada al-Karmi describes the practices followed by her parents, who had settled in London, claiming that “this was their

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4. 5.

6. 7.

means of reviving the lost homeland, as if the families and villages that they had known still existed, in the expectation that they would get them back”;3 establishing associations and clubs that bring together descendants of abandoned localities; fostering young people’s awareness of and attachment to the place of origin of their forefathers—indeed, young people born in refugee camps after 1948 often maintain that the abandoned town or village is their place of origin or even their birthplace, and not the camp in which they were born;4 preserving memories through nostalgic stories and popular folklore, which perpetuate a past, lost life;5 visiting the site of homes that were destroyed. This practice is often extremely disappointing, particularly when Jewish towns or villages with different, Hebrew names have been established there. The Palestinian-American writer Fawaz Turki, for instance, attests to such deep feelings of disappointment when he returned to his house in the Halisa neighborhood in Haifa in 1992, expressing his shock at the renewed encounter with Haifa, which, he said, “is not my home anymore!”6

All generations of refugees have therefore sought to perpetuate the Nakba memory in everyday life, closely integrating it into their lives. Many underline the temporary nature of their stay in exile, for instance, by refusing to improve their living conditions or to sign long-term work contracts, for fear that these acts might be interpreted as forsaking the dream of return. Al-Karmi relates that her parents consistently refused to learn English or to make local friends after they moved to Britain.7 Others, as Turki reports, tried to alleviate the pain of uprooting by mythologizing the past as a “paradise lost” (al-firdus al-mafqud )—they did this by creating the illusion that “time in Palestine had stopped,” and that no change had taken place in a world that was lost to them in 1948—or, according to Yehoshafat Harkabi, by suppressing the memory of the dark sides of Palestinian life before 1948. Nearly all refugees insisted that the younger generation carry on the commitment to return, instilling in them the feeling of being uprooted and a yearning for something missing—an awareness so powerful that the youth felt as if they themselves had experienced the Nakba.8 Various communities of refugees have thus developed as “communities of memory,” in which people take part in activities that reflect a strong commitment to both the memory of the past and dreams of return in the future. They have persistently refused to come to terms with the stark reality, and perpetuate the past as an open wound. The Palestinian national

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poet Mahmud Darwish describes how his mother refused to go to weddings and took part only in funerals after al-Barwa, the family’s village in the Galilee, had been destroyed.9 Another way in which the Nakba memory is shaped “from below” is through various projects that document life in the past, focusing on the lost localities and their histories before and throughout the 1948 war. The PLO has supported many of these projects, but many others, especially those launched in the 1950s and 1960s, were the products of independent initiatives. The various documentation initiatives included, among others, detailed descriptions of destroyed localities, their histories, land registers, and populations. During this period, Palestinians also compiled encyclopedic works on the lost homeland and its villages. Most prominent among them is the historian ‘Arif al-‘Arif ’s al-Nakba—Nakbat Bayt al-Maqdis wal-Firdus al-Mafqud [The Nakba: The Nakba of Jerusalem and the lost paradise],10 Mustafa Murad al-Dabbagh’s eleven volumes of Biladuna Filastin [Our country Palestine],11 and Hajj Muhammad Nimr al-Khatib’s Min athar alnakba [Remains of the Nakba]. Added to these were studies supported by PLO institutions, including a comprehensive memorialization research project, All That Remains, promoted by the historian Walid al-Khalidi. The project comprises detailed documentation of all the localities that were destroyed, including data about the principal families in each locality, the prevailing type of agriculture, the conquest of these localities by the Israeli army, descriptions of what remains of the villages, and their present use or settlement by Israeli Jews. Statehood or Return? The Nakba Memory in Palestinian Public Discourse since the Establishment of the Palestinian Authority Paradoxically, the peculiar circumstances of the Israeli occupation and the absence of an effective Palestinian government prior to 1994 gave the Palestinian “inside” (the West Bank and Gaza Strip) the rare opportunity to develop components of a relatively independent civic society. Even after the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was established, and despite the fact that it was a centralized government aspiring to exert maximal influence over society, the “inside” community—unlike most Middle Eastern societies—remained relatively independent vis-à-vis the PNA. One of the most striking manifestations of Palestinian civic society after the establishment of the PNA is the ongoing and lively debate over whether the Palestinian public space has reached a postrevolutionary stage. Those who initiated the discussion argued that, in view of the Palestinian progress toward their national goals—that is, first and

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foremost, an independent state—they should forgo the stage of national mobilization they had maintained for so many years. This “mobilization” approach, they contended, prevented internal criticism and stocktaking among the Palestinians, and thwarted efforts to advance any issue that was not part of a political or military effort. The central issue around which the discussion revolved concerned the Palestinian national goals: Should the Palestinians focus their efforts on achieving statehood, even at the cost of painful national concessions, or should they continue to adhere to the goals of return and total liberation? The increasing preoccupation with the 1948 defeat elicited a fascinating public debate, including the question of the correct approach to the Nakba memory, which demonstrated the ability of the Palestinian community to play a central role in shaping national myths, in conjunction with the government.

The Nakba discourse as a postrevolutionary signifier? The debate on the Nakba memory was led by a handful of intellectuals and public figures, but never directly involved the general public. Still, it reflected a process of change that took place in the consciousness of Palestinian society as a whole after the establishment of the PNA. The core issue was how the Nakba should be remembered, and whether, in view of the prospected attainment of statehood (or “semistatehood”), it was necessary to reexamine this national myth more critically and consider the lessons to be drawn from it. Those who led the debate wanted to divest the Nakba memory of the romantic and ideological components that had embodied it for years and had, in their view, prevented its critical scrutiny. Hasan Khader, a prominent journalist and writer, who served as director general of the Palestinian Ministry of Culture, argued that “Palestine was never a paradise.”12 This statement was meant to dim the sanctity of the Nakba memory in a way that would grant the Palestinians a sharper perspective on their past and would help them understand where they had erred and how they could rectify the situation in the future. Similarly, the historian ‘Azzam Nassar asserted that despite the status of the Nakba as a formative pillar of Palestinian identity, research about it had been rather scant. In his view, this situation was mainly caused by the fact that most archives in the Arab states were closed to the public. Another reason was the heavily politicized public opinion regarding the Nakba. These factors made it difficult for Palestinians to evaluate the historical truth behind the event and, more importantly, extract from it vital lessons to improve their future.13

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Yezid Sayigh, a Palestinian historian based in Oxford, and Musa alBudayri, a political scientist at al-Quds University in East Jerusalem, tried to examine the Nakba memory from another critical angle. They asked in what ways members of the second generation of the Nakba continued to foster awareness of the event through their parents’ stories or old photographs, even though it was not part of their personal experience. Sayigh’s and al-Budayri’s skeptical approach became apparent in their assertion that the memory of the Nakba could never encompass the entire nation, because many sectors of the population had neither experienced it directly nor felt its outcome personally, and therefore felt its significance less intensely.14 Another problem related to memory and commemoration of the Nakba was the dominance of the nationalist-ideological narrative, at the expense of the individual dimension. Some argued that the very emphasis on a collective-nationalist narrative inevitably prevented the scrutiny of the Nakba from a more personal angle. Ghada al-Karmi, for one, underlined the need to highlight the mental state of individuals when investigating the Nakba.15 The debate over the Nakba legacy helped various groups promote social goals that opposed the government in a way seldom seen in other Arab states. Fatihiyya Nasro, a behavioral scientist from Bir Zeit University, argued that the Nakba reflected an ongoing crisis in Palestinian society that would only end in the event of profound social and cultural changes, and with the establishment of a civil society in the Palestinian arena.16 To a certain extent, this discourse embodied a desire to focus on optimal and realizable goals for the future, rather than, to use Mahmud Darwish’s words, remaining “prisoners of history and victims of the past.” This new discourse ended with the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada, when Palestinian society promptly returned to earlier political and ideological conventions.

Perpetuating the Nakba memory at the popular level The public discourse on the Nakba memory drew much attention and generated a bitter polemic in the Palestinian intellectual world. However, it remained a small part of the activity surrounding the memorial events that swept Palestinian society in the late 1990s, including the broad endeavors of memorialization and documentation that developed from initiatives from “below.” These initiatives did not correspond to the critical spirit or the desire to dispel myths, which typified the discourse of the intellectual elite regarding the Nakba; instead, they paralleled the patterns

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of action and the goals the government was aiming for. Social activity thus reflected another facet of the symbiotic relationship between public and government that had traditionally characterized the Palestinian arena. Before discussing the handling of the Nakba memory at the popular level after 1994, a few words on the changing attitudes of the refugees are in order. Most refugees did not view the establishment of the PNA and the ongoing negotiations as implying a readiness for concessions and compromise, or as giving preference to immediate statehood over the realization of the dream of return. However, a rude awakening from the dream came fairly soon. As negotiations dragged on, a discussion of the refugee problem was repeatedly postponed. Moreover, the return from the diaspora to the PNA territory was not to be of large numbers of refugees, but of just a few tens of thousands of Palestinians.17 As a result, the Palestinians, and the refugees in particular, became involved in an intense discussion about which national goal they ought to focus on: immediate statehood or return to the homeland at some undetermined, distant future. The historian Rashid al-Khalidi, who lives in the United States, accurately defined this dilemma when he asked: “How will the Palestinians adopt the idea of conceding territories conquered in 1948, but which have always been considered part of Palestine?”18 Ibrahim Abu Lughod on his part wondered whether the Palestinians could draw consolation from establishing a Palestinian authority, where a minority would live under an autonomous government, giving up the right of return.19 Salim Tamari, a prominent Palestinian sociologist, defined this question as part of “the new dichotomy in Palestinian politics,” which distinguished between partisans of the “goal of return” and partisans of the “goal of a state.”20 The sweeping answer supplied by the Palestinian public to the question of the Nakba memory negated all concessions on return. This response reflected not only adherence to the memory but also a deep frustration with a diplomatic process that had initially seemed to implement the rectification of a “historical wrong.”21 Thus, paradoxically, the possibility of a diplomatic arrangement and statehood lessened all hope of return and intensified the fear of a continued exile. This further reinforced the longing and emphatic demand for return. Salman Abu Sitta, director of the al‘Awda (Return) Center in London, which focuses on elaborating plans to realize the right of return, clearly expressed the precedence of the idea of return. He challenged the possibility of finding a solution to the Palestinian problem in terms of statehood. Since the 1970s, the Palestinians’ right of return has lost its central place among the demands of the Palestinian people . . . A situation has been created according to which the Palestinian question is reduced to the results of

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the June 1967 war. And that’s not it. The Palestinian question has “existed for some one hundred years” . . . The chief road marker of the Palestinian question is the Nakba of 1948 . . . The solution offered in the framework of two states and an Israeli withdrawal to the borders of 4 June 1967 does not ensure that the rights of the Palestinian people will be implemented.22

The intensification of the Nakba memory since 1998, together with the Palestinian insistence on return, has found expression in a broad range of projects and public initiatives. The main ideas were identical to those of the PNA, although they contained independent features, including elements of a critical discourse, and very often a personal dimension. The following initiatives were put forward: 1. Documentation projects: Documentation projects, such as local initiatives to gather testimonies from Palestinians who had experienced the Nakba,23 and projects of nongovernmental institutions to document materials connected with the Nakba.24 A number of interviews with survivors were published in the nongovernmental press,25 and an extensive project launching new Web sites was devoted to memorializing the Nakba. These included files of testimonies, extensive information about destroyed localities, documents, photographs, and fiction.26 2. Academic research: Most academic studies did not strive for critical analysis of the Nakba memory or for a reexamination of its essence, but focused on detailed documentation of everyday life in the Palestinian localities prior to 1948 and their disintegration during the war.27 3. Communal activities bringing together people from localities destroyed in 1948:28 Families visited destroyed localities.29 Cultural and educational activities involving the youth were organized in refugee camps. These activities bolstered the participants’ knowledge of the localities their parents hailed from.30 Several community memorial books were published. Such “agents of memory” are common in societies of displaced persons, for example among Eastern European Jews (particularly Holocaust survivors), Armenians, and Germans uprooted from their towns and villages in Eastern Europe after World War II.31 Most of these activities were carried out inside the PNA territory, which had become the heart of Palestinian nationalist activity. The diaspora—sometimes labeled “the flame of the Nakba memory”—was temporarily devoid of leadership and became politically marginalized. However, it did not remain inactive: in various Arab countries, particularly in Lebanon and Jordan,

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refugee organizations engaged in a variety of activities—from informational seminars to mass rallies.32 In Western countries, the main activities centered on setting up organizations and Web sites for documenting the Nakba (especially on gathering personal testimonies) and on the dissemination of the Palestinian version of the 1948 war.33 Of these, the al-‘Awda (Return) Center was prominent in drawing up plans to implement return, seeking to persuade the Western public that these plans were feasible and would not bring about the destruction of the State of Israel.34 These public commemorative activities were aimed not only at preserving memory but also at drawing practical lessons and formulating modes of action. Their primary message, equivalent to the one advocated by the PNA, depicted the Nakba as a continuing past and as an experience that was part and parcel of the everyday lives of the Palestinians. Salih ‘Abd al-Jawad, a political scientist at Bir Zeit University, defined the Palestinian situation as sociocide, that is, “destruction of a society,” manifested, he claimed, by destruction and exile, which has over the years become more effective in debilitating the Palestinians as a society and national movement.35 As a consequence, the Palestinians were called upon to draw the right lessons from 1948, and to demonstrate endurance and perseverance rather than surrender to fear or the impulse to flee. Some called on the Palestinians to emulate the Jews by adhering to national goals, as they did. The PLO leader Shafiq al-Hut, for one, held that “we should not continue to lament and weep over the ruins; we must act as our enemy acted, patiently, so that Jaffa will return to us and we to it.”36 The U.S.-based Palestinian social scientist Hisham Sharabi wondered whether the Palestinians would become “the Jews of the twentyfirst century,” explaining that if the Jews could wait two thousand years in expectation of a homeland they had never seen, the Palestinians were capable of waiting five, ten, or even fifty years.37 As part of this discourse, Palestinians frequently equated the Nakba with the Jewish Holocaust, disregarding the profound differences between them. They claimed a cause and effect relationship between the two tragedies, portraying themselves as “victims of the victims,” often accusing Israel of emulating Nazi practices. They also underlined what they saw as a lack of symmetry between the memory of the Holocaust and that of the Nakba in world consciousness.38 The Nakba Memory in Palestinian Art Nearly all areas of modern Palestinian culture demonstrate the mobilization of the arts for the Palestinian cause. A substantial part of the cultural output was supported and guided by the PLO, the rest being the outcome

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of independent expression. Either way, both served as “agents of memory” and contributed to shaping the national consciousness. The Nakba has claimed a central place in Palestinian art since 1948. Various aspects of the Nakba memory have found expression in the arts, including descriptions of a vanished world, of yearnings for lost homes, and of the living conditions of the refugees, calls for armed struggle, and the creation of a vision of return. Poetry The Palestinian poetry of return, a literary genre that had already developed in the early 1950s, is characterized by a deep yearning for a lost world, together with a fierce determination to return to that world. Among the outstanding poets of this genre are Mahmud al-Tut, author of the famous lines, “O Lost Paradise, you were never too small for us, but now gigantic states are too small for us”;39 ‘Abd al-Karim al-Karmi (Abu Salama), who rose to fame in 1953 with his poem “We Will Return”; and the poets Mu‘ayn Basiso and Fadwa Tuqan. Still, the most outstanding figure among the poets of return is Mahmud Darwish (1942–2008), a native of Kafr al-Barwa, who went into exile in Lebanon with his family in 1948 and, like others, returned by infiltrating into Israeli territory, where he joined the Israeli Communist Party. Darwish stood out by using unequivocal Palestinian-nationalist motifs and style, which were regarded as daring in the 1960s. In 1970 he left Israel and joined the PLO; soon afterwards he won great acclaim both in the field of Palestinian poetry and in Arab poetry in general. Darwish’s works became so popular that he earned the title “Palestinian national poet.”40 The Nakba holds a central place in Darwish’s poetry—not surprisingly, since he experienced it personally. The sense of loss, together with a longing for return, is reflected in the poems “Passport” (jawaz al-Safar) and “My Mother” (Ummi). In the latter he writes: I long for mother’s bread . . . Restore to me my stars of childhood So that I can take part with the little birds in the journey of return To the nest where you await.41

Another famous poem that deals with Palestinian fate is “I Am Joseph, O My God” (Ana Yusef, Ya Rabbi), written in 1987, which presents the alienation from Arabs who deny responsibility for their Palestinian brothers: They [the brothers] cast me into a pit, And accused the wolf And the wolf was more merciful than my brothers42

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Among Israeli Palestinians, artistic representations of the Nakba coincided with the changes that occurred in the reception of art in the political and public spheres. For example, in the poetry and literature that developed in the 1950s, the fear of touching upon sensitive national issues was very conspicuous. Poems of love for the land, such as those of George Najib, overflowed with descriptions of landscapes and visions of nature, but lacked any mention of the war or displacement.43 Nevertheless, at the end of the 1950s, in fact preceding nationalist activity in the political domain, the literary work of Israeli Palestinians began to focus on the Nakba. The pioneers of the new wave were poets, including Jamal Qa‘awar, Najwa Qa‘awar, Mahmud Darwish, and Rashid Husayn.

Prose and literature Shim‘on Ballas, a novelist and expert on Arabic literature, argued that the Nakba constituted a crossroads in the history of Palestinian literature. From just another tributary of the general current of Arabic literature lacking distinctive features, he said, post-1948 Palestinian literature became an effervescent focus of unique creativity. Literary activity developed in two branches: that of the refugees and that of Palestinians who became Israeli citizens. Both were connected, said Ballas, to the social and emotional roots of a divided people striving to be rejoined and to return to their homeland.44 Like poetry, Palestinian literature was at first characterized by expressions of yearning and despair (a genre called Adab al-Nakba or Adab al-Ishtiqaq, that is, literature of yearning or longing). Over time and parallel with developments taking place in the Palestinian national movement, and in view of new political needs, this genre gave way to a literature of struggle (Adab al-Maqawamma), characterized by encouragement to activism. Another famous writer was Ghassan Kanafani, who, like Darwish, experienced the Nakba personally (he left Acre for Syria). In his works, in which the imprint of the Nakba is clearly evident, Kanafani examines various aspects of the 1948 experience: the fate of the refugees in the Arab states, depicted in the story “Men in the Sun”; the uprooting from the homeland, described in “Land of the Sad Oranges”; and the call to struggle and particularly the importance of emulating Israel’s determination, a step that would make the Palestinians worthy of their country, in “Return to Haifa.”45 The Nakba holds a prominent place among other writers as well, including Nasser al-Din al-Nashashibi in his book Return Ticket, which emphasizes the profound link between yearnings for return and directives

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for action: I will see the hatred in the eyes of my children and your children, I will see how they take revenge. And if they don’t know how to take revenge, I will teach them; and if they call a ceasefire or negotiate peace, I will fight against them as I fought against my enemies . . . I want them to immerse the 1948 Nakba in the blood of those who prevented them from entering the Land. The Homeland is dear, but vengeance is dearer.46 In the PNA, literature continued to focus on the yearning for return and the preaching of sumud (firmly holding onto the land). Among these, Bab al-Shams [Gate of the sun] stands out, even though the author, Elias Khouri, is a Lebanese Fatah activist, not a Palestinian. The story’s powerful plot, which deals with the life story of refugees and highlights their longings for the homeland across the border, as well as its timely publication on the fiftieth anniversary of the Nakba, made it a bestseller in the Arab world. It was translated into numerous languages, including Hebrew.47 The book includes a penetrating debate about possible future solutions to the refugee problem, while adhering to the traditional goal of return. Among the writings of Israeli Palestinians, Emile Habibi’s (1921–96) work includes some of the most striking descriptions of the Nakba. The protagonists of his stories are almost always bearers of the Nakba memory and represent Israeli Palestinians, who were viewed as “traitors” for years because of their readiness to remain under Israeli rule, but in fact served as “guardians of the national memory.” The Nakba fills a prominent role in the works of other writers as well: Muhammad ‘Ali Taha’s al-Maghrusun fi al-ard [Planted in the ground] describes a tragic attempt by refugees to return to their land;48 Tawfiq Fayyad’s “The Dog Samur” (al-Kalb samur) narrates the adventures of a dog who (unlike its masters who had fled their village) remains loyal to the soil;49 Hanna Ibrahim’s “Infiltrators” presents an often-repeated motif in Palestinian stories—the attempt by refugees to return to their villages or towns of origin,50 which usually ends in their death at the hands of Israeli military patrols, and in their subsequently being defined as fida‘iyun (Those who sacrifice redeem themselves) in the Israeli press.51 The Nakba continued to be the focus of later literary works, such as Arabesque (1986) by Anton Shammas and Dancing Arabs (2002) by Sayyid Qashu‘a.

Visual arts A quick glimpse at the collection of works by well-known Palestinian painters in the Palestinian Encyclopedia (al-Mawsu‘a al-Filastiniyya)

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leaves no doubt as to the place of the Nakba in modern Palestinian painting.52 Like poetry and literature, Palestinian painting is routinely enlisted in favor of the national cause. As such, it is mostly typified by its realism, distinctiveness and colorfulness, and its aiming at being clear to the simple observer and at making an immediate, visual and emotional, impact. To a certain extent, this tendency is reminiscent of the works of the Mexican painter Diego Rivera, who transmitted Communist revolutionary messages to the masses through powerful, relatively simple visual impressions. Prominent among the works of Palestinian painters who experienced the Nakba are artists like Isma‘il Shamut (native of Lod, 1930) and Ibrahim Hazima (born at Acre, 1933), whose motifs represent the period before and following the Nakba. The same motifs appear in the works of a younger generation of painters who did not experience the Nakba personally, people like Taysir Barakat, who was born in the Jabaliyya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, and Sulayman Mansur from Bir Zeit. The works of these artists share a similar rendering of a harmonious and pastoral village life of the peasants before the Nakba, and the antithetical, wretched refugee life, alongside the “heroism of the struggle” and dreams of return.53 Another visual plane in which the Nakba is often represented is the highly popular and influential world of cartoons. Among these artists, the cartoonist Naji al-‘Ali is especially prominent. He gained his fame from “Hanzala” (the cactus fruit), a traditional and faceless image that represents the poor, hardworking refugee. Al-‘Ali was born in the Galilee village of al-Shajara (1937) and went into exile to Lebanon in 1948. Alongside Hanzala’s cactus fruit, which represents the yearning for return and the frustration of life in exile, is al-‘Ali’s image of a woman carrying a key. She stands for the pain of being uprooted and the determination to return to the homeland.54 Continuing the Naji al-‘Ali tradition are cartoonists Amia Juha of the daily al-Quds and Baha’ al-Bakhari of al-Ayyam, both of whom time and again highlighted the Nakba. Their works reflect a strong yearning for return, together with an adamant rejection of compromise, particularly of tawtin, the resettlement of refugees in Arab countries. Most figures in these illustrations are characterized by their tight hold on the key, which appears in some of the illustrations as the sole possession inherited by sons from their fathers, and in others as a lone lantern illuminating the historic road of the refugees.55 Among the Israeli Palestinians, quite a number of painting and plastic art exhibitions deal with Palestinian identity and touch upon the theme of Nakba. They were presented as part of the commemorative activities of the fiftieth anniversary of the Nakba, displaying common motifs of lost homes, including keys, bundles of cloth, and clumps of soil.56

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Cinema and theater Until 1967, Palestinian cinema barely existed. Thus, cinematic treatment of the Nakba was found mainly in films produced in Arab countries, particularly Egypt, Syria, and Iraq (and even this was rather limited in scope).57 The revival of the Palestinian national movement after 1967 went hand in hand with the development of a movie industry serving as a vehicle for propaganda and mobilization on behalf of various Palestinian organizations. The first films, produced in the 1970s, were mainly documentaries and were supported by the arts committees of various Palestinian organizations. Many dealt with the life of Palestinian refugees in the Arab states and with the idea of return. The film The Key, produced in 1976 and directed by Ghalib Sha‘ath, for instance, featured the widespread practice among the inhabitants of refugee camps in Lebanon of holding on to the keys to their lost homes.58 In the field of theater, al-Hakawati (which means popular folktale narrator), the Palestinian National Theater in Jerusalem, stood out. It was supported by local initiatives, unlike most other Palestinian theater activities that the PLO sponsored. Many of the plays that al-Hakawati produced dealt with the Nakba. Outstanding among them was The Story of Shuma Village, which was first presented in 1988. While emphasizing the subject of return, it also dealt with the equally poignant questions as to whether this yearning was realistic and what price the Palestinians were paying for it.59 The film Haifa, directed by Rashid al-Mash’harawi in 1995, surveys the mixed feelings of residents of a Palestinian refugee camp, shifting between despair and budding hope after the signing of the Oslo Accords. Significantly, it is the persona of the camp fool who plays a prominent role as the person who insists on adhering to the goal of return, constantly shouting “‘Akka, Yaffa, Haifa” (Acre, Jaffa, Haifa).60 The director of Haifa, Subhi Zabidi, a native of the Jalazun refugee camp (near Ramallah), imparted a personal touch to the Nakba memory in his film My Very Private Map (1998). In this film, the “private map” of the second generation of the Nakba comprises two worlds: the memories of places that they had never seen, and which the older generation instilled in them, and the environment in which they grew up.61 Films produced by the Israeli Arab community also focus on the Nakba as their central subject. Films like Ustura (Legend) by Nizar Hasan (1998), 1948 by Muhammad Bakri (1998), and Chronicle of a Disappearance by Ilya Sulayman (1996) all deal, in one way or another, with the uprooted people of the Saffuriyya village (Sepphoris or Tsipori in Hebrew) and with their lives before, during, and after the 1948 events.62

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“Refugee Women for Refugee Men”: Israeli Palestinians and the Nakba Memory Saeed, the hero of Emile Habibi’s novel The Pessoptimist,63 laments the dismal fate of the Palestinian refugees. He criticizes the local girls who are not willing to marry refugees, a situation Habibi describes as “refugee women for refugee men.” 64 The self-mockery mirrors the implied mockery of a sexist wisecrack that was widespread in Israel in the early 1960s: “The best men for the pilot corps, the best women for the pilots” (succinctly alliterative in Hebrew). Habibi’s statement accurately reflects the duality in the Israeli Arab public’s attitude toward the issue of identity: on the one hand, this community is an integral part of the Palestinian people and shares its sense of fate and destiny; on the other hand, they keep a close watch on the Israeli system, of which they are part, and are hence interested in advancing their particular goals, including civic equality. Therefore, while Israeli Palestinians share common aims with non-Israeli Palestinians, their very existence as a national minority in the State of Israel singles them out. This duality is clearly evident in the Israeli Arab community’s approach to the Nakba memory. Most Israeli Palestinians did not experience displacement in 1948, and the central trauma for them was the transformation from a majority in Mandatory Palestine to a minority in a non-Muslim state. Thus, only about 20 percent (30,000 to 35,000 people in 1948) of all Israeli Palestinians are defined as refugees or as descendants of refugees today.65 Most settled on the outskirts of other Arab localities in Israel, such as Nazareth and Kafr Kana, which took in many inhabitants of the Galilee village of Ma‘alul.66 Under the Israeli law of 1950 they were defined as “present-absentees,” which meant that their real estate assets were transferred to the State General Property Custodian, as was the property of the other Palestinian refugees.67 In fact, this community formed the central link that connected the Israeli Palestinians to the predicament of displacement in the Nakba memory, and is the most active group in matters of Nakba memory in Arab political life in Israel today.68 In the course of time, and similarly to other Palestinian communities, the Israeli Palestinians adopted the Nakba as one of their most outstanding national identifying symbols. The fact that Israeli Palestinians are grappling with the Nakba memory mirrors to a large extent the processes of political, cultural, and ideological changes that the community has undergone, and the way it defines its very identity. The growing preoccupation with the Nakba memory reflects the strengthening of the Palestinian component in their identity while simultaneously expressing a growing demand for recognition of the rights of the Arab community and its integration into the state.

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The Nakba memory until the early 1990s Throughout the early years of Israeli statehood, the prevalent inclination among Israeli Palestinians, who feared the new regime, was to avoid public discussion of the Nakba. The gradual change became apparent when the second generation, which had not personally experienced the 1948 defeat (at least not as adults) and felt freer to express its national identity, reached adulthood. A prominent expression of this change, though rather a late one, was the establishment of the Association of Forty in 1988, marking 40 years of displacement. The association represented people from the ‘Ayn Hud village at the foot of Mount Carmel, which was abandoned in 1948 and whose residents set up a new settlement not far from the original village. In 1953 the original village became an (Jewish) artists’ village, with the Hebrew name Ein Hod, while the new Arab ‘Ayn Hud remained a settlement unrecognized by the state.69 Today, people from the village spearhead the public campaign of the refugees within Israel, demanding the return of lost homes and villages, or alternatively for the state’s recognition of the new villages. The case of Ikrit and Bir‘am became prominent after 1948 as a symbol of the Nakba memory for Israeli Palestinians. The populations of these two Christian villages located in the Upper Galilee (Greek Catholics in Ikrit, Maronites in Bir‘am) were evacuated by agreement with the Israeli army in 1948, after being given the assurance that they would be allowed to return to their homes at the end of the hostilities. In fact, the residents were never allowed to return, and the villages themselves were completely destroyed in 1953. Since then, the inhabitants of Ikrit and Bir‘am—who meanwhile had settled in other villages in the Upper Galilee—have waged an uphill battle for public opinion and in the courts, demanding the right to return to their land.70 Despite an injunction by the Supreme Court in 1951 favoring the return of those villagers, every subsequent Israeli government has opposed the decision, asserting that such a return would serve as a precedent for demands by other Palestinian refugees.71 While the Nakba memory did not occupy center stage in the public discourse of Israeli Palestinians over extended periods of time, it has always been kept alive. First, the distinctive identity of the uprooted communities was maintained by the fact that they tended to settle as a group in new localities while preserving their former social fabric, such as the al-Safafari neighborhood in Nazareth, for instance, which is made up almost entirely of people from the Saffuriyya village.72 The estrangement of most of the refugees from the veteran residents, and the scornful attitude toward them as “outsiders,” helped perpetuate their outsider status and deepened their memory of and longing for the abandoned localities.73 Nonetheless, it

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should be stressed that there have never been Arab refugee camps within Israeli territory, which made it somewhat easier for the refugees to integrate into local society and politics.74 At the same time, this prevented the creation of “living monuments” to the refugee problem, as happened in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian diaspora. The Nakba memory was constantly expressed in the everyday lives of Israeli Palestinians, as it was in Palestinian society in general. It involved activities that anchored the past in people’s daily routine, such as naming stores after localities that had been destroyed (for example, the Ma‘alul Boutique in Nazareth),75 the practice of keeping keys to houses or making pilgrimages to the remains of villages (a practice that was easier for Israeli Palestinians than for residents of the Occupied Territories), and the establishment of youth summer camps, such as the al-‘Awda Society, a yearly summer camp for youngsters from Bir‘am that was first set up in 1987 by a society bearing the same name.76 These actions helped pass on the memory of the past to the younger generations and to preserve their longing to return to their former homes.

Revival of the Nakba memory in the shadow of diplomatic processes While the renewed preoccupation with the Nakba memory inside the PNA territories and the Palestinian diaspora since 1998 has affected Israeli Palestinians, other factors unique to their community are also at work. First was the rise to positions of leadership within the community of second- and third-generation Israeli Palestinians. These generations, which stressed their Palestinian national identity, viewed 1998 as marking not only fifty years since the 1948 defeat and displacement but also fifty years of life in the State of Israel. In other words, it brought to the fore much more sharply than in the past the question of how Israeli Palestinians could identify with the state’s celebration of its fiftieth anniversary—an event viewed in Palestinian national consciousness as an unremitting tragedy. The political philosopher ‘Azmi Bishara, who subsequently became a member of the Knesset, expressed this contradiction with the assertion, “I am a Palestinian Arab. This Israeli victory [the War of Independence] is my Holocaust.”77 Emphasis on the Nakba memory was thus meant not only to emphasize the past and longings for return but also as a way of protesting the associated feelings of discrimination and estrangement. In this light, the demands for return increased, both on the national and on the individual level, describing return as compensation by the state to its own, uprooted citizens. In addition, Israeli Palestinians demanded that the state

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acknowledge its responsibility for Palestinian suffering by setting up an official memorial day to mark the Nakba and by paying compensation to Palestinians within Israel.78 The organizations involved in these endeavors represented mainly Israeli Palestinians, chief among these being the Initiative Committee to Defend the Rights of the Uprooted of 1948—Citizens of the State of Israel, which also spoke on behalf of some unrecognized settlements.79 They monitored diplomatic negotiations, particularly those dealing with the refugee issue, seeking to link their cause with that of the refugee problem in general. Nevertheless, these organizations quickly realized that the PLO, for reasons of its own, was in no hurry to combine its own interests with theirs. Consequently, they decided to promote their interests independently, underscoring the demand for return as an expression of the state’s willingness to grant Israeli Palestinians full equality. Significantly, despite their contention with the PLO institutions, the Israeli-Palestinian organizations, particularly the Initiative Committee, maintained a policy of broad cooperation with nongovernmental Palestinian bodies that were active on the refugee issue, such as Badil and ‘A’idun.80 On the public plane, the revival of the Nakba memory was conveyed through initiatives that paralleled projects of the PNA, though some of them were fully integrated with projects promoted by the PNA. As elsewhere, the various initiatives were intended to create “sites of memory” and to underlie the notion that the Nakba is a living past, manifested in Israeli actions such as the confiscation of lands, destruction of houses, and discrimination. According to this conception, historic events such as the Kafr Qasem massacre (1956), Land Day (1976), and the October 2000 clashes constitute separate chapters combined into a single historical narrative of broader scope. The following are among the outstanding projects for memorializing the Nakba:: 1. Fostering awareness of the Nakba among the younger generation— “Return Tours” to the sites of former villages, organized for youngsters and guided by elders who recount stories of the 1948 war. Among these organizations, the Arab Culture Society of Nazareth, which coordinates tours throughout the country, stands out. The society’s chairperson Rawda ‘Atallah, ‘Azmi Bishara’s sister, contended that the Return Tours are not meant to foster hostility or a craving to return among the youth, but to teach them “how to behave in similar situations in the future.”81 2. Documentation and research about the Nakba—the crowning achievement of this phenomenon is journalist Wadi‘a ‘Awawda’s

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book The Memory that Does Not Die: Eyewitnesses Who Opened Their Sealed Hearts and the Cells of Their Memory to Tell What Happened to Them in 1948, the Year of the Nakba (published in Arabic in 2000), which contains twenty-five testimonies by Palestinians who experienced the Nakba. The book has become a bestseller among Israeli Palestinians and is distributed to Arab highschool students upon graduation.82 Also of note is a series of books by Jamil ‘Arafat that record destroyed villages in the Galilee region.83 Personal testimonies of Israeli-Palestinian public figures about the 1948 experience (for instance, the testimony of the historian ‘Adil Mana‘, which described his family’s flight from Majd al-Krum and their return to it) have also received considerable publicity.84 In addition, Palestinians and their descendants set up associations named after abandoned localities. 3. Marking Nakba Day as a national day—this observance was adopted following the PNA marking of Nakba Day as an official day of national remembrance in 1998. Until 2001, it was commemorated among Israeli Palestinians only symbolically, and the number of participants was relatively small. However, following the bloody clashes in October 2000 between Israeli Palestinians and Israeli security forces, the Supreme Monitoring Committee of the Israeli Palestinians, the highest leadership body of the Arabs in the state, decided to mark Nakba Day, coordinating some of the activities with PNA officials who were involved in the commemoration.85 Thus, many of the activities carried out on Nakba Day in 2001 reflected those promoted by the PNA, including dedicating classes to the Nakba, displaying Palestinian and black flags in Arab localities, instituting a minute of silence, and organizing “pilgrimages” to the ruins of abandoned localities.86 4. Demands for changing street names—a notable expression of the intensification of the memory of the past among Israeli Palestinians is heard regularly, particularly in mixed cities, where demands are made to change street names devoid of meaning for the Arab community to names bearing a cultural Arabic and national Palestinian significance. For instance, Iman ‘Awdah, a member of the Haifa city council, demanded that the name Mountain Street be restored to a street presently called Zionism Boulevard. Rif‘at Turk, deputy mayor of Tel-Aviv–Yafo, asked that streets in Jaffa (Yafo) be named after outstanding Palestinian and Arab figures, such as Ibrahim Abu Lughod, a historian born in the city; Ghassan Kanafani, a Palestinian writer who was also a spokesman of the PFLP; and Najib Mahfuz, the Egyptian writer and Nobel Prize laureate.87

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The Islamic movement in Israel and the Nakba memory The Islamic Movement (IM) in Israel, similar to the movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, was founded in the 1980s. The IM is an offshoot of the universal Muslim Brotherhood and in many respects constitutes a “sister movement” to Hamas. The approach of the IM toward the Nakba memory is quite similar to that of Hamas, as both emphasize the Islamic dimension of the 1948 war and impart to it a religious interpretation. A major manifestation of this attitude is the IM’s effort to preserve and renovate abandoned Islamic sites—mosques, tombs of shaykhs, and cemeteries—throughout Israel. In addition, it frequently demands the restoration of Islamic waqf (religious endowment) property to Muslim hands by the state. The two factions also strive to document all Islamic sites in Israel, with the assistance of Turkish religious personalities, locating Ottoman documents that attest to Muslim ownership of various waqf properties.88 The flagship of these activities is the al-Aqsa Society, headed by Shaykh Kamal Riyan, whose publications decry the alleged desecration of abandoned Muslim sites, which have become places of entertainment and commerce.89 The fierce clashes in October 2000 between Israeli Palestinians and the police in the wake of the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Initfada in the PNA territories brought about the intensification of the Nakba memory. Reinforcement of the Palestinian national dimension in the identity of the Israeli Palestinians, together with an increasing alienation from Israel and its symbols, has deepened the notion of the unity of Israeli Arabs with the Palestinian people as a whole. In this setting, a fertile ground has been created for the Palestinian view according to which the ongoing struggle is a natural continuation of the 1948 events. For example, the journalist Wadi‘a ‘Awawda and Lutfi Mash‘ur, editor of the weekly al-Sinara, claimed that the October 2000 incident had clarified to the Israeli Palestinian community that the struggle would be a long-lasting one, especially the fact that the effects of the 1948 events are still tangible.90 Members of the younger generation, including the journalist Sayyid Qashu‘a and the artist Maruth ‘Isa, supplied a personal touch to this argument, saying that the events of the present have revived old fears, of sudden loss or uprooting, feelings inherited from their forefathers. In this light, according to them, their lives are shrouded in a deep sense of insecurity and fear of the future.91 These feelings were reinforced by the deepening tension between Jews and Arabs in Israel, manifested inter alia by polls that indicated a rise in the support of the Jewish public for expelling Arabs.92 Overall, and despite the dispersal of the population, the popular commemoration of the Nakba by various Palestinian communities

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demonstrates remarkable continuity, displaying both evolution— the development or introduction of new themes and techniques of commemoration— and common features. The major discrepancy is between refugee communities and Israeli Arab citizens. While they all shared similar attitudes, the refugees were the most active right from the start, launching a wide variety of ways to commemorate their loss. The Palestinian Israelis, on the other hand, joined the commemorative effort rather late, strengthening their Palestinian identity in contrast to their Israeli citizenship, sometimes through their own unique activities. Commemoration among the refugees combines personal experience with national narrative, whereas other communities emphasize rather more national themes. Poetry and the arts serve as a common arena for the various communities, combining all themes and thereby creating an overarching single community of memory. Technological developments have also helped pave the way for new means of commemoration. Overall, the unresolved conflict seems to ensure the continuity of commemorative themes. Notes 1. Ziyad ‘Abbas, “The Key and the Lost Gift,” Mitsad Sheni, no. 12 (May 1998, in Hebrew): 15–16. 2. Danny Rubinstein, The People of Nowhere: The Palestinian Vision of Home (New York: Times Books 1991), pp. 10–11. 3. Ghada al-Karmi, “Ba‘d al-Nakba: Tajriba min al-manfa fi Ankeltara,” Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya (Beirut), no. 37 (Winter 1999): 87–88. 4. See an example in Ilan Magat, Bir‘am: A Mobilized Community of Memory, Surveys of Arabs in Israel, no. 26 (Giv‘at Haviva: Institute for Peace Research, 2000), p. 27. 5. Nimer Sirhan, “The Nakbah in Palestinian Folk literature,” Palestine-Israel Journal 5, nos. 3–4 (1998): 156–57. 6. Sharif S. Elmusa, “When the Wellsprings of Identity Dry Up: Reflection on Fawaz Turki’s Exile’s Return,” Journal of Palestine Studies 25, no. 1 (Autumn 1995): 102. See similar expressions of disappointment on Ibrahim Abu Lughod’s return to Jaffa: Akhbar Yaffa, no. 11, 31 May 2001, p. 5; and Ibrahim Abu Lughod’s “al-Yawm al-akhir qabla sukut Yaffa,” al-Karmil , nos. 55–56 (Spring–Summer 1998): 129; Hisham Sharabi, “The Palestinians: Fifty Years Later,” Distinguished Lecture Series, no. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, May 1998), p. 5; Edward Said, Haaretz, Sabbath Supplement, 18 August 2000; and Edward Said, “Fifty Years of Dispossession,” al-Ahram Weekly, 7–13 May 1998. 7. Al-Karmi, “Ba‘d al-Nakba,” p. 93. 8. Magat, Bir‘am, p. 5. 9. Adam Shatz, “A Love Story between an Arab Poet and His Land: An Interview with Mahmud Darwish,” Journal of Palestine Studies 31, no. 3 (Spring 2002): 72.

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10. ‘Arif al-‘Arif, al-Nakba—Nakbat Bayt al-Maqdis wal-firdus al-mafqud (Beirut, between 1956 and 1964). 11. Mustafa Murad al-Dabbagh, Biladuna Filastin, 11 vols (Beirut, 1965 and 1972–86). For further elaboration on these works and others, see “‘Alam al-Nakba,” al-Mawsu‘a al-Filastiniyya (Damascus) 4 (1983): 505; Walid al-Khalidi, All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992), foreword, pp. xv–xvi. 12. Hassan Khader, “One Event, Two Signs,” al-Ahram Weekly, 2–8 April 1998. 13. ‘Azzam Nassar, “Khamsin ‘Aman ‘ala al-Nakba: I‘adat al-tafkir fi kitabat al-ta’rikh al-hadith,” al-Siyasa al-Filastiniyya, no. 18 (Spring 1998): 41–42. Nassar approved the openness of the Israeli archives, which, he claimed, helped create the trend of “new historians” after the revelation of new truths about the 1948 events. 14. “Reflections of the Nakbah” (compendium of testimonies, in English), Journal of Palestine Studies 28, no. 1 (Autumn 1998): (collection of testimonies, in English), pp. 19–21, 31–33. 15. Al-Karmi, “Ba‘d al-Nakba,” p. 47. 16. Fathiyya Nasro, “al-‘Ibar al-mustafada khilal khamsin ‘aman ala nakbat Filastin,” al-Siyasa al-Filastiniyya , no. 18 (Spring 1998): 47. 17. According to the sociologist Salim Tamari, about 80,000–90,000 Palestinians returned to the PNA territory after 1994, “The Problem of the Palestinian Refugees Will Be Solved When They Are Assured the Right of Return,” An Interview with Salim Tamari, Palestine-Israel Journal 6, no. 4 (1999): 65. 18. Rashid Al-Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 205. 19. Ibrahim Abu Lughod, “The Nakbah (The Disaster): This Is What Happened,” Alpayim, no. 16 (1998, in Hebrew): 156. 20. Salim Tamari, “Return, Resettlement, Return to the Homeland: The Discussion on the Future of the Palestinian Refugees,” Palestinian Deliberations, no. 6 (Giv‘at Haviva: Institute for Peace Research, 1998 in Hebrew), p. 8. 21. See a striking expression of this feeling, as reflected in the statement by Ahmad al-Jarmi, a Palestinian policeman and native of Jaffa, who had arrived in Nablus from Lebanon when the PNA was established: “This whole peace process was a hoax and a swindle. What came out of it for us, if I cannot go to Jaffa?” Haaretz, Sabbath Supplement, 26 July 2001, p. 28. 22. Salman Abu Sitta, “This Soil Is Mine,” Mitsad Sheni, no. 19 (October 1999): 27. 23. See the documentation project by ‘Adil Yahya, an archeologist from the Jalazun refugee camp (Ramallah), who collected personal testimonies from 200 Palestinians, Haaretz, 16 November 1999. 24. The center was set up in 1979, see http://www.birzeit.edu/ourvoice/history; al-Sakakini Center (KSCC) was founded in 1997 and worked on gathering recordings, pictures, and testimonies about the Nakba, see http://www.sakakini.org. Documentation activities were also promoted by publications identified with the PNA or the PLO, such as “Watha’iq mukhtara `an harb 1948, adhar/ mars-ayar-mayu,” [Selected documents on the 1948 War, March to May] and “Dhikra al-tahjir ba‘d khamsin sana: shahadat,” [Memories of Deportation:

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26.

27.

28. 29. 30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

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Testimonies] in Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya, no. 34 (Spring 1998): 10–86, 104–52 respectively. See for example testimonies of residents of the al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza city, al-Umma, no. 24, May 2000, pp. 8–9; or testimonies published in Akhbar al-Khalil, 29 November 2000. See for example the site, http://www.alnakba.org/, which contains information in Arabic, English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian, as well as a picture archive and links to other sites dealing with the subject of the Nakba, etc. See also http://www.deiryassin.org, which is operated on behalf of an organization memorializing the Deir Yassin village, and contains pictures and literature dealing with the Nakba. For studies on the 1948 War, see documentation on everyday life in West Jerusalem neighborhoods before the Nakba (al-Qatamun, al-Talbiyya, alBaq‘a, al-Musrara, ‘Ayn Karm, Lifta), as supplied by Salim Tamari, “al-Quds 1948, al-madina al-muhajira,” Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya (Beirut), no. 38 (Spring 1999): 139–50. See also a series of monographs about destroyed localities, such as Bayt Jubrin, Abu Shushah, Qaqun, al-Faluja, Deir Yassin, published at the initiative of the Center for the Study and Documentation of Palestinian Society of Bir Zeit University. On communal activities, see al-Ayyam, 23 January 1999. For examples of memorializing the Nakba, see the Palestinian-American Web site: http://www.cactus48.com/ See, for example, the activity of the Supreme Committee for the Return of Refugees in Nablus, which prompted youth activities in light of the understanding that most pupils in the Nablus refugee camps did not know the names of places from which their forefathers had been uprooted in 1948, Haaretz, 26 June 2001. See the comprehensive study by Susan Slyomovics, The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), which examined the publication of community books in Palestinian society from a sociological and anthropological angle. For theatrical activities focusing on dreams of return of Palestinian youth in Jordan, see Yedi‘ot Ahronot, Sabbath Supplement, 31 January 1997; for the commemoration of Nakba Day as “a day of Palestinian rage” in the refugee camps in Lebanon, see Radio Nur, 11 May 1999. A Web site devoted to realizing the right of return is operated in the United States, namely, http://www.rightofreturn.org/. Supporting this site is the organization CPRR (Council for Palestinian Restitution and Repatriation), which deals with aid for Palestinian refugees and spreads the idea of the right of return among communities in the West. See also http://www.aaah.org/, which is operated by Palestinians in Chicago, and deals, among others, with gathering testimonies from Palestinians who live in the United States and have experienced the 1948 events. The organization was founded in Britain in 1996 as an independent academic body, see http://www.prc.org.uk/; http://www.al-awda.org/. Salman Abu Sitta, who heads the al-‘Awda Center, is a native of Beersheba and has been working for

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35.

36.

37. 38.

39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47.

48. 49.

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thirty years at gathering testimonies and documents connected with the Nakba. The organization runs the Web site http://www.palestineremembered.com, which aims at preserving the memory of the past and transmitting it to the younger generation, while developing consciousness of the right of return. Saleh Abdel Jawad, “War by Other Means,” al-Ahram Weekly, 8–14 January 1998. Al-Jawad refers mainly to activities such as destroying houses, expelling Palestinian leaders from “inside” to “outside,” and the appropriation of land. ‘Abd al-Rahman Munif, “Filastin al-dhakira,” al-Karmil (Ramallah), nos. 55–56 (Spring–Summer 1998): 225; Shafiq al-Hut, “Yaffa—Madinat al-‘inad,” al-Karmil (Ramallah), nos. 55–56 (Spring 1998): 139. In this context he added that there was a need to improve the ability to mobilize historic memory for the purpose of realizing national goals. Sharabi, “Palestinians: Fifty Years Later,” pp. 15–17. See the essay by Esther Webman in this book for an elaborate analysis of this issue. On the Palestinians and the Holocaust, see Meir Litvak and Esther Webman, “Perceptions of the Holocaust in Palestinian Public Discourse,” Israel Studies 8, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 123–40. Ali Tibawi, “Visions of the Return: The Palestine Arab Refugees in Arabic Poetry and Art,” Middle East Journal 17, no. 5 (Autumn 1963): 513. On Darwish, see Raja’ Naqqash, Mahmud Darwish: sha‘ir al-ard al-muhtalla (Beirut: Dar al-Hillal, 1972). These poems appear on a musical disk by Marcel Khalifa, the Lebanese (Maronite) singer who performs Darwish’s best work. “Marsil Khalifa—Ajmal Aghani.” See http://www.palvoice.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-5750.html. References to the songs appear in numerous Arabic language Web sites. Haaretz, 5 November 1999. On his poems, see Avraham Yinon, “Several Focal Topics in Israeli Arab literature,” HaMizrah HeHadash 15, nos. 1–2 (1965, in Hebrew): 75. Shimon Ballas, Arab Literature under the Shadow of War (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1978, in Hebrew), pp. 7–8. “Encyclopedia of The Palestinians: Biography of Gassan Kanafani,” http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Acre/Story168.html. For analysis of his work, see Muhammad Siddiq, “Man is a Cause”: Political Consciousness and the Fiction of Ghassan Kanafani (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984). Nasser al-Din al-Nashashibi, Return Ticket (Beirut, 1962), p. 205. Makram Khouri was born in Haifa. After 1948, his family left for Lebanon but later on returned to the Yasif village. See Yedi‘ot Ahronot, Supplement, 9 November 2001. Muhammad ‘Ali Taha, “al-Maghrusun fi al-ard,” in his Jisr ‘ala al-nahr al-khazin (Nazareth, 1978), pp. 61–74. Tawfiq Fayyad, “The Dog Samur,” in The Dog Samur (Ramallah: Manshurat dar ugarith lil-thaqafa wal-nashr, 2004), p. 6. The author was born in Haifa in 1939, went into exile in 1948, eventually returned to Israel, but subsequently left again. Note an interesting quotation at the end of the story: “At least he [the dog Samur] returned to die at home, Dad. Not like us. We will die wandering, starving and thirsty, homeless and without shelter,” ibid., p. 171.

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50. Hanna Ibrahim, “Infiltrators,” Palestinian Stories, pp. 9–15. 51. Fida’iyun was the Arabic term referring to Palestinians who infiltrated into Israel in order to carry out attacks. See also other stories that stress the same motif: “The Infiltrator” by Tawfiq Mu‘ammar, “The Return” by Nadim Bat’hish, and “Layla and the Perfume of Oranges” by Najwa Qa‘awar, cited in Yinon, “Several Focal Topics,” pp. 79–80. 52. Kamal Bulata, Al-Fann al-tashkili al-filastini khilal nisf qarn (1935–1985) in al-Mawsu‘a al-Filastiniyya (Beirut), part 2, vol. 4 (1990), pp. 931ff.. 53. On the various artists, see Kamal Balata, “al-Fann al-tashkili,” pp. 910–14. 54. On al-‘Ali, see Fa’id ‘Abd al-Majid al-‘Abudi, Fi al-dhakira al-thaniya li-istishhad Naji al-‘Ali – wa-rasah fi karikatir Naji al-‘Ali (Majd al-Krum, Israel: Rawdat al-shahid Naji al-‘Ali: 1989), pp. 14–15, 61, 79, 118–19. Al-‘Ali was killed in 1988 during internecine struggles between Palestinian organizations. 55. See the Web sites of both: http://www.omayya.com/ and http://www.babacartoon.net. 56. See the exhibit “Identity” presented in Um al-Faham, Haaretz, 4 January 2002; an exhibit by artist Marut ‘Isa, daughter of a refugee family from Bir‘am village, which deals with the expulsion from the village, Haaretz, 19 July 2002; or a work by Sakhar al-Masri from ‘Ar‘arah, in which twenty keys are presented surrounding the numerals of the year 1948, Haaretz, 1 February 2002. 57. See for example the Egyptian film, Refugee Camp in Gaza (1955) No details on the film are provided in the encyclopedia’s article or the Syrian film Far from the Homeland, directed by Qays al-Zubaydi (General Cinema Institute in Damascus, 1969). A reference to films appears in ‘Adnan Madanat, “al-Sinema al-Filastiniyya,” al-Mawsu‘a al-Filastiniyya (Beirut), part 2, vol. 4 (1990): 843, 848–50. 58. Madanat, “Al-Sinima al-filastiniyya,” p. 864; George Khulayfi, “Chronicle of Palestinian Cinema,” Teoriyah u-Biqoret, no. 18 (Spring 2001): 182. 59. Rubinstein, People of Nowhere, p. 129. 60. Khulayfi, “Chronicle,” pp. 185–87. 61. Ibid., pp. 189–90. 62. Hayim Breshit, “The Borders of Palestinian Memory: Home and Exile, Identity and Avoidance in the New Palestinian Cinema,” Teoryah u-Biqoret, no. 18 (Spring 2001): 77–102. 63. Emile Habibi, The Secret Life of Saeed, the Pessoptimist, trans. Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Trevor LeGassick (London: Zed Books, 1985). 64. See an explanation of this statement in Hanan Hever, “Emile Habibi and the Canon of Hebrew Literature,” HaMizrah HeHadash 35 (1992–93, in Hebrew): 105. 65. Mustafa Kabha and Ronit Barzilai, Refugees in Their Country: Internal Refugees in the State of Israel, 1948–1996 . Surveys of the Israeli Arabs, no. 20 (Givat Haviva: Institute for the Study of Peace, 1996, in Hebrew), p. 7. 66. Ibid., p. 9. As to the numbers of refugees within the state of Israel, see Riad Beidas, “The Internally Displaced: Seeking Return within One’s Own Land: An Interview with Waqim Waqim,” Journal of Palestine Studies 31 (October 2001): p. 33.

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67. For the text of the law of absentee property (amendment no. 3), see HaMizrah HeHadash 15 (1965, in Hebrew): pp. 95–96. 68. Several Israeli Arab Knesset members are descendants of DPs, including Muhammad Baraka of Hadash, ‘Abd al-Malik Dahamsha, and Tawfiq al-Khatib; representatives of the Islamic movement on the Ra‘am list (United Arab List); and Hashim Mahamid, former general secretary of Hadash and a Knesset member for Ra‘am. See Yedi‘ot Ahronot, Supplement, 15 May 2001. 69. See http://www.assoc40.org/ 70. People from the Bir‘am village mostly transferred to Jat; Bir‘am was destroyed in 1953. People from Ikrit, destroyed in 1951, dispersed to many villages. For that reason, they did not function as a unified “community of memory” as did the descendants of Bir‘am. See Magat, Bir‘am, p. 60. 71. Golda Meir’s government’s decisions were reached in this spirit in 1972. The Sharon government adopted the 1972 decisions anew and, in an affidavit to the Supreme Court, claimed that partial return would serve as a means for the PNA to advance further demands for return and would encourage similar demands on the part of 200,000 more Israeli Arabs. Yedi‘ot Ahronot, Supplement, 26 November 2001; Ma‘ariv, 16 January 2001; Haaretz, 11 December 2001. In 1995, Justice Minister David Libai set up a committee that recommended monetary compensation for residents of the two villages in exchange for their conceding the demand to return. Another solution proposed was to set up two alternative communal settlements. Representatives of the villages rejected the offers and continued to adhere to the demand for a full return to their villages. Haaretz, 25 September 2001. 72. Riad Beidas, “Interview with Waqim Waqim,” Journal of Palestine Studies p. 34. Same as note 66. 73. Kabha and Barzilai, Refugees in Their Country, p. 15; Ahmad Ashkar, “We Didn’t Imagine that the Uprooting Would Last till Today,” Mtsad Sheni, no. 1 (Januay 1996): 16–17. 74. In several places, refugees participated in municipal elections on separate lists, although their platform was directed at the entire, mixed community in the locality. In some localities, representatives of refugees were elected as heads of local councils, for example, Hashim Mahamid in Um al-Faham or Tawfiq al-Khatib in Jaljulya, Kabha and Barzilai, Refugees in Their Country, pp. 21–22. The residents of Ikrit, however, refused to participate in local elections where they were living, lest they be seen as having come to terms with the loss of their village. David Grossman, Nokhehim nifkadim: Exiles in the Promised Land: Conversations with Palestinians in Israel (Tel Aviv: ha-kibbutz ha-meuchad, 1992, in Hebrew), p. 169. 75. Kabha and Barzilai, Refugees in Their Country, p. 22. 76. Magat, Bir‘am, pp. 48–49. 77. Al-Hadaf, no. 122, July 2001. 78. Elie Rekhess, “The Arabs of Israel after Oslo: Localization of the National Struggle,” Israel Studies 7, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 24ff.; Idem, “The Reopening of the 1948 File Cases,” a lecture at the symposium “From Intifada to War: Landmarks

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80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

85. 86. 87. 88.

89.

90. 91. 92.

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in the Palestinian National Experience,” the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, 22 May 2002, p. 124. The committee was founded in 1992. It had 28 members and represented 28 localities that were abandoned in 1948. Kabaha and Barzilai, Refugees in Their Country, p. 27; Riad Beidas, “Interview with Waqim Waqim,” pp. 35–36. In September 2005, the minister of interior finally granted ‘Ayn Hud official recognition. Ibid., p. 38. From time to time, contacts were also held with the Palestinian team negotiating with Israel. Tel Aviv, 11 February 2002, p. 53; Haaretz, 15 January 2001, p. 8, and 6 July 2001, Sabbath Supplement. Haaretz, 15, 23 May 2001. Haaretz, 23 May 2001. ‘Adel Mana‘, “Majd al-Krum 1948: ‘Amaliyyat tamshit ‘Adiyya!!!” al-Karmil (Ramallah), nos. 55–56 (Spring–Summer): 184–200. See also the story of ‘Isam Abu al-Hija on the conquest of ‘Eyn Hud and ‘Awni Sabith on Ikrit, cited in Grossman, Nokhehim Nifkadim, pp. 66–70, 163–4, and the poet Hanna Abu Hanna about the 1948 events in the Galilee, “From a Diary of Fateful Years,” Palestine-Israel Journal 5, no. 2 (1998): 55–61. Al-Hayat al-Jadida, 5 May 2001. Haaretz, 27 April 2001; Ma‘ariv, 16 May 2001; Yedi‘ot Ahronot, 16 May 2001. Israeli TV, Channel One, 15 May 2001. Haaretz, 15 May 2001, 8 February 2002. See “Exposé” on Israeli TV, Channel One, 1 August 2001. Until now 1,200 mosques, tombs of sheikhs, and Muslim cemeteries have been marked and mapped. It is estimated that there are 1,200 more, see Rekhes, Reopening, pp. 117–18. The al-Aqsa Society for Preserving the Islamic Waqf, Survey of the al-Aqsa Society Regarding the Waqf and Islamic Endowment in the State of Israel (Umm al-Fahm, Israel, April 1994), pp. 5, 9–11, 23. See also a detailed list made by ‘Ikrama Sabri, Chief Mufti of the PNA, “al-I‘tida’at ‘ala al-awqaf wal-muqaddasat 1948–1987,” in al-Mujtama‘ al-Filastini -Arba‘in ‘aman ‘ala al-Nakba wa-wahad wa-‘ishurin ‘aman ‘ala ihtilal al-Diffa wa-Quta‘ (Jerusalem: al-‘Amal, n.d.), pp. 44–46. Haaretz, 15 May 2001, p. B1; Yedi‘ot Ahronot, Supplement, 16 May 2001. Qashu‘a in Ma‘ariv, Sabbath Supplement, 11 January 2002, pp. 26, 82; ‘Isa in Haaretz, 19 July 2002. Haaretz, 10 October 2002.

4

Constructing a National Past: The Palestinian Case Meir Litvak

Introduction Every nationalist seeks to provide what any nation is in need of: a suitable and dignified past. No aspirant ethnic group can be without its particular myth of descent if it is to secure recognition.1 Anthony Smith’s insights are particularly apposite to the Palestinians, who are still engaged in a struggle for the realization of their national aspirations against a rival national movement, Zionism, and against the State of Israel. Palestinian nationalism serves as a valuable case study of how, in order to forge a “nation” in the present, it is vital to create and crystallize ethnic components of the past; failure to do so is likely to constitute a serious impediment to nation building.2 The present study therefore explores the evolution and changes in the myths of common ancestry in Palestinian nationalism. More specifically, the conception or reconstruction of a national history among Palestinians and the changes this process underwent over three distinct periods of time will be examined: from the 1920s to 1967, which favored a pan-Arab narrative; from 1967 to 1994, which marked the revival and crystallization of a distinct Palestinian identity within a broader context of Arab nationalism, that is, up to the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA); and from 1994 onward, under PNA auspices. The Palestinian historical discourse aims at achieving two complementary goals: the first is the continued process of nation building and the consolidation of a Palestinian national consciousness as the primary framework of identity, vis-à-vis primordial clannish, tribal, and local

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loyalties on the one hand and radical Islam on the other. Although the Palestinian national movement emerged after the First World War, the nation-building process did not reach full fruition, due to the particular circumstances of Palestinian history—the 1948 defeat and dispersal, the life under Jordanian and Egyptian rule until 1967, and the subsequent Israeli occupation from 1967 to 1994.3 The second goal is the use of history as a weapon in the ongoing conflict with Israel in order to enhance Palestinian historical claims to the land and refute Israeli-Zionist arguments. In the words of a sympathetic Norwegian observer, “Palestinians have become increasingly aware of the decisive battle about the past” in view of the fact that the history of the land was written by others.4 Since the Palestinians became engaged in the process of nation building in the 1920s and are still in the midst of a national struggle, Palestinian historiography in the Arabic language—whether official, academic, or popular—can by and large be depicted as a mobilized one. In other words, it is still in the uncritical and unreflecting phase in which only those themes and elements that serve the national cause are accepted, established maxims and truths remain unchallenged, and evidence that runs counter to the national cause is ignored or dismissed as false or hostile. Academic standards on the use of historical evidence are rarely practiced. Part I The Arabization of the Past: From the 1920s to the 1960s Reconstructing a past during the British Mandate The 1920s and 1930s witnessed the consolidation of separate national movements in most Middle Eastern countries, accentuated by the struggle against Western imperialism; still, the dominant intellectual and political discourse among the educated and urban sectors at the time was panArab. While each national movement developed in its own way, the standard self-perception was that of a single Arab nation composed of different Arab movements. Even Egypt, the country most similar to a Western-style nation-state, shifted to Pan-Arabism in the early 1930s.5 The Palestinian national movement was no exception, and despite its unique experience of a simultaneous confrontation with Zionism and with British imperialism, it incorporated the ideals of Pan-Arabism that embraced Arab unity and independence. This development was most explicit in the rise of the Istiqlal (Independence) Party in the 1930s, which appealed mainly to Palestinian youth.6

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This development is clearly evident in Palestinian historiography and in the representation of the Palestinian national case.7 The struggle against Zionism and the need to refute Jewish claims prompted a historiographic effort on the part of the Palestinians, who sought to prove the continuous “Arabness” of Palestine, from antiquity to the present. History, according to Tarif Khalidi, was perceived as a “national legacy to be used in the ongoing debate with the Zionists and the British” and as “a storehouse of examples which new Palestinian generations must learn and digest.”8 Publications in this vein first appeared during the British Mandate and continued well into the 1960s. The first wave of Palestinian historiography produced two sets of works that paralleled concurrent historiographic trends in neighboring Arab countries. The first included local historical accounts (often about the author’s hometown), multivolume biographical dictionaries, and historical geographies.9 Intent on proving the Arab character of the various localities, most of these works dealt primarily with the Arab and Islamic periods. Although some of the works border on antiquarianism, they continue to serve as important sources of information for historians today.10 The second group of works consisted of general histories of Palestine that sought to prove its Arab identity, tracing it back to antiquity.11 Although the historians were writing on the history of Palestine, their imagined community of the past was the collective Arab nation; they discussed the history of Palestine not as a distinctly Palestinian past, but as an integral part of the history of the Arab nation. Accordingly, the Palestinians were part of the Arab collectivity, and their uniqueness stemmed primarily from the fact that they resided in Palestine. Their essential identity was Arab, and they were an integral part of the Arab nation.12 Many of these historians disapproved of the borders carved out by the European powers, which had detached Palestine from the adjacent regions. Writing in the early 1920s, ‘Umar Salih al-Barghuthi and Khalil Tutah asserted that Palestine had always been an integral part of Syria; it was never separated from it, either by natural borders, or by ethnicity, or by history. Such views persisted until the 1960s.13 Another expression of this perspective was the “Semitic wave theory,” prevalent in Arab historiography from the 1930s onward, and according to which all the Semitic peoples who had lived in the Middle East since antiquity were Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula who had emigrated in various waves, either peacefully or as conquerors. This theory, originally put forward by H. A. Winkler and Leone Caetani, was just one of five speculative hypotheses on the origins of the Semites prevalent at the time, but was

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received and expounded by Arab historians and publicists as an undisputed scientific truth.14 The portrayal of the Semites as having a single territorial and cultural origin served as a justification of contemporary Arab unity. In the Palestinian context, representing the Canaanites as Arabs enabled the Palestinians to claim historical continuity in the land, thus antedating the first Israelite settlements. It also served to repudiate the appeal made by some Zionists of a common Semitic bond between Jews and Arabs.15 Mustafa al-Dabbagh’s encyclopedic work Our Country Palestine, published in the wake of the 1948 defeat with the aim of preserving the live memory of Palestine, reflects this approach. Al-Dabbagh attributes the first settled civilization in Palestine, that is, the Canaanites, to the BanuCan‘an tribe that lived on the eastern shore of the Arabian Gulf. The Canaanites were closely linked to the Emorites and Phoenicians, who had also migrated from the Arabian Peninsula and respectively settled on the eastern bank of the Jordan River and on the northern shores of the Mediterranean, thus forming the early Arab Middle East. According to alDabbagh’s theory, all of these peoples shared the same Arabic language, culture, and history when they migrated to the region in ca. 2500 BCE. Later, the merging of Canaanites and Philistines—who had migrated from the Greek islands in ca. 1500 BCE, bringing with them a superior iron culture—formed the core of present-day Palestinian Arab ancestry. The name “Land of Canaan” was derived from these Canaanites, al-Dabbagh concluded, “and this was the earliest name by which our country was called.”16 Every Palestinian writer during the British Mandate accepted these same premises. In his history of Jerusalem, for example, the Palestinian historian ‘Arif al-‘Arif posited the Arab character of the city and the falsehood of Jewish claims to it by tracing the establishment of the city to the Arab Jebusites.17 The conviction of an Emorite ancestry was not confined to history books; it was also put forward in political polemics against representatives of the Zionist movement and the British rulers.18 While several non-Palestinian writers in the Arab world included the Israelites among the ancient Semitic peoples, Palestinian writers rejected this notion, since it would have given some credence to a Jewish link to Palestine. Following the 1948 war, Palestinian writers resolved this conflict by denying any historical link between the ancient Hebrews and modern Jews, describing the latter as descendants of the Caucasian Khazar nation that had adopted Judaism in the eighth century, or as an amalgamation of people from various ethnic groups, who embraced Judaism in the course of the past two thousand years.19 To establish the Arab continuum in Palestine, scholars also made use of archaeological findings. Mahmud al-‘Abidi, one of the founding fathers of

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Palestinian archeology in the 1930s, sought to demonstrate continuity between the Canaanite and Arab Islamic periods. Since, as he argued, there was a scarcity of pre-Islamic archaeological remains in Palestine—in contrast to neighboring countries—he concentrated his efforts on the ArabIslamic period (660–750 CE), seeking to achieve two main goals: to stress the historic links of the Arabs with Palestine, which would refute Jewish historical claims, and to concurrently “remind his readers of the great accomplishments of their forefathers and thus enhance their national sentiment.”20 The fusion of Palestinian patriotism with the broader framework of Arab nationalism eventually led Palestinian writers to belittle the uniqueness of Palestine in ancient times and completely ignore or even deny it in their discussions of the period of Arab Islamic rule from the seventh century onward. For Palestinian nationalists, Muslims and Christians alike, both before and after 1948, the “golden age” of the past meant the common glories of the Arab Islamic past. Furthermore, the lasting impact of Muslim rule on Palestine provided the ultimate proof of its Arabness within the broader context of Islamic civilization.21 ‘Arif al-‘Arif, for example, sought to refute claims of a Jewish historic link with Palestine by elaborating on the history of the Arab tribes that had settled in Palestine, and asserted in his History of Be’er Sheba that the population of Palestine was descended from pure Arab stock—to a degree even greater than that of the neighboring Arab countries.22 There was no need to imagine a particularist Palestinian past within this greater imagined historic community: indeed, Palestine and Palestinians had a glorious past by virtue of their being members of the larger Arab Islamic community. Al-Dabbagh serves as a good example of this trend, as his historical survey of Palestine ends with the Roman period on the eve of the Arab conquest. For most Palestinian writers during the Mandate period, the idea of Arab historical unity throughout the ages served as a theoretical basis and a justification for modern-day Pan-Arabism. Typically, they referred to the period of the Crusades “by recalling how the foreign invaders had been thrown out of Palestine in the Middle Ages through the combined efforts of the Arabs, and how the greatest accomplishments of the Arab empire had occurred in times of Arab unity.”23 Subhi Yasin, writing in the 1950s at the height of the pan-Arab movement, even Arabized the non-Arab Muslims who played an important role in Palestine’s history, describing the Crusades as wars waged “against the Arabness of Palestine.”24 A somewhat different approach was adopted by the Supreme Muslim Council (SMC) headed by the Grand Mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, during the British Mandate. This influential body sought to transform festivals

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commemorating local Muslim saints into religious-national Palestinian holidays. The most important of these was the springtime Nabi Musa festival, which attracted pilgrims from the southern and central regions of Palestine, thereby contributing to a shared sense of historical memory and collective identity. Although the roots of Nabi Musa very likely predated Islam, the festival may have become fixed in the local calendar at the time of Saladin in the twelfth century, as a demonstration of the Muslim presence in and around Jerusalem at Easter time. The official organ of the SMC explained that the council had been happy to revive [these festivals, namely, Nabi Musa, Nabi Rubin, and Nabi Salih], and has worked to refine them . . . and to increase their amenities. It has attempted to turn some of them into cultural and educational fairs and industrial exhibits, in order to encourage Arab [emphasis mine] culture and national crafts.25

Expressions of national sentiments, such as songs and slogans, were permanent features of these festivities. They often had political content and implications, supporting Hajj Amin al-Husayni or condemning Zionism and colonialism. According to one report, in the early 1930s they “bore reference to the combat of colonization and the West, restoration of Arab glory [emphasis mine], the force of arms, and the attainment of absolute independence.”26 The Mawlid al-Nabi (birthday of the Prophet Muhammad), a more universal orthodox Islamic holiday, took on a national coloration as did the local religious festivals of the 1930s. During this period an attempt was also made to introduce a new religio-political festival: the celebration of the Muslim victory over the Crusaders in Hittin in 1187.27 Internalizing nationalist symbols among the popular classes was a difficult process, as becomes evident when one observes the SMC representation of Palestine in the 1930s, when the council favored Islamic themes over nationalist ones, stressing the need to preserve Palestine as a Muslim country in the light of a growing Zionist challenge. Its publications continuously referred to Palestine as “a trust (amana) of Allah, His Prophet, and all the Muslims,” which “rests on Palestinian shoulders,”28 and a holy country in which the first of the two qiblas [direction to which Muslims turn in prayer] and the third haram (holy place) [are situated]; . . . the land of al-Isra’ wal-Mi‘raj, . . . the land of which the earth has been molded with the blood of the most pious Muslim warriors; of which the soil has collected many prophets, righteous persons, martyrs and virtuous [persons].29

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Part II The Palestinization of the Past: From the 1960s to the 1990s Singling out the Palestinian past The Palestinian defeat in 1948, the Nakba, affected Palestinian national identity in two, seemingly contradictory, ways. In addition to the bitter encounter with and rejection by the neighboring Arab societies, the trauma of defeat and displacement reinforced the crystallization of a distinct Palestinian identity. Politically, however, the Palestinians’ weakness and dispersal led them to put their faith in Arab unity, which was widely perceived as the key to regaining Palestine. Due to a growing disillusionment with Arab rulers, however, the revival of an organized Palestinian national movement took place only in the 1960s, with the establishment of the PLO in 1964 and Fatah in 1965. The 1967 War, which dealt a harsh blow to Pan-Arabism, brought together three major Palestinian communities under Israeli rule, thereby enhancing the political and cultural bonds between them. The daily frictions with Israeli occupation served as the final boost to this process. While language served as the basis of a collective Arab identity, what distinguished the Palestinians from other Arabs as a national entity was their particular historical experience. Consequently, the Palestinians turned to the creation or reconstruction of a distinct collective memory and history as the main channels for asserting their distinct identity.30 Palestinian collective memory had emerged by the late 1960s, centering on various events during the British Mandate—particularly on the profound national trauma of the 1948 defeat and displacement, which for many Palestinians was also a key component of their personal memory. The renewed Palestinian emphasis on the construction or reconstruction of a national past and a collective memory after 1967 was manifested in an intensive effort to establish the existence of a continuous Palestinian entity and national consciousness, reaching back to ancient history. The importance attached to the establishment of a collective memory is illuminated by the bitter condemnation of the confiscation of PLO publications by Israeli police, described as an attempt to “murder Palestinian memory.”31 This effort was part of a larger phenomenon, which encompassed most other countries in the Middle East. Lacking a tradition of nation-statehood, they needed to mold a sense of national identity. They sought to transform collectivity based on territory (often the outcome of colonial divisions) into a community of memory. In most Arab countries, state patriotism was imposed from above with a view to enhancing the legitimacy of the

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state as against rival ideologies—mainly political Islam and PanArabism—and to overcome internal cleavages between rival ethnicities and religious sects.32 By contrast, the shift toward imagining a more particularistic Palestinian past was launched both from above, that is, by the PLO as surrogate state, and from below, at grassroots level. The effort to recreate a national past included all three sectors of the Palestinian people: in Israel, in the Occupied Territories, and in the diaspora. Under the British Mandate this effort was mostly carried out by individuals—members of the intelligentsia—but by the late 1960s it had been taken over almost entirely by institutions that acted as surrogates for a Palestinian state. In 1968, the PLO established the Department of Culture, whose goal was to promote research and disseminate Palestinian culture both among Palestinian communities and in the West in general. Two noteworthy projects the Department of Culture sponsored were the Encyclopedia Palaestina, published in 1974 as a political and cultural enterprise in collaboration with the Arab Cultural Organization, and the Palestine Atlas project launched in 1992 in cooperation with the Jordanian University in Amman. The atlas includes historical maps intended to demonstrate the “deep historical cultural roots of the Palestinian people” and enhance the reader’s awareness of Palestine’s Arab nature.33 The Palestinization effort in the West Bank was led by universities and social and political institutions affiliated with the PLO. Bir Zeit University, for instance, established a documentation center with the primary goal of gathering material and conducting research on Palestinian society and history, particularly on the Palestinian villages destroyed and abandoned during and following the 1948 War. The universities held historical seminars, symposia, and public lectures, while various other institutions pursued similar activities on a more popular level. In Israel proper, the Communist Party was a major agent for the promotion of Palestinian culture and history, through its extensive press activity and public educational events. While in most other Arab states historiographic changes stemmed from the domestic needs of the state or the ruling elite, for the Palestinians the grassroots efforts to rewrite history came in response to the challenge and threat posed by Israel to the identity and character of Palestine. The preservation or invention of a national heritage was perceived as an important means to enable Palestinians to hold on to their land in the face of political and economic hardship. The inculcation of this heritage was achieved both through scholarly enterprises and on the popular level through the press, exhibitions, and oral acculturation. In contrast to the pan-Arab discourse employed by Palestinian writers during the British Mandate—which was by and large elitist and directed

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more toward an intellectual audience outside Palestine than toward local Palestinians of the lower social strata—the Palestinian national and historical discourse from the late 1960s onward aimed more at the Palestinian public itself and at the lower social strata in particular. This shift resulted from a growing disaffection with the Arab elites, who had failed to rescue the Palestinians—from the need to mobilize the Palestinian masses behind the PLO and its various affiliates, and from the leftist revolutionary ethos of some of these movements. Whereas the earlier narrative sought to prove the Arab nature of Palestine, such a proof was no longer deemed necessary, just as the Arab character of Syria and Iraq needed no proof. The succeeding narrative endeavored to prove the unique nature of Palestine within a greater Arab identity.34 In his introduction to the anthology Palestinian Poetry of the Past Thousand Years, Samih al-Qasim, a poet and senior activist of the Israeli Communist Party, concedes that the emphasis on Palestinian particularity might initially have evoked reservations among Arab nationalists, who rejected anything that tended to encourage regionalism (iqlimiyya). But, he argues, Zionist propaganda persisted in its efforts to obliterate the distinctiveness of the Palestinian entity by denying the existence of a distinct Palestinian people and by insisting that the vast Arab lands were capable of absorbing those Arabs who had left Palestine voluntarily. “Against this activity of methodical negation,” he explains, the adherence of Palestinians to their national culture reflects a firm desire to cling to their homeland. In affirming its cultural viability and continuity, a people affirms its close ties with the homeland, which in turn will provide it with the legal legitimacy to prove its right to the land. Consequently, Qasim concludes, the keen interest Palestinians take in their heritage and cultural legacy explains the determination with which they rally to retrieve the homeland in the face of an imperialist and Zionist assault.35 Palestinian thinkers perceive history as a crucial instrument in the struggle against Zionism. According to the editors of the Encyclopedia Palaestina, Israel was established on the premise of a historical lie, namely, that Palestine is the land of the Jews. Hence, the central role of the Encyclopedia Palaestina “in the battle for liberating Palestine, has been to present the historical facts about the land and its people . . . so that it will constitute a historical document to refute the legends on Palestine.”36 An obituary for Emile Tuma, the ideologue of the Israeli Communist Party, asserted that the integral relationship of Zionism with Jewish history, on the one hand, and Arab and Palestinian history, on the other, had led him to view history as a major weapon in the Palestinian struggle to reaffirm the authenticity of its national identity and the depth of its roots.37

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The evolution of a new imagined past of a distinct and continuous Palestinian identity through the ages is also discernible in the changing attitudes toward the issue of Palestine’s borders. In the past, Arab historiography emphasized that the fragmentation of the Arab world into separate states and the present artificial borders had been imposed by the Western powers to serve their own imperialist interests.38 In the 1960s and thereafter, however, the boundaries of the British Mandate were referred to as the frame of reference or the borders of the imagined Palestinian community of the past. Thus, the Palestinian Covenant—both in the original, pan-Arab 1964 version and in the amended, particularist 1968 version— gives no other definition of historical Palestine beyond that of the Mandate period, implicitly conceding the difficulty in establishing an earlier distinct entity. Likewise, the Encyclopedia Palaestina gives the Mandate boundaries as its terms of reference for Palestine, even when dealing with early history. Some contemporary Palestinian writers even contend that the Mandate borders actually existed as natural historical boundaries in the distant past.39 In his book on the Arab-Israeli conflict, ‘Umar Masalha, a PLO ambassador to UNESCO, claimed that the Palestinians celebrated a “Holiday of Peace” on 25 December in 4000 BCE, implying a link between the origins of Christmas and the Palestinians. A review of the book in the official PLO organ, Filastin al-Thawra, praised it for summarizing the Palestinian epic of “a million years,” which was characterized by “openness and tolerance.”40 In a historical introduction to his proposed peace plan published in al-Fajr, Talal al-Safi, the Palestinian intellectual and intifada activist, likewise depicted the invading Israelites led by Joshua as attacking the Palestinians in wars that lasted over a hundred years.41 The Canaanites were portrayed by another writer, ‘Abd al-Latif al-Barghuthi, as being among the first to adopt monotheism in response to Abraham’s call.42 The shift to the new narrative is even more striking in references to the Arab Islamic period. Although some historians concede the difference between modern Palestine and the same district under Arab Islamic rule, they use the modern term to refer to areas delineated in the past in an apparent attempt to show historical and geographic continuity.43 In an article on the “coinage of Palestine”—the title itself is significant in light of the association between the minting of coins and sovereignty—Yusuf Sa‘id al-Natshe implies the existence of a distinct Palestinian identity some thousand years ago. He writes: “Palestine submitted totally to the Abbasid Caliphate”; “Palestine became liberated from this absolute subordination”; and, “under Abbasid rule, Palestine shifted from absolute subjection and complete subordination, on the one hand, to tangible, realistic independence while retaining the nominal leadership of the Caliphate.”44

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An eighth-century lead mold, previously assumed by art historians to have been used for stamping official Umayyad taxation documents, was given a new interpretation in the 1970s in accordance with the new narrative. When Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik consulted with various provincial governors on the need to mint Arab coins instead of the old Byzantine ones, writes Muhammad Baqir al-Husayni, “Palestine responded with this sample.” Husayni adds, “Those Palestinians [both emphases mine] . . . knew of ‘Abd al-Malik’s determination to mint Arab coins free from foreign influences.” The sample proposed by the people of Palestine, he concludes, was subsequently used throughout the Arab empire.45 The publication of Husayni’s article in the PLO yearbook of 1975, which was primarily a record of the Palestinian national struggle during that year, points to the political significance of Husayni’s conclusions in the editors’ view. Even the nomadic Bedouin tribes assumed a certain Palestinian uniqueness during the Islamic period, according to this narrative. In a conference on the Palestinian popular heritage held in Damascus in 1981, ‘Awd Sa‘ud ‘Awd argued that the Palestinian Bedouins became sedentary much earlier than other Bedouins in the Middle East, while Bedouin women in Palestine had almost the same status as men, thereby reflecting the more advanced nature of Palestinian society.46 While acknowledging universal Islamic cultural activity during the Arab Islamic period in the entire region, Samih al-Qasim also stressed the special role played by the Arabs of Palestine in its development. Jerusalem generally, and al-Aqsa Mosque in particular, became Islamic cultural centers that rivaled al-Azhar university, he wrote. Moreover, he sought to demonstrate the continuous existence of a tradition of Palestinian poetry going back as far as the tenth century CE, including, for this purpose, nonnative poets who had lived in Palestine for brief periods only. For example, the first poet cited in Qasim’s anthology is the Iraqi-born Kushajim al-Ramli (295–360 Hijri/908–971 CE). Qasim defended this approach by claiming that there was no “fault” in listing these “innovators” under the Palestinian heading because there were no borders that separated the various parts of the Arab homeland at the time, and because of general freedom of movement and settlement then.47 Emile Tuma published a series of articles in 1981 in al-Jadid, the Israeli Communist Party literary magazine, on the history of Palestine under Ottoman rule (1518–1918); while acknowledging that Palestine was not a separate entity under the Ottomans, the writer nevertheless dealt with it as such. For example, in discussing the fall of the local rulers of Mt. Lebanon in 1635, Tuma concluded with the statement: “Henceforth leadership passed on to Palestine.”48

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Tuma’s articles reflected the transformation of the image of Zahir al-‘Umar (1689–1775), a Bedouin chief who had established a local fiefdom in the Galilee in defiance of the Ottomans. The earliest references to Zahir, primarily by Lebanese writers, described him as one of a group of feudal lords (ashab al-muqata‘at) who controlled the area between Mt. Lebanon and the “land of Safed.” These writers unintentionally stressed the traditional and regional rather than the national nature of Zahir’s activities by referring to his realm as “the land of Galilee” or “the land of Safed.”49 Arab historiography until the late 1960s hailed Zahir al-‘Umar as a symbol of Arab opposition to Turkish rule and as one of the forebears of Arab nationalism. As late as 1970 he was described as the first during the Ottoman period . . . who sought to realize the idea of Arab unity, or, in other words, the first who called for Arab solidarity and joint military action among the Arab lands . . . to liberate the Arab lands from the yoke of the usurping Turks.50

Ibrahim Abu Lughod conceded in 1988 that in recent years Palestinians “anxious to ‘prove’ a historical basis for Palestinian independence often refer to Zahir al-‘Umar.”51 Tuma, for example, came to the conclusion that Zahir’s fiefdom could be regarded as the “first Palestinian state” since it emerged in Palestine and “developed authentic local culture.’ In 1992 Filastin al-Thawra went further, hailing Zahir as “a major Palestinian figure who established the idea of the Palestinian entity” and as the “father of the Palestinian entity.”52 While in the past Palestinian historians described the national awakening of the Palestinians as part of a larger Arab national movement, in recent years Palestinian writers on both the scholarly and popular levels have devoted considerable effort to prove the existence of Palestinian national consciousness, prior to the onset of Zionism. This effort was articulated most clearly by Ibrahim Abu Lughod: In a very important sense the Palestinians have always [emphasis mine] been conscious of their Palestinian Arab identity that has produced distinct cultural manifestations, expressing itself in art, crafts, literature, economics, and politics. And it is that distinct political consciousness that impelled Palestinians to participate in the politics of the Ottoman Empire in the late Nineteenth Century long before the confrontation with either Zionism or British imperialism accentuated the political drive of the Palestinians for independence . . . The conclusion is inescapable: the recent Palestinian drive for independence . . . is premised upon a long-standing consciousness of a distinct territorial and national identity.53

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The new narrative about the existence of a distinct Palestinian nation throughout history was expressed most explicitly in the Palestinian Declaration of Independence of 15 November 1988, which stated: Palestine, the land of the three monotheistic religions, is where the Palestinian Arab people was born, on which it grew, developed and excelled. The Palestinian people was never separated from or diminished in its integral bonds with Palestine. Thus the Palestinian Arab people ensured for itself an everlasting union, between the people, its land and its history. Resolute throughout history, the Palestinian Arab people forged its national identity, even rising to unimagined levels in its defense against invasion, foreign designs, and the appeal special to Palestine’s ancient and luminous place on that eminence where powers and civilizations are joined . . . All this thereby intervened to deprive the people of its political independence. Yet the undying connection between Palestine and its people secured for the land its character and for the people its national genius. Nourished by an unfolding series of civilizations and cultures, inspired by a heritage rich in variety and kind, the Palestinian Arab people added to its stature by consolidating a union between itself and its patrimonial land . . . And in generation after generation, the Palestinian Arab people gave of itself unsparingly in the valiant battle for liberation and homeland.54

Another component of the Palestinian effort to develop a distinctive collective memory was the adoption of new national holidays or memorial days, and the promotion of national heroes. From 1967 onward, at least seventeen official national and memorial days were incorporated into the Palestinian calendar, all of which commemorated events that occurred in the twentieth century, that is, the period in which the Palestinian national movement emerged—beginning with 2 November 1917 and the Balfour Declaration.55 All but five of these holidays are linked directly to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, indicating its centrality in the evolution of Palestinian nationalism. The earliest hero to be canonized by the Palestinian national movement was the Syrian-born Shaykh ‘Izz al-Din alQassam, revered as the father of the organized armed struggle against the Zionist enterprise in the 1930s. Once again, this selection reflects the centrality of the struggle against Zionism in the evolution of the Palestinian national movement. Conceivably, if an independent Palestinian state were to be established, it would most likely emulate other Arab countries in celebrating earlier events and heroes. As in the past, both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict use archaeological findings to prove their historical case. In the 1980s, archaeologists from Bir Zeit University sought to prove the historical Canaanite-Palestinian continuity by showing similarities between the material culture of the

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Canaanite period and that of contemporary Palestinian villages. A somewhat different approach, formulated by other archaeologists to further validate the Palestinian rights to the land, held that the Palestinians constituted a direct continuum of the sum total of peoples and cultures that had existed in Palestine, including the ancient Israelites.56 An essential part of the affirmation of Palestinian identity was the negation of the Jewish link to or role in Palestine. This often assumed the nature of counterhistory, that is, polemical history, systematically, using the adversary’s most reliable sources to prove the opposite of the original intent and spirit.57 The assertion by Arab historians that all Semites were Arabs, which would imply that the Israelites were Arabs too and consequently had a legitimate link to the region, entailed a Palestinian rejection of Jewish history. One solution to this dilemma was the depiction of the Israelites as the one alien and disruptive element in an otherwise harmonious and prosperous region. Mustafa al-Dabbagh, for example, described the Israelites as “wandering nomads when they entered Palestine and usurped its towns and villages.” Culturally inferior to the Canaanites, they borrowed a great deal of their “civilization, culture, language, manners, books, and religious rituals” from the Canaanites. The Jews, in his view, did not give anything of value to the world, as their history “is obscure and is not distinguished by anything of value.”58 Other writers pointed to the short period of Jewish domination of the land, compared with the prolonged Arab Islamic rule, and to the marring of Jewish rule by ongoing internal strife and wars with the Canaanite Arabs. Although some writers embraced the contribution to Palestine made by each people or empire that had ruled it since antiquity, they denied any such contribution by the Israelites. The common attitude has been the one expressed by a leading pro-PLO daily in the West Bank, which describes the ancient Jewish presence as “the first occupation of Palestine” and Zionism as the second. Concurrently, some Palestinian publicists have argued that there is no historical or archaeological evidence to prove an Israelite presence in Palestine prior to the eighth century BCE (that is, shortly before the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE). Filastin al-Thawra, for example, contended that “no Jewish stone” was found in the excavations conducted in David’s City in Jerusalem, only evidence from the Arab Umayyad period.59 These writers in fact accused the Israelis of appropriating Canaanite artifacts and attributing them to ancient Israelite culture.60 A more sophisticated approach held that archaeological excavations have proven that there is no trace of an Israelite people or culture distinct from the Canaanite one. Consequently, “everything which had been named Israelite or Hebrew is in fact in its essence and appearance

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Canaanite.” Most importantly, the linguistic and literary component of the Bible stemmed from Canaanite culture. Likewise, the Israelite religion was considered basically Canaanite, since the Canaanites had been the first to worship the one supreme God; in fact, unlike the truly monotheist Canaanites, the Israelites continued to worship various idols periodically until the destruction of their kingdoms.61 A minority view was expressed in al-Fajr by Talal al-Safi, a West Bank intellectual and political activist, in the introduction to his proposed peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Safi characterized the history of Palestine as a continuous struggle between the Palestinians— the indigenous inhabitants of the land—and the Jews, starting from the time of Moses and Joshua. These wars continued until the destruction of the two Hebrew kingdoms in the ninth and sixth centuries BCE and recommenced once the Hebrews returned under the auspices of the Persians in ca. 516 BCE. The only period of intercommunal peace was under Islamic rule from the seventh until the nineteenth century CE, but the struggle was resumed once Zionism emerged.62 The implicit acknowledgment by Safi of the long-term link between the Jews and Palestine, however, was one of the reasons for the wide opposition his peace plan encountered. Apparent Palestinian willingness, from the late 1980s onward, to accept Israel’s existence and to confine aspirations for statehood to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has not led to a reconstruction or imagining of a past limited to these territories. Rather, the imagined community of the past remained that of Palestine in its entirety. The Palestinians, says Mahmud Darwish, the poet and member of the PLO Executive Committee, distinguish between the homeland and the state. Part III The PNA and the Past The establishment of the PNA in 1994, following the signing of the Declaration of Principles between Israel and the PLO on 13 September 1993 (the Oslo Accords), profoundly affected the Palestinian effort to reconstruct a collective memory and history. The PNA was far from being an independent state as it was subject to numerous restrictions due to the continued Israeli presence in the Palestinian Territories on the one hand and to its own inherent deficiencies on the other. Nonetheless, it enjoyed complete freedom of action in two areas crucial to the inculcation of historical memory and consciousness: education and the media. For the first time in their history, the Palestinians could shape an educational

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curriculum as they pleased. Similarly, the PNA gave high priority to setting up its own printed media, national television, and radio programming in order to enhance its legitimacy among the population and mobilize it behind its political goals. A plethora of new publications, sponsored by civil institutions such as universities and research centers, also appeared in the Palestinian Territories, free of the restrictions formerly imposed by the Israeli authorities. The PNA’s weaknesses prompted it to symbolically highlight attributes of state power and independence—it started issuing passports, hoisting national flags, holding military parades, and promoting “national” education. The construction of a collective memory and historical consciousness through school curricula, state media, official ceremonies, and archeology was deemed especially important.63 Widespread activities by NGOs and semiofficial organizations complemented the official efforts. An important component of this enterprise has been the construction of an official historical narrative of Palestine and the Palestinians from prehistoric times to the present, which simultaneously weaved itself into Arab and Islamic history and demonstrated its unique Palestinian traits. The present section will focus on the Palestinian effort under the Fatahled PNA to construct and inculcate a historical memory related to the earlier history of the land. More specifically, this involved the cultivation of two seemingly contradictory, but in fact complementary, national myths: the “Canaanite myth of descent,” which depicted the ancient Canaanites as Arabs and as the direct ancestors of modern-day Palestinians, and a second myth, which advocated a Palestinian Islamic identity predating the Prophet Muhammad.64 According to Anthony Smith, these two constructions of the past correspond to two prevalent, albeit opposing, myths of descent: the Canaanite past as part of a genealogical or biological type and the “ancient Islamic past” as an “ideological” descent.65 Indeed, in most Arab countries the preIslamic past was a subject of dispute between secular nationalists, who promoted it in order to enhance the country’s particular territorial identity, and Islamists, who rejected the notion as Jahiliyya, that is, as a period of barbarity and ignorance.66 In the Palestinian case, nationalists and Islamists upheld both myths, even fusing them together when discussing the history and sanctity of Jerusalem. The reason for this unique joining of minds is that both myths were directed against a common national adversary—the Zionist movement—as a primary focus of identity, rather than against each other, thereby forging a unified national narrative. Nevertheless, Hamas and Fatah did differ in their perceptions of modern history, mainly because of its greater ramifications for the present-day political conflict between them.

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The main goal of the national narrative was to consolidate Palestinian consciousness of the historical continuity of a distinct Palestinian community in the land, which preceded the Jewish presence, and continued, so it is argued and apparently believed, even under Jewish rule in Palestine. While the central outlines of this narrative remained unchanged from the 1970s onward, the dissemination of the “Canaanite past” under the PNA has been much more extensive and elaborate. The Canaanite past was raised not only to refute Jewish-Zionist claims to the land but also to emphasize that just as Palestine successfully weathered many foreign occupations and tribulations in the past, so too would be the case at the present time. “All those who lived in this land except us have disappeared. We preserved our roots one generation after another,” said the historian ‘Issam Sisalem.67 By the time the Israelites came to Palestine, according to the official narrative, the Canaanites had established an advanced civilization with agriculture, crafts, trade, towns, and a series of city-states reflecting a high level of political development. Most importantly, they had a written script, which the wandering, and thus less developed, Israelite tribes imitated.68 Some, including Sisalem, solved the problem of the Israelite presence, which broke the seemingly uninterrupted Arab-Canaanite presence in the land, by claiming that the ancient Israelites were in fact “Bedouin-Arab tribes” who have no connection with the modern Khazar Jews. Judaism itself, Sisalem maintained, was actually part of Arab cultural heritage, as the book of Genesis was actually Ugarithic and the book of Job came from Iraq. These Hebrew-Arab tribes were later “erased and ceased to exist and no traces were left of them.” The conclusion, therefore, is that the presentday Jewish-Zionist claim of descent from them has no basis in history. 69 Other Palestinian producers of culture concede that with the coming of the Israelites from the east and the Philistines from the Aegean Sea, the Canaanites ceased to be the sole masters of the land. Yet, they insist that Canaanite culture retained its position as the dominant high culture, which the Israelites imitated and appropriated for themselves. Consequently, according to this view, only two civilizations—the Canaanite and the Arab— prevailed in Palestine from 5000 BCE until 1917, the beginning of British rule and “Zionist intrusion.”70 Turning to the Qur’an as a direct link between the Canaanite past and the Palestinian present, PNA chairman Yasser Arafat often quoted the passage Inna fiha qawman jabarin (a race of giants dwells there),71 which refers to the portrayal of the Canaanites by the Israelite spies, while addressing the present-day Palestinians as sha‘b jabarin (a people of giants).72 The implication was clear to speaker and audience alike: present-day Palestinians

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were equated with their “ancestors,” the Canaanites, in their common struggle against the Israelites-Israelis. Even the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas integrates the Canaanite past in its historical narrative, depicting the Canaanites as Arabs and describing Palestine as Islamic in essence thanks to the activities of the early prophets there. However, unlike the “nationalist camp,” Hamas also emphasizes the significance of the migration and settlement of Arab tribes following the seventh-century Muslim conquest.73 The reason for this acceptance and legitimization of the Canaanite past, even though it is considered the age of jahiliyya—that is, the pre-Islamic period associated with ignorance and barbarity—in Muslim tradition, is its usefulness in refuting Jewish-Zionist claims. Concurrently, the Canaanite past never served as an alternative to the Arab-Islamic focus of identity, as was the case with the pharaonic past in Egypt in the 1920s, but rather complemented it or even further consolidated it. New means of dissemination Modern technology and the tools of a modern quasi state provided the PNA with the means to disseminate the national narrative. Official PNA institutions, such as the Palestinian National Information Center, used their Web sites to provide an official version of the history of the land, going back to Canaanite times.74 Civil-society institutions, as well as research centers, municipalities, and even private individuals helped promulgate the national historical narrative in their publications and activities.75 Another means of commemorating the Canaanite past was the use of the names Yebus (Jebusite), Canaanite House, and Stars of Canaan for a newspaper, a cultural institution, and a dance company, respectively.76 Of particular importance in this context were the formulation of school curricula, the constant publication of school textbooks dedicated to history, and “national education” (tarbiyya wataniyya). The PNA textbooks, according to Nathan Brown, propounded a seamless sense of national identity. Religious, territorial, familial, and Arab identities were not only complementary; they were often coterminous, to the point of being blurred. According to this narrative, Palestine’s first inhabitants were the “Arab Canaanites,” as was the population in all pre-Islamic civilizations of the region: Mesopotamian, Sumerian, Akkadian, and so forth. Both the Arab and the Palestinian nations were eternal entities, going back to the beginning of history. In order to link the Canaanite past with the present, seventh graders were told of a Canaanite myth about a bird that left its homeland to look for food, but then felt so homesick that it did all it could to return home. Lest the symbolism escape the students, Brown

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comments, the book posed the question of whether the story could be applied to the Palestinian diasporas.77 Likewise, official historical maps speak of uninterrupted historical continuity between ancient Canaanites and present-day Palestinians, while suppressing any reference to an Israelite-Jewish presence or to holy Jewish sites.78 Aiming to advance its political agenda, the PNA gave first priority to the establishment of national television; this, too, was then used to offer numerous historical programs. A survey of the TV programs from 1998 to 2003 found at least 142 references to the Canaanite forefathers of present-day Palestinians or to the Canaanite origins of Palestinian localities. Likewise, the semiofficial printed press offered special sections on the country’s history, or sections devoted to the history of specific towns and villages.79 As in the past, archeology played an important role in the efforts of both peoples to substantiate their historical claims. Lamenting the lack of interest in archeology among ordinary Palestinians, the archaeologist Hamid Salim maintained that “traditional Palestinian culture stood at the head of a cultural journey going back thousands of years.” Palestinian heritage, he added, symbolized the “accumulating expertise of interaction with its specific environment,” but required scientific scholarship in order not to become a mere myth.80 Taking a more politicized approach, Dr. Ibrahim al-Fanni, head of the Jerusalem Center for Research and Documentation, pointed to the “ongoing struggle between the Zionist invaders and the owners of the land in the fields of history, archeology and identity.” According to him, “a scientific struggle over Palestine’s history and civilization” is waged at several interrelated levels and concerned a number of issues in which archeology plays a role, namely, that of strengthening the claims of one group at the expense of the others. Most important, he asserted, were the disputes over the country’s geography, history, and sanctity; over periodization, which goes back to the past, since Jews do not recognize these roots and deny ever having had an Arab identity; over names, since Jews insist on falsifying the names of ancient sites; and over the cultural heritage of the Palestinian people, since Jews claim that this heritage belongs to them.81 The major Palestinian contention was that all archaeological excavations carried out in Palestine revealed the high level of Canaanite cultural development. It preceded, they said, that of the Israelites, for whose presence there was in fact no archaeological evidence. Palestinian researchers therefore concluded either that the Israelite presence was ephemeral or that it had overwhelmingly been influenced and shaped by the more sophisticated Canaanites.82 To support their arguments Palestinian archaeologists and official spokesmen relied heavily on the “minimalist school” in Western

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archeology and biblical studies, which denied the validity of the Bible as a historical source and minimized the time span and cultural impact of ancient Judaism in Palestine. For obvious reasons, they tended to disregard views that criticized this school and conflicted with their own narrative.83 Theater, too, helped propagate the notion of a Canaanite past. A Palestinian theater company, al-Hakawati, was established in Jerusalem in 1977, but it dealt mostly with current issues of the Israeli occupation and was often subjected to Israeli restrictions. In 2000 a new theater group, named Ashtar (after the ancient Canaanite goddess), performed Of Soil and Diamonds, a play whose main theme is the evolution of Palestine’s Arab identity since the Canaanite period. It depicted Jerusalem, or the Canaanite Ur Salem, as its capital. The play mingled the “ancient and modern eras on the stage,” blending the “Canaanite mythology with the brittle [Ugaritic] tablets,” which described the central pillars of life, namely, the numerous Canaanite gods and their influence on Canaanite society. “These [legends] have been preserved to this very day despite the consistent threat and ugliness of war and political turbulence in the region,” wrote the Palestinian director and playwright Sawsan Darwaza. The play aimed to convey the message that Israelis had manufactured their own, imaginary, history, covering the Canaanite era up to the present.84 Commemorative ceremonies reenacting the past have always played an important role in fostering historical memory, translating the written text into a living reality.85 Significantly, while the PNA held numerous commemoration ceremonies of the 1948 Nakba (see Esther Webman’s and Michael Milshtein’s chapters in this book), only a few of them reenacted the Canaanite period. The most significant ceremonies took place on 15 August 1996 at the village of Sebastia (near Nablus), under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture, and attended by the governor of Nablus and by commanders of the Palestinian security forces. Young people—wearing garments designed like Canaanite robes and decorated with Canaanite motifs, and riding on wooden chariots built to the specifications of drawings found in the Megiddo excavations—reenacted the legend of the supreme Canaanite god Ba‘al and his struggle against his brother Mut, god of the underworld. Ba‘al eventually emerged victorious with the help of his sister ‘Anat, the goddess of war. Linking past and present, the narrator emphasized the warnings against the approaching “Habiru” (Hebrew) tribes and expressed sympathy with the warriors of the Amorites, Girgashites, Jebusites, and Perizzites, who had been defeated by the biblical leader Joshua, son of Nun. At the play’s conclusion, the participants proclaimed Chairman Yasser Arafat the “First Lord of Canaan (Sayyid Kan‘an al-Awwal).” The message conveyed was that the present-day struggle with Zionism continues the conflict that began more than three millennia ago.86

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Although the ceremony had a clearly propaganda bias, it aroused only faint protests in Islamic circles, a far cry from the virulent opposition the glorification of the pharaonic past elicited in Egypt. The only exception was the radical Hizb al-Tahrir, which had always rejected nationalism in its Arab or Palestinian forms and advocated the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate in a single pan-Islamic state.87 This protest, however, was the exception that proved the rule since Hizb al-Tahrir’s small size and radical views against nationalism relegated it to the fringes of Palestinian society. Hamas on its part refrained from open criticism at a time of high tension in its relations with the PNA. It is equally plausible, however, that since Hamas accepted the Canaanite past as a founding myth rather than as the basis of present-day political identity intending to supplant Islam, it did not see the ceremony as a cause for alarm. Still, the PNA refrained from holding similar events thereafter. Apparently, officials felt that such ceremonies failed to elicit the emotional effect or political commitment produced by commemorative ceremonies of more recent events dealing directly with the present Palestinian predicament. They therefore focused on the Nakba rather than on the Canaanites.

All past is perceived as Palestinian Arab The Palestinian discourse Arabizes all the peoples that ever lived in Palestine, from the Canaanite period onward—except for the Jews. It demonstrates the country’s uninterrupted Arab identity and appropriates its cultural heritage. One writer, Abu Basil, asserted that the prehistorical Natufi cave people, who had settled in Palestine ca. 7,000 years ago, were the first civilization in history to shift from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists, thereby progressing from an economy of consumption to one based on production. “In this way the Natufi-Palestinian man [emphasis mine] contributed much to humanity, which is the foundation of modern civilization,” he concludes, in his search for a source of national pride for the Palestinian people.88 Likewise, King Herod (who reigned from 37 to 4 BCE) was described as the “Arab Edomite.” His Arabization apparently required the rectification of his tainted image in Judeo-Christian tradition, leading one writer to protest against the injustice done to him when he was accused of perpetrating the massacre of male children after the birth of Christ.89 In a similar vein, the Palestinian narrative nationalized the Dead Sea Scrolls, attributed to the Qumran (Dead Sea) sect by most archaeologists today. The scrolls were discovered in 1947 and contain a voluminous body of Jewish documents, dating from the third century BCE to 68 CE.90 The Palestinians maintained that the scrolls were written in Aramaic or Greek,

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not in Hebrew, that their contents preceded the known texts of the Jewish Torah, and that they consequently had no connection whatsoever with ancient Judaism. Rather, since Aramaic was a branch of Arabic, the scrolls were part of the Palestine-Canaanite cultural tradition that preceded the Jews and persisted in Palestine throughout history. Moreover, since the scrolls were found near the Dead Sea, they belong to the PNA, and Israel is holding them illegally.91 Of particular significance in this regard is the portrayal of Jesus as a Palestinian or as an Aramaic-Arab, thereby blurring or denying his Jewish origins while attributing the birth of Christianity and its contribution to world civilization to the Palestinians. Arab historians used to describe Jesus as an Arab, but in the early 1990s, Dr. Hannan ‘Ashrawi, the spokeswoman of the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks, described him as Palestinian.92 Since 1994 it has virtually become official policy. The textbook History of Palestine, for instance, describes the birth of Jesus but does not mention his Jewish origins at all, nor his encounter with the Jewish community. In another context it does mention, however, that Aramaic was the dominant language in Palestine at the time, hence also spoken by Jesus. Since Aramaic culture is described early in the text as representing the Canaanite-Arab culture, and since language is considered the decisive factor determining identity, the implication with regard to Jesus seems quite clear.93 Palestinian Christians systematically spoke of “Jesus the Palestinian,” and also referred to Mary and the apostles as Palestinians. The Muslim leadership of Fatah adopted that theme as well. Chairman Arafat emphasized the Palestinian “roots” of Jesus and of the papacy itself during Pope Paul John II’s visit to the Holy Land in June 2000 by speaking of “the Palestinian apostle Peter.” The leading Palestinian publicist Bilal al-Hasan described Jesus as the “Palestinian Prophet,” who, he acknowledged, “was sent to guide the Jews.”94 The early church itself was often depicted as Palestinian, while its Jewish origins were totally ignored.95 The PNA organ al-Hayat al-Jadida went even further when it described Jesus as the first Palestinian shahid—martyr for God, murdered by the Jews—which not only used Islamic terminology that evolved centuries after his death but also contradicts the Qur’an, which denies the Crucifixion. In an article praising the steadfastness of the Palestinian city Nazareth against allegedly continuous Zionist efforts to undermine its identity, a writer stated that Nazareth “still has not forgotten nor will it forget her first son [Jesus], whom the Jews betrayed and handed over to the emperor, insisting on his killing”; the author expresses his belief that “inevitably the savior will one day come to Nazareth to return the joy.” As in other cases, references to the Jewish persecution of Jesus, the Palestinian,

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also intended to show, in the words of a Palestinian artist, that the “struggle today against the other [Israel] is an eternal one. It can be said that it started 2,000 years ago and continues until today.”96 The Islamic past Alongside the “genealogical” Canaanite myth of descent, the Palestinian narrative also makes use of an “ideological myth of descent,” which emphasizes Palestine’s status as a blessed land in Islam and portrays the Palestinians as the true legitimate heirs of biblical-Muslim prophets who predated Muhammad.97 Unlike the Canaanite myth, the Hamas narrative stresses the spiritual-religious bond between the present-day Palestinian Muslims and the monotheistic Muslim prophets who preceded Muhammad, rather than the genealogical link. While the sanctity of al-Aqsa Mosque has always served as a rallying point for the Palestinian national movement, it was Hamas that made Palestine’s sanctity a major pillar of its national platform.98 In fact, with the establishment of the PNA, the national and Islamic narratives drew closer together. Significantly, the PNA school textbooks—not just the media—blend the nationalist and religious components of Palestinian nationalism. Thus a fifth-grade textbook explains that God had blessed Palestine via the Prophet’s miraculous nighttime journey to al-Aqsa Mosque (al-Isra’) and his ascension to heaven (al-Mi‘raj) from there, and also by making Jerusalem the residence of numerous prophets.99 A major reason for Palestine’s preeminence was its position as “the fortress that stood firm against all the invading expeditions to which the Muslim world was exposed,” chiefly the Crusaders and the Mongols, who destroyed the Caliphate in Baghdad but were defeated in ‘Ayn Jalut. Alluding to the struggle and fate of modern Palestinians, the textbook adds that many hadiths (oral traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad) commend Muslims who stay in Palestine as a garrison (murabitun) on its soil in spite of the challenges, the suffering, and the pain which they find. That is so because God has entrusted the people of this land with a great mission, namely, that they be the vanguard in the battle between the Muslims and their enemies. They will not receive the reward mentioned by these Prophetic Sayings unless they perform their duty to their religion and their nation and their land.100

The two pasts, the Canaanite and the Islamic, converged in Jerusalem in view of its sanctity to the three monotheistic religions, and because both Israelis and Palestinians see it as their capital. The national narrative

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emphasizes Jerusalem’s long “Arab” history, predating the Hebrews. Its first inhabitants (ca. 2000 BCE), the Amorites, were Arabs; some 500 years later, the town was renamed Jebus, after the Jebusites, another Arab tribe that had settled there. All the city’s names from ancient times to the present, such as Yerushalem (founded by Salem), Jebus, and Zion (Sahyun), with the exception of the Roman Ilya Kapitolina, were said to have been Arab names, denoting the city’s Arab origins and continued identity.101 The name Ursalem or Urshalem appears in an Egyptian papyrus ca. 1850 BCE, proving that “what the Zionists claim today to be a Hebrew name, is in fact an original Arab-Canaanite word,” one writer stated. Another notes that various Arab scholars had dedicated themselves to proving the Arab nature of Palestine, and of Jerusalem in particular, in what resembles a “scientific or scholarly intifada.” The intention of this scholarly production is to refute attempts to deny Jerusalem’s Arab history before the Davidian conquest—whether by Jews or by others, whether for political ends or for lack of understanding. “Everything on our land is holy to us and we will defend it and never be deceived, nor will we argue about biblical lies that penetrated the minds of some orientalists. Jerusalem has been the capital of our capitals since the dawn of history, and will remain so,” concluded the historian Sisalem.102 Another stumbling block at the center of the Jewish-Palestinian controversy is the Temple Mount (the Haram al-Sharif): The Jews revere the Western Wall as the last remnant of the Temple (in fact it is only part of the above ground portion of the Temple’s supporting wall), while the Muslims regard the al-Aqsa Mosque as the place to which the Prophet Muhammad made his nighttime journey (al-Isra’) and from where he ascended to heaven (al-Mi‘raj). The Palestinian discourse contains numerous references to the Isra’ wal-Mi‘raj event; its anniversary has become a national holiday, combining Palestinian distinctiveness within a broader Islamic context. The PNA conducted annual ceremonies to commemorate Muhammad’s ascent to heaven; and Yasser Arafat chose that date to deliver speeches and receive congratulatory letters from dignitaries and other Arab leaders.103 Consequently, a necessary corollary of the assertion of Palestine’s continuous Arab character, and of that of Jerusalem in particular, was the denial or belittling of a Jewish historical presence in it.104 As far as the Jewish Temple itself was concerned, Palestinian spokesmen did not offer a unified narrative. During the failed 2000 Camp David Summit, for example, Chairman Yasser Arafat denied the historical existence of a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount.105 Some Palestinians insisted that there was no evidence for the existence of the “falsely alleged temple” (al-Haykal al-maz‘um), while accepting the existence of the Second Temple, established in 516 BCE after the rise of the Akhmeneid

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Persian Empire.106 Others acknowledged the existence of the Jewish Temple, but insisted either that it had lasted for only a short while or that the Western Wall was unrelated to it.107 Jarir al-Qidwa, head of the PNA Public Library and Arafat’s advisor on education, explained in a PNA TV educational program that “Solomon’s Temple” had been “built by the Canaanites, who were the neighbors of the Israelites.” In their eyes, the Bible had become “an archival document, not representing what the Israelis and the first Jews were, but what they thought they were, what they imagined. The Temple is the fruit of their imagination. In any case, when our nation or our Canaanite forefathers came to Palestine, they built the Temple, a temple in Jerusalem.” The issue of the Temple, he went on to say, was “a Zionist innovation. No one said that the temple that was built in Jerusalem, neither the Canaanite nor the Roman [sic], no one said that it was in the place of the [Islamic] haram.”108 Interestingly, as was the case in the broader debate on archeology, various Palestinian writers occasionally cited the Qur’an and various hadiths as historical documents in order to refute a number of biblical assertions, ignoring the question of why one religious text was more historically valid than the other. The denial of the First Temple’s existence became a widespread trend in Arab and Islamic writings in recent years. Significantly, these claims contradict the early Islamic tradition, which did acknowledge the Temple, stressing that the Dome stood on the Holy Rock from which the Prophet ascended to heaven. Likewise, earlier Palestinian works, most notably the encyclopedic work Biladuna Filastin of 1949, stated that the Haram al-Sharif stands where the Temple once stood. At the time, however, the area was under Arab control and there was no need to change Palestine’s past history.109

A useful past and a meaningful past The past is a contested area in all Arab states, as it is in most countries in the world—in this, Palestine is no exception. However, unlike in other Arab countries, there is a broad consensus among Palestinian nationalists and Islamists about long periods of the country’s history, in the main for utilitarian reasons. All Islamic movements in other Arab countries oppose the governmental cultivation of a pre-Islamic past as an attempt to foster a rival, non-Islamic focus of identity. By contrast, Hamas endorses this approach, given its political usefulness in the struggle against Israel, and because it serves as a myth of descent that complements the Arab Islamic identity of the Palestinians without constituting a rival identity. The contested past among Palestinians relates to the modern post–World War I era

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when the modern Palestinian national movement emerged—a period that seems more relevant to present-day politics. Consequently, there is little reason to doubt the broad public acceptance of the myth of Canaanite descent, particularly in view of the fact that it has been widely disseminated for over seventy years in a profusion of ways, for instance through history books, through school textbooks, or in the popular media, and notably by obstructing the diffusion of conflicting myths or alternative approaches to history. The usefulness of this approach to the Palestinian national narrative in the struggle against Zionism was also instrumental in its widespread acceptance. Concurrently, Palestinian nationalists have always incorporated Islam as a major component of the country’s history and national identity, and used Islamic motifs in their historical discourse. In addition to the unanimous emphasis on the sanctity of Jerusalem to Islam, they have often relied on the Qur’an and the hadith as undisputed historical evidence in refutation of Jewish arguments. Yet, I would argue that the Canaanite past has little meaning for most Palestinians, especially when compared with the more recent past. Indeed, in most societies, current events are of greater significance than a remote, two-thousand-year-old past, let alone for the Palestinians, whose modern history and identity is overshadowed and shaped by the 1948 defeat and dispersal. However, a comparison of the role of a Canaanite past in Palestinian national culture with the role of a distant past for modern Jews would show its limited impact on the hearts and minds of most Palestinians. A brief glance at Palestinian school textbooks, particularly the 2005 eleventh grade History of Palestine up to 1917, shows that only fifteen pages were allotted to Palestine’s pre-Islamic past, while thirty-seven pages were devoted to the Muslim period up to the beginning of Zionist immigration, and thirty pages to Zionist and British activities up to 1917. More striking is the number of books and articles written on the Palestinian struggle against Zionism, compared with those covering earlier periods of history, as well as the space allotted to each period on official and unofficial Web sites dealing with Palestinian history. Moreover, the actual discussion of the Canaanite past proves this point, as it hardly ever refers to any specific events, places, or personalities, except for a few archaeological excavation sites and the Jebusite past of Jerusalem. Instead, it surveys the Canaanite past only in general terms—in marked contrast to the detailed treatment of early Islamic history, or to the equally detailed treatment of ancient Jewish history in Jewish or Israeli historiography. Moreover, both the early Islamic and the ancient Jewish past are still part of living traditions for the two peoples. One only has to compare the

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treatment of two thousand years of alleged Canaanite past with the event of the Isra’ and Mi‘raj, which is often cited and revived, not only by Hamas but by nationalist writers as well. A cursory look at the voluminous Hamas literature on the early encounters between the Prophet Muhammad and the Jews demonstrates the high relevance of early events of Islamic history to present-day Arab historical memory. Another example of the difference between Israelis and Palestinians in this context is the place the battle between David and Goliath holds in Jewish history and culture. Although it is probably a mythical event, it nevertheless carries with it a profound symbolic meaning in modern Jewish culture, creating the idiom and self-image of the Jews as “Davids facing Goliath.” No event in the Canaanite period has similar resonance among Palestinians. Pierre Nora spoke of “sites of memory” that are instrumental in the creation and consolidation of collective memory.110 No Canaanite site has ever played such a role; no such site has ever acquired an elaborate story of its own or been linked to a particular event. Rather, all Palestinian sites of memory are related either to Christianity, to early Islamic history, such as al-Aqsa and the Horns of Hittin, or to the villages ruined in 1948. Likewise, no Canaanite personality is revered as a national or historical hero, mythical or otherwise. In Iraq, to cite an example to the contrary, Saddam Husayn sought, with partial success at best, to “promote” the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar; similarly, popular Iranian culture recognizes pre-Islamic figures such as Rustam, the hero of Shahnameh, or Kaveh, the pre-Islamic Persian Robin Hood figure. For the Palestinians, all national heroes emerged in the twentieth century, and all were drawn from the struggle with Zionism. Likewise, all national Palestinian holidays are related either to the struggle with Zionism or to general Arab events, but none to the Canaanite past. Emmanuel Sivan has shown how Arab states, when seeking to enhance territorial identity, use historical and archaeological sites associated with their country’s territory and often with its pre-Islamic past, including the pyramids on Egyptian bank notes and Petra or the ruins of Jarash in Jordan on money notes, stamps, and the like.111 Palestinian stamps, on the other hand, show al-Aqsa Mosque or the Church of Nativity, but not Canaanite sites. Likewise, in a first-grade national education textbook, the children are required to read aloud the following sentence, printed against a background picture showing al-Aqsa Mosque: “I am from Palestine, my citizenship is Palestinian.” This central, prominent site of memory and identity relates to the Arab-Islamic past, not to the Canaanite one.112 In general, Islam provides the most powerful reservoir of mobilizing symbols for both the nationalist and Islamic camps, as seen in the names al-Aqsa Intifada or Fatah’s al-Aqsa martyrs brigades. Similarly, when the

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Jewish fundamentalist political movement Gush Emunim seeks to restore the golden age of the past, it refers to biblical times. When Palestinians speak of the golden past, they usually refer to pre-1948 Palestine or, in the case of Hamas, also to the early days of Islam. No one, however, speaks of restoring the golden age of Canaan. The limited significance of the pre-Islamic past is also evident in the use of first names. Secular Iranians or Egyptians may give their children names that relate to their country’s pre-Islamic past, such as Cyrus or Daryush for Iranians or Ramsis for Egyptians. Similarly, Zionism has revived various biblical names associated with the land’s early history, such as ‘Anat, to mark a break with Jewish names associated with the diaspora. Yet, no Palestinian would name his or her sons after a Canaanite king, and all personal names are common Arab names or names that are related to the specific fate of modern Palestinians, such as Nidal (struggle) or Jihad. The overwhelming importance of recent history is even more striking when one considers later events in Palestine’s early modern history, as becomes apparent in the relation to two events. In the 1960s, the eighteenth-century local ruler Zahir al-‘Umar was glorified by Arab writers as a precursor of Arab nationalism, and in the 1970s as the founder of the first Palestinian state; yet, the eleventh-grade textbook History of Palestine devotes less than a page to his exploits, and the official PNA Web site does not even mention him, let alone highlight him as a national hero. In their controversial book Palestinians: The Making of a People, Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal argue, utterly unconvincingly, that the 1834 rebellion of the village shaykhs in the Nablus area marked the beginning of a separate and distinct Palestinian collective action and identity.113 The book drew greater and more heated responses from Israeli scholars than from Palestinians, even though it provided the latter with an ideal historical event to mark the birth of modern Palestinian political and national consciousness. Yet, the revolt is only very briefly mentioned in the above-mentioned History of Palestine, and is completely absent from the Web sites devoted to Palestinian history; it does not seem to play any role at all in Palestinian collective memory, nor is it commemorated. Rather, all national Palestinian heroes are modern figures related to twentiethcentury history; most prominent among these heroes is shaykh ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam, the father of armed struggle against the Zionists. Presumably, the Palestinian leadership and elites are interested only in historical heroes who fought foreign occupiers, rather than in those who challenged Muslim rulers. Overall, it may be concluded that Palestine’s pre-Islamic past and, to some extent even its premodern past, are only useful inasmuch as the Palestinian nation-building process and rivalry with Zionism are

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concerned. However, it is doubtful whether this past is truly meaningful to the great majority of Palestinians, compared with that which links Palestine to Islam as a religion or to the more recent past of the conflict, particularly the 1948 Nakba. Every national movement views the past largely as an instrument for its present struggle, as well as for its vision of the future. The Palestinian national movement is no exception. Palestinian perception and representation of the past have largely been a function of the crystallization of the contemporary Palestinian national movement, and of its struggle with Zionism and Israel. The emergence of a Hamas-led government, following the movement’s victory in the January 2006 elections for the PNA Legislative Council, has opened a new era in Palestinian politics, which is very likely to effect the reconstruction of the past as well. Notes 1. Anthony D. Smith, “Gastronomy or Geology? The Role of Nationalism in the Reconstruction of Nations,” in Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 176; Anthony D. Smith, “National Identity and Myths of Ethnic Descent,” in Myths and Memories, p. 60. 2. Anthony Smith, “Are Nations Modern,” in idem, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), p. 17. 3. One manifestation of these subnational loyalties is the tension between West Bankers (Dafawis) and Gazans (Ghazawis) and the reluctance of West Bankers to receive “migrants” from Gaza. 4. Unni Kjus Aahlin, “Promoting National Identity: A Challenge to Palestinian Education” (paper submitted to the 5th Nordic Conference on Middle Eastern Studies, Lund, Sweden, 2001), http://www.hf.uib.no/smi/pal/ abstract_Lund_ 02UKA.pdf. 5. Anwar Chejne, “The Use of History by Modern Arab Writers,” Middle East Journal 14, no. 4 (Autumn 1960): 382; Israel Gershoni, The Emergence of PanArabism in Egypt (Tel Aviv: Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 1981). 6. Manuel Hassassian, “State, Territory and Boundaries: Attitudes and Positions in the Palestinian National Movement (A Historical Perspective)” (Working paper no. 12, Israeli-Palestinian Peace Research Project, Winter 1991–92), 5. 7. These self-perceptions were evident in numerous official statements produced by the Palestinian national movement during the British Mandate. The phrases “the Arab people,” “the Arabs of Palestine,” “the Arab nation in Palestine,” “the Arab problem in Palestine,” “the Arabs who are the true owners of Palestine,” and “the Arab youth in Palestine” were commonly used. The terms “Palestinians” or “Palestinian people” were extremely rare. Likewise, the Palestinian case was presented as an Arab rather than a particularistic Palestinian one. The use of these phrases continued well into the 1950s, the

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10.

11.

12. 13.

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apex of the pan-Arab movement. See ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Kiyyali, Watha'iq al-muqawama al-filastiniyya al-‘arabiyya dida al-ihtilal al-baritani wa-alsayhuniyya, 1918–1939 (Beirut: Mu'assasat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya, 1968), pp. 6, 352, 454, 463ff., 541ff., 564, 601, 603, 605, 647. Tarif Khalidi, “Palestinian Historiography: 1900–1948,” Journal of Palestine Studies 10, no. 3 (Spring 1981): 64. Among the most important works in this group are As‘ad Mansur, Ta‘rikh al-Nasira min aqdam azmaniha ilá ayyamina al-hadira (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Hilal, 1924); ‘Arif al-‘Arif, Ta'rikh Ghazza (Jerusalem: Matba‘at dar al-aytam al-islamiyya, 1943); idem, Ta'rikh Bir al-Saba‘ wa-qaba'iluhu (Jerusalem: Matba‘at al-Quds, 1934); idem, Ta'rikh al-Haram al-Qudsi (Jerusalem: Matba‘at dar al-aytam al-islamiyya, 1947); Ihsan al-Nimr, Ta'rikh Jabl Nablus wal-Balqa' (Damascus: Matba‘at Ibn Zaydun, 1938); A. S. Marmaji, “Nubdha min ta'rikh al-Yaffa,” al-Mashriq 26, nos. 10 and 11 (1928); idem, Buldaniyyat Filastin al-‘arabiyya (Beirut: Manshurat al-majma‘ al-thaqafi, 1948). For a comprehensive list of such local histories, see Ibrahim Muhammad, “Buldaniyyat Filastin: Dirasa wa-bibliughraphiyya,” Filastin alMuslima (May–June 1992), parts 1 and 2. For similar phenomena in other Arab countries, see Chejne, “Use of History,” p. 384. For a partial list, see Beshara Doumani, “Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine: Writing Palestinians into History,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, no. 2 (Winter 1992): notes 44–50. Among the most important writers and their works in this group were ‘Izzat Darwaza, Nash'at al-haraka al-‘arabiyya al-haditha, 3 vols (Sidon, Lebanon: Manshurat al-maktaba al-‘asriyya, 1949–51); idem, al-‘Arab wa-al-‘uruba fī al-qarn al-thalith hattá al-qarn al-rabi‘ ‘ashar al-hijr ī (Damascus; Dar al-yaqza al-‘arabiyya, 1959–60); ‘Umar Salih al-Barghuthi and Khalil Tutah, Ta'rikh Filastin (Jerusalem: Matba`at bayt al-maqdis, 1922); Ishaq Musa al-Husayni, ‘Urubat Bayt al-Maqdis (Beirut: Munazzamat al-tahrir al-filastiniyya, 1968); Mustafa Murad al-Dabbagh, Biladuna Filastin (Beirut: Dar al-Tali‘a wal-Nashr, 1965). Yehoshafat Harkabi, The Palestinians and Their Awakening (Jerusalem, 1979, in Hebrew), p. 69. Barghuthi and Tutah, Ta'rikh Filastin, pp. 2–3; see also Adnan Abu Ghazaleh, Arab Cultural Nationalism (Brattleboro, VT: Amana Books, 1991), pp. 60–65, 72; Subhi Yasin, al-Thawra al-‘arabiyya al-kubra (fi Filastin), 1936–1939 (Cairo: Dar al-Hina' lil-taba‘a, 1959), p. 10; ‘Abd al-Rahman Yaghi, Fi al-adab al-Filastini al-hadith qabla al-Nakba wa-ba‘daha (Cairo: n.p., 1960), p. 21. Nimrod Hurvitz, “Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib’s Semitic Wave Theory and PanArabism,” Middle Eastern Studies 29, no. 1 (January 1993); Ernest D. Dawn, “The Formation of Pan-Arab Ideology in the Inter-War Years,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 20, no. 1 (February 1988). Bernard Lewis, History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 36–37; Dawn, “Formation of Pan-Arab Ideology,” pp. 70ff.; Hurvitz, “Semitic Wave Theory and Pan-Arabism,” particularly pp. 127–28.

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16. Al-Dabbagh, Biladuna Filastin, pp. 386–416. 17. Al-‘Arif, Ta'rikh al-Haram al-Qudsi . See also Barghuthi and Tutah, Ta'rikh Filastin; Khalil Baydas, Ta'rikh al-Quds (Jerusalem: n.p., 1922); al-Husayni, ‘Urubat Bayt al-Maqdis. 18. Yehoshua Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian Arab National Movement, 1918–1929 (London: Frank Cass, 1974), pp. 30–31. 19. Chejne, “Use of History,” p. 395; Joshua Teitelbaum, “The Palestine Liberation Organization,” Middle East Contemporary Survey (1990): 212; “A Comprehensive Interview with the Hamas Leadership,” Filastin al-Muslima, April 1990; Anon, “al-‘Ibriyya lughat Kan‘an,” al-Hadaf, 30 May 1993. 20. Ghazaleh, Arab Cultural Nationalism, p. 66. 21. ‘Izzat Darwaza, Nash'at al-haraka, pp. 112–15. 22. Al-‘Arif, Ta'rikh Bir al-Saba‘, p. 6. 23. Ghazaleh, Arab Cultural Nationalism, p. 73. 24. Yasin, al-Thawra al-‘arabiyya, p. 10. For a discussion on the portrayal by present-day Arab historians of Muslim resistance to the Crusades as a national Arab effort, see Emmanuel Sivan, Arab Political Myths (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1988, in Hebrew), pp. 36–42. 25. Bayan al-Majlis al-Shar‘i fi Filastin li-sanat 1340-1 hijriyya (1922–23), p. 18, cited in Uri M. Kupferschmidt, The Supreme Muslim Council: Islam under the British Mandate for Palestine (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 1987), p. 234. 26. Kupferschmidt, Supreme Muslim Council, pp. 233–34. 27. Ibid., pp. 235–36. 28. A religious ruling (fatwa) by the Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husayni. Cited in ibid., p. 241. 29. Ibid., p. 242. 30. For a discussion on collective memory, see Litvak’s introduction in this volume. 31. Anon: “ La Yumkinu ightiyal al-dhakira al-filastiniyya,” Al-Jadid , January– February 1982; see also the article by Majid al-Zubaydi (head of the documentation section at the PLO Research Center) "Al-Maktaba al-filastiniyya darura wataniyya,” on the need to establish a Palestinian national library in order to preserve the Palestinian national memory in al-Hadaf, 12 April 1992. 32. Eric Davis, “Theorizing Statecraft and Social Change in Arab Oil-Producing Countries,” in Statecraft in the Middle East: Oil, Historical Memory, and Popular Culture, eds. Eric Davis and Nicolas Gavrielides (Miami: Florida International University Press, 1991), pp. 26–27; Amatzia Baram, “Territorial Nationalism in the Arab World,” Middle Eastern Studies 26, no. 4 (October 1990); Sivan, Arab Political Myths, chapter 4. 33. Al-Dustur, 4 April 1992. 34. See, for example, the discussion on the “Duality between the Palestinian and the Arab” in Encyclopedia Palaestina (hereafter cited as al-Mawsu‘a alfilastiniyya), part II, vol. I, p. “sh”. 35. Samih al-Qasim, Matali‘ min antulujiyya al-shi‘r al-filastini fi alf ‘am min 908m (295h) hatta 1936 (1355hijri) (Haifa: Dar Arabisk, 1990), pp. 7–9. 36. Al-Mawsu‘a al-filastiniyya, part I, vol. I, p. A.

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37. Mahir Sharif, “Emile Tuma wa-dwar al-ta'rikh fi ma‘rakat al-thaqafa al-filastiniyya al-wataniyya,” Sawt al-Watan , November 1991. 38. Barghuthi and Tutah, Ta'rikh Filastin, p. 3. 39. al-Mawsu‘a al-filastiniyya, vol. I, list of abbreviations; Doumani, “Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine,” p. 9; Sharif Kana‘na, “Mukhattat tams wajh Filastin al-‘arabi,” in al-Turath al-sha‘bi al-filastini judhur wa-tahaddiyyat, ed. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Abu Hadba (Taybe: Israel: Markaz ihya' al-Turath al-‘Arabi, 1992), p. 75. 40. Anon, “ al-Quds 25 December 4,000 q.m.,” Filastin al-Thawra, 10 May 1992. 41. Al-Fajr, 13 May 1991. 42. Kana‘na, “al-Turath al-sha‘bi al-filastini judhuruhu wa-takhassusuhu,” in Abu Hadba, ed., al-Turath al-Sha‘bi, p. 29. This claim could imply that the Canaanites were the true spiritual heirs of the Biblical patriarchs. 43. See, for example, the various articles in al-Mu'tamar al-dawli al-thalith li-ta'rikh Bilad al-Sha‘am: Filastin, (Amman: University of Jordan, 1983). 44. Yusuf Sa‘id al-Natshe, “Naqd Filastin min al-thawra al-‘abbasiyya wa-hatta al-istiqlal al-Tuluni,” in al-Mu'tamar al-dawli al-thalith li-ta'rikh Bilad al-Sha'am: Filastin, vol. 2, p. 536 (in Arabic). 45. Muhammad Baqir al-Husayni, “Athr farid yuqaddimuhu sha‘ab Filastin lil-khalifa ‘Abd al-Malik ka-khutwa thawriyya li-islah al-naqd al-‘arabi,” in Filastin al-Thawra, 1 January 1976. 46. Filastin al-Thawra, cited in al-Jadid, April–May 1981. 47. Qasim, Matali‘ min antulujiyya al-shi‘r, p. 12. 48. Emile Tuma, “Filastin fi al-‘ahd al-‘uthmani,” al-Jadid, January and February 1981. 49. Mikha’il Niqula al-Sabbagh al-‘Akkawi, Ta'rikh al-shaykh Zahir al-‘Umar al-Zaydani (Harisa, Lebanon: n.p, 1926). 50. Tawfiq Mu‘ammar, Zahir al-‘Umar (Nazareth: Matba‘at al-Hakim, 1970), p. “j.” See also Darwaza, al-‘Arab wal-‘uruba, vol. 2, p. 292. 51. Ibrahim Abu Lughod, “Territorially-based Nationalism and the Politics of Negation,” in Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestine Question, ed. E. W. Said and C. Hitchens (London: Verso, 1988), p. 203. 52. Anon, “Zahir al-‘Umar abu al-kiyan al-filastini,” Filastin al-Thawra, 31 May 1992. 53. Ibrahim Abu Lughod, “Retrieving Palestinian National Rights,” in Palestinian Rights: Affirmation and Denial, Ibrahim Abu Lughod, ed.,(Wilmette, IL: Medina, 1982), p. 5; see also al-Fajr (English edition), 25 September 1989, Hisham H. Ahmed, “A Textbook for Undergraduates in the U.S.,” review of Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (New York: St. Martin Press, 1988), which states: “Smith errs . . . when he undermines the depth of the Palestinian national consciousness, which existed long before the Zionists postulated publicly their idea of colonizing Palestine”; see also Muhammad Muslih, The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 69, 86–87. 54. JPS 18, no. 2 (Winter 1989): 213–14. 55. Israel Defense Forces, Calendar of Dates and Events in the Arab World for 1992 (in Hebrew).

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56. Haaretz, 21 August 1992 (in Hebrew). 57. Amos Funkenstein, “History, Counter-History and Narrative,” Alpayim, no. 4 (1991, in Hebrew): 210–11. 58. Mustafa al-Dabbagh, Biladuna Filastin, vol. 1, pp. 579–80. 59. Ibid., 6 September 1992. 60. Danny Rubinstein, “Building a Future for the Palestinian Past,” Haaretz, 21 August 1992. 61. Farrass al-Sawwah, “Arki'ulujiyyat Filastin wal-Tawrah al-suriyya,” al-Fikr al-Dimuqrati, no. 1 (Winter 1988): 140, 141–44. Similar statements appeared in a booklet distributed to the press by the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference, Haaretz, 30 August 1992; al-Hadaf, 23, 30 May, 20 June 1993. 62. Al-Fajr, 13 May 1991. 63. See, for instance, the PNA Ministry of Education Report on Palestinian education, which states that 1994 is the “period when the Palestinian people in the West Bank and [Gaza] Strip began to exercise its educational selfdetermination on its homeland,” in “Mujaz li-masirat al-ta‘alim al-filastini fi al-qarn al-‘ishrin,” http://www.moe.gov.ps/publications/index.html 64. According to Anthony Smith, the term “myth” does not apply to the historical validity of these claims, but to the “dramatization and exaggeration of elements of truth in the tale it tells of a heroic past which serves the present.” See “The Problem of National Identity: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern?,” in his Myths and Memories, p. 100. 65. Smith, “National Identity and Myths,” pp. 57–59. 66. Egypt is the best example of the deep row over the country’s pre-Islamic past; see Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 80–83. 67. PA TV, 14 May 1999. See also, “Religion Lesson” on PNA TV, 16 November 1998, cited in http://www.imra.org.il 68. Markaz al-ma‘lumat al-watani al-filastini, “Filastin ma qabla al-ta’rikh,” http://www.pnic.gov.ps/arabic/history/historya.html; “Filastin al-hadara,” http://www.mohe.gov.ps/publications/Nakba.doc; Taysir Jbara, Sa‘id al-Bishawi, Raghda ‘Abid, Jamal Salim, Salah al-‘Awwur, Muhammad al-Khirmawi, Ta’rikh Filastin al-hadith wal-mu‘asir lil-saff al-hadi ‘ashar al-juz’ al-awwal (Ramallah: Al-Sulta al-Wataniyya al-Filastiniyya: Wizarat al-tarbiyya wal-ta‘lim, 2004). 69. PA TV, 14 May 1999 and 8 October 2001; PA TV, 2 August 2004, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) Special Report, 8 August 2004. 70. “Filastin ma qabla al-ta’rikh,” “Filastin al-hadara.” 71. Surat al-Ma’ida, [passage no.] 22—The Koran With Parallel Arabic Text, trans. N. J. Dawood, (London: Penguin, 1995) 72. PNA TV, 21 February 2002; http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/ 63DCADDD-FEF4-4986-BAFD-DDFF241DB63F.htm. I wish to thank Sariel Birenbaum for pointing me to this episode. 73. Al-Tayyib Ghana’im, “Hebron will be Either Ours or Theirs,” Eretz Acheret, no. 32 (February/March 2006, in Hebrew): 60; “The history of Palestine pre-Islam,”(25 January 2003), http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/am/publish/

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74. 75.

76.

77.

78.

79.

80. 81. 82.

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printer_13.shtml; for an analysis of Hamas nationalist ideology, see Meir Litvak, “Palestinian Nationalism and Islam: The Case of Hamas,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 2, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 500–522. See the PNA official Web site, http://www.pnic.gov.ps; http://www.palestinenet.com/history. See, for instance, the annual calendars distributed by the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA), which produce a historical chronology of Palestine; see also http://www.albireh.net/albireh_ history1.html, the Web site of municipality of al-Bireh, which contains a section on the town’s history from biblical times to the present; http://www.palestine-net.com and http://www.palestine.net, which are affiliated with the PNA; http://www.palestinehistory.com, which aims to serve as an online encyclopedia about Palestine; http://www.falasteen.com, which is affiliated with the Left; and http://www.bahethcenter.org, a Lebanese site that is opposed to the PNA. Al-Ayam, 9 June 1999; al-Hayat al-Jadida, 15 October 1999; Haaretz, 25 August 2005. Yebus was also the name of a high-school newspaper of the Qalandiya school. Curriculum Center, National Education, grade 7, cited in Nathan Brown, Palestinian Politics after the Oslo Accords: Resuming Arab Palestine (Berkeley, CA, 2003), p. 222. “Geography and Politics,” Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, November 2003—http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia// ENGLISH/AUTHORITY/PDF/MAPS.PDF. No author is given. See, inter alia, the TV series The Canaanite produced by PNA TV for the month of Ramadan 2005, usually the month with the highest rating; the program actually dealt with the encounters and tribulations of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. PNA TV, 6 October 2005; PMW Bulletin, 10 October 2005. I wish to thank Sariel Birenbaum for this information. Hamid Salim, “Dawr ‘ilm al-athar fi al-mujtama‘ al-filastini,” Shu’un Tanmawiyya 2, no. 2 (April 1994): 88–89. ‘Aziza ‘Ali, “al-sira‘ ‘ala al-ard wal-ta’rikh wal-hawiyya,” Majallat al-Kuwait, 1 April 2004. See for example, Hamdan Tah, “Mudakhalat al-ta’rikh al-hadari li-Filastin mundhu bidayat al-‘asr al-hijari wa-hatta al-fath al-islami,” Shu’un Tanmawiyya 2, no. 2 (April 1993), pp. 43–54; Salim ‘Arafat al-Mubid, “al-hadarat al-muta‘aqiba ‘ala Filastin min khilal al-ma‘alim al-athriyya wa-hatta al-fath al-islami,” Shu’un Tanmawiyya 2, no. 2 (April 1993),, pp. 55–64; Muhammad Mu‘in Sha‘ban Sadiq, “al-Hifriyat al-athriyya fi quta‘ ghazza wa-nata’ijuha,” Shu’un Tanmawiyya, vol. 2, no. 22 (April 1993),, pp. 71–80; al-Ayam, 20 April 2000; PNA TV, 17 April 2001. For the views of the minimalist school, see Thomas Thompson, Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999); Keith Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History (London: Routledge, 1996). For refutations of the minimalist approach, see William G. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know & When

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84.

85.

86. 87.

88. 89. 90.

91.

92. 93.

94.

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Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2001); B. Halpern, “Erasing History: The Minimalist Assault on Ancient Israel,” Bible Review 11, no. 6 (1995): 26–35, 47; J. A. Hackett, P. K. McCarter, A. Yardeni, A. Lemaire, E. Eshel, and A. Hurvitz, “Defusing Pseudo-Scholarship,” The Biblical Archeological Review 23, no. 2 (1997), pp. 41–50, 68; Gary A. Rendsburg, “Down with History, Up with Reading: The Current State of Biblical Studies,” http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/programs/Jewish/30yrs/rendsburg/index.html Jordan Times, 27 November 2000. The Ashtar group had to revoke its plan to show the play in August 2001 in Bethlehem as part of Bethlehem’s 2001 millennium celebrations, due to the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000. Jerusalem Times, 12 October 2001. See Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan, eds., War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1999); Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, Commemorating the Nation: Collective Memory, Public Commemoration, and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Egypt (Chicago: Middle East Documentation Center, 2004). Ehud Ya‘ari, “The New Canaanites,” Jerusalem Report, 19 September 1996. Hizb al-Tahrir, “al-manahij al-madrasiyya al-filastiniyya: ta‘amul ‘ala hadam al-asam fi nufus abna’ al-muslimin wa-tahwilihim ila al-‘ilmaniyya al-kafira” (n.p., 2004), p. 52. For Hizb al-Tahrir’s opposition to nationalism, see David Commins, “Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani and the Islamic Liberation Party,” Muslim World 81, nos. 3–4 (1991): 195–96. Abu Basil, “Ism Filastin,” at http://www.abubasel.com/palname.htm Al-Quds, 19 February 2001; al-Hayat al-Jadida, 23 February 1999. On the scrolls and the scholarly debate on their origins and significance, see D. Dimant and U. Rappaport, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research, (Jerusalem, forthcoming); Z. J. Kapera, ed., “The First International Colloquium on the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Folia Orientalia, 25 (1988): 1–l55; F. Garcia-Martinez, “The Texts of Qumran and the History of Community,” Revue de Qumran 14, (1989–90): 2–4. Taysir Nazmi, “Isra’il tastawli ‘ala makhtutat filastiniyya,” al-Mubadara, March 2004. The claim of the Canaanite identity is not supported by any scholar dealing with the scrolls. Chejne, “Use of History,” p. 395; Haaretz, 5 May 1992; see also Barghuthi and Tutah, Ta'rikh Filastin, p. 61, who claim that Jesus’s parents were Palestinians. Taysir Jbara et al., Ta’rikh Filastin al-hadith wal-mu‘asir lil-saff al-hadi ‘ashar al-juz' al-awwal, p. 11. See a similar claim on Jesus in the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education’s statement on the Palestinian curriculum: http://www.moehe.gov.ps/curriculum/index.html Al-Hayat, 20 March 2000; Nicholas Jubber, “The Cross in the Crescent,” World Catholic Report, January 2002: http://www.catholic.net/RCC/ Periodicals/ Igpress/2002-01/dossier.html. Al-Hayat al-Jadida, 24 January 2000, 14 December 2004; 9 March 2006 - PMW, 6 July 2006; PNA TV, 23 July 2000. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, prudently

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97.

98.

99.

100. 101.

102.

103.

104.

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described Christ as a son of the Holy Land in his 2001 Christmas message, http://www.lpj.org/Nonviolence/Patriarch/Miladh01.htm; Gershon Nerel, Anti-Zionism in the ‘Electronic Church’ of Palestinian Christianity (Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, 2006). Nerel, Anti-Zionism, p. 24. Al-Hayat al-Jadida, 17 January, 18 November 2005, and 9 March 2006; PNA TV, 21 July 2000. See also the article by Arafat’s advisor Bassam Abu Sharif in al-Sharq al-Awsat, 20 March 2002. Islamic tradition views several of the biblical prophets as Muslims since they advocated the belief in one God; see Roberto Tottoli, Biblical Prophets in the Qur’an and Muslim Literature (Richmond, VA: Curzon, 2001). “The Land and History: The History of Palestine pre-Islam,” in http://palestineinfo.co.uk, 25 January 2003. For a background to this view, see Litvak, “Palestinian Nationalism and Islam.” Islamic Education, Grade 5, part 1 (2004) pp. 61, 77–79; Our Beautiful Language, Grade 5, part 1 (2004), p. 5, cited in Arnon Groiss (ed.) Jews, Israel and Peace in the Palestinian Authority Textbooks (Jerusalem: Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, 2005), pp. 25, 55–58; Jbara et al., Ta’rikh Filastin al-hadith wal-mu‘asir, p. 13. Islamic Education, Grade 10, part 2 (2004), pp. 48–51, cited in Groiss (ed.) Jews, Israel and Peace, pp. 58–59. Faysal Salih al-Khayri,“Dalalat asma’ Filastin wal-Quds ‘ala ‘urubatiha (al-hadara al-natufiyya),” at http://www.palestine-info.info/arabic/landhistory/history/ dalalat.htm; Mustafa, “al-Ta’sil al-ta’rikhi.” al-Khayri, “Ism Filastin,”; Mustafa, “al-Ta’sil al-ta’rikhi”; PA TV, 21 November 2004, cited in Steven Stalinsky, “Palestinian Denial of Jewish Ties to Jerusalem,” http://FrontPageMagazine.com, 10 December 2004. See, for instance, PNA TV program al-Muntada al-Thaqafi, 1 February 1999; al-Quds, 25 September 2003, which printed Arafat’s speech and the congratulatory notes. See http://www.fateh.org/e_editor/99/150399.htm; PNA Report: “2000 Years After The Birth of Christ (Do not crucify the Lord in Jerusalem again),” part 2, 28 February 28 1998; see also the article by Walid M. Awwad, “Jerusalem, A City Crying Out For Justice” (The original article that had appeared on the PNA official Web site http://www.pna.org in December 1996 is no longer available, but excerpts are found at http://www.imra.org.il, 3 December 1996). Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, 27 June 2001. For other examples denying the Temple’s existence, see Yasser Abed Rabbo (P.A. Minister of Cabinet Affairs), Le Monde, 25 September 2000; Sawt al-Haq wal-Hurriyya, 9 January 2004; ‘Abdallah al-Hasan, “al-Masjid al-Aqsa tahta niran usturat al-haykal,” at http://bahethcenter.org/arabic/mosharakat/ara2/8-2004/24_almasjed.thm; ‘Abdallah Bahij, “Dirasa fi dakhd al-maza‘im al-yahudiayya fi Filastin,” at http://bahethcenter.org/arabic/derasat/dahd-maza`emalyahood.htm.

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106. Jarir al-Qidwa, “al-Haykal al-yahudi haqiqatuhu, wa-ayna huwa wa-ayna kana?” http://www.falasteen.com/article.php3?id_article=5248, 22 June 2005. 107. “Filastin ma qabla al-ta’rikh,” in http://www.pnic.gov.ps/arabic/history/ palestine.html; Mustafa, “al-Ta’sil al-ta’rikhi”; Adel Hasan Ghunayim, “Ha’it al Buraq wa-laysa Ha’it al-Mabka,” al-Ru’ya, no. 3 (October 2000), at http://www.sis.gov.ps/arabic/roya/3/hmepage3.html 108. PNA TV, 2 August 2004; PMW Bulletin, 8 August 2004, al- Ayam, 12 April 1998. See a similar claim that the Wall had been built “previously by our forefathers, the Canaanites,” in “Palestine: History and Heritage,” PNA TV, 1 December 1998. 109. Mustafa al-Dabbagh, Biladuna Filastin, vol. 1, pp. 560, 628. 110. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les lieux de mémoire,” Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 19–20. 111. Emmanuel Sivan, “The Arab Nation-State in Search of a Usable Past,” Middle Eastern Review 19, no. 3 (Spring 1987): 21–30. 112. Khalil Dufash, ‘Abir Quqas, Taha ‘Ajwa, Layla al-Raj‘i, Al-Tarbiyya alwataniyya lil-saff al-awwal al-asasi (Ramallah: al-Sulta al-Wataniyya alfilastiniyya, Wizarat al-tarbiyya wal-ta‘lim, 2001), p. 10. 113. Baruch Kimmerling and Joel Migdal, Palestinians: The Making of a People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 6–10.

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5

Historical Discourse in the Media of the Palestinian National Authority Sariel Birnbaum

Introduction The mass media of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) put considerable effort into presenting history in a manner that is accessible to the ordinary person. This is evident in the many Palestinian television programs devoted to discussions with historians, and in the substantial references to Palestinian history in the press. This chapter will examine the various Palestinian historical discourses—nationalist, Islamic, popular, and academic—exploring their meaning, the concepts that affect them, the worldview and political schools of thought they aim to instill, and the ways in which they are presented in the media. While the main subject of this study is the historical discourse in the media, we will, in addition to intifada communiqués, books and political documents, also examine history books, which constitute an additional channel for dissemination and national indoctrination and will serve as a control group. However, while the study of school textbooks focuses on a distinct set of books that have received the official approval of the Palestinian Ministry of Education, the wider historical discourse is more difficult to define, due to an overload of source material. One therefore has to proceed with the utmost caution before drawing conclusions. This chapter will look at how the media covered the pre-1948 years over a five-year period, from the end of 1998 to 2003. Indeed, by 1998, the PNA and its media agencies had already established themselves and accumulated

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experience. At that time state power was centered in the hands of PNA chairman Yasser Arafat. While it would be impossible to fully cover all important events, the major historical topics vital to our understanding of the Palestinian discourse as a coherent chronological continuum will be examined.

Historical discourse, collective memory, and identity building The concept of “discourse” is broad and unfocused. Indeed, it deals with an ever-growing body of knowledge and a wide range of concepts conveyed through speech and action, determining the way in which a given subject can be related to.1 “Historical discourse” therefore comprises any words or acts that relate to the past. The information related to in historical discourse is communicated through a number of sources; these include academics who publish articles in the press and are interviewed on radio and television, journalists, and Palestinian leaders whose views become known through their speeches, interviews, and newspaper articles. The latter in particular have a very powerful resonance and make up a substantial part of this discourse. This chapter will focus on the historical discourse of leaders such as the former leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Hamas, Yasser Arafat and Sheikh Ahmad Yasin. Basic political documents such as the Palestinian National Covenant and the Hamas Charter, both of which serve as canonical texts of their respective movements and are therefore of great value in conveying their historical worldview, constitute an integral part of the Palestinian historical discourse. The discourse is also clearly manifest in intifada communiqués and in a number of frequently aired television programs on history.2 Similarly, the press deals with history intensively in special features, such as “Today XX Years Ago,” and in articles on the history of cities and villages. This method of mass marketing a historical message contributes to the development of what Yael Zerubavel refers to as “history that people carry within their minds,” a concept akin to that of collective memory.3 Collective memory, according to many researchers, is the outcome of national-cultural manipulation that uses info-mediaries to bind together memory fragments of the past and so make them part of society’s selfimage and reflect its current concerns.4 It is one of the factors that gives a group a common identity and distinguishes it from other groups. This is particularly relevant for Palestinians, for whom national consciousness is relatively new and is not based on an ancient, prenational Palestinian collective memory.5

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The link between historiography as a “scientific” concept of the past and an innately “fluid” collective memory can be defined in a number of ways. Zerubavel demonstrates this by pointing to relations of mutual dependence and of “creative tension” between historiography and collective memory.6 The historical discourse that takes place in the media constitutes the “principal interface” in which those relations of mutual dependence between historiography and collective memory are exercised. History programs on Palestinian television often combine interviews with historians surveying an event and interviews with TV viewers who call the studio to tell of their experiences, family stories, and personal views about it. Thus, an interesting interaction is created in the media discourse between the memories of ordinary people and those of political leaders, or of historians and other scholars, who try to promulgate an “official narrative.” A fascinating example of such interaction occurred on the program The Open Day, which hosted Shaykh Ibrahim Sarsur, leader of the southern faction of the Islamic Movement in Israel.7 A Gazan named Hasan Ibrahim called the studio and recounted: “My grandfather and my father told me that during the Nakba [the 1948 disaster], a fatwa [religious-legal ruling] was issued by our qaimaqam [local governor] that whoever stayed on the land of Filastin and the land of Majdal [Ashqelon] was a traitor!” In the studio the interviewee’s face turned red with embarrassment, and he angrily retorted that whoever had issued this fatwa bore a burden of guilt in this and in the world to come.8 This clearly illustrates the mutual impact of the collective memories of various groups within the Palestinian camp—in this case, between the collective memory of the 1948 refugees and that of the Arab citizens of Israel (the Arab media in Israel will not be discussed here). This could also be viewed as an interaction between the collective memory of the 1948 refugees and the official narrative that the Palestinian national movement strives to inculcate in future generations. The historical discourse, as demonstrated in this study, is “mobilized” for strengthening Palestinian nationalism and for justifying Palestinian demands. This is done with the use of well-known techniques, such as when interviewers “guide” interviewees toward a desired response through leading questions and assertions. The various participants in the historical discourse, both in the media and in the historical reference materials presented to Palestinians, create a coherent historical picture. Zerubavel describes the structured picture of the past that the national movement aims to inculcate as a “master commemorative narrative,” which constitutes “the narrative line” that endows members of the group with shared feelings of a common past.9 This master narrative introduces meaning and an explicit worldview into the events of the past, thus connecting past events to the reality of the present, and

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the future. Sometimes, the master narrative (whether faith-based, Communist, or national) is guided by an array of “historical laws” and becomes a metahistorical narrative. The master narrative is built on an “axis of time,” that is, a nation’s history presented in terms reminiscent of an individual person’s biography: date of birth, date of liberation from foreign yoke, and periods during which it progressed culturally or technologically, and thus contributed to world culture. In short, both its lows and its highs are reflected in the narrative. The master narrative thereby transforms certain events in a people’s history into powerful political myths.10 The principal tool by which historians decide who will be resurrected and upon whom oblivion will be decreed is not distortion, but selection.11 Historians take on the task of organizing, ordering, and analyzing “raw” historical materials, and transforming them into a narrative that possesses an orderly, logical structure. This selection and organization process relates, among others, to Zionism too: the Palestinian discourse stresses both the Zionist link to Western colonialism (as reflected in the Balfour Declaration, for example) and facts that question its connection to the Land of Israel (the 1903 Uganda Plan, for instance). Unlike the “typical scenario of nationalism” described by Anthony Smith, Palestinian nationalism is not based on an ethnic group that existed for centuries before the rise of nationalism and is distinguished by linguistic and cultural uniqueness. On the contrary, it is based on the borders of Mandatory Palestine, thus defining the national group by colonial borders, as in other postcolonial cases. 12 The elite that shaped Palestinian national consciousness was forced to create something out of nothing, among a group whose members till then only had an awareness of local, tribal, Arab, and Islamic belonging. To this day, Palestinian nationalism, like similar movements in other Arab countries, has been forced to compete with suprastate identities enjoying great popularity: pan-Arab nationalism and Muslim identity. Likewise, it also faces harsh competition with powerful substate identities, such as tribe, clan, region, or towns and villages. This reality explains the very intensive, guided involvement of the Palestinian media in molding “the history of the Palestinian people.” This study follows a positivistic approach: it aims to compare the Palestinian historical discourse with academic research. Although this approach may seem old-fashioned, it would indeed be highly problematic to examine Palestinian historical discourse through a highly relativistic approach in which every claim is considered equal to any other. Even while accepting “the construction theory of history,” which holds that historians actually construct the past, and that conclusions drawn by them do not necessarily match the reality of the past, it is evident that several

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Palestinian spokesmen violate the rules of historical research in that they base their writings on unreliable sources, while ignoring sources and studies that would oppose their preconceived notions.13 Part I Trends in Palestinian Historical Discourse As in other countries, Palestinian historical discourse comprises a number of categories and trends that roughly fall into three major groups: the academic, the popular-nationalist (the PLO), and the Islamist. It is therefore useful to analyze them within their respective contexts and bearing in mind the specific media in the framework of which the historical discourse is taking place. Academic writing This category refers to academic writings in Arabic and English originating in Middle Eastern and Western universities. Among them are Rashid Khalidi’s Palestinian Identity, Walid Khalidi’s From Haven to Conquest, and Elias Shufani’s al-Mujaz fi ta’rikh Filastin al-siyasi [A short political history of Palestine].14 Often, these writers direct their works at Western readers and scholars who are interested in learning about the Palestinian people, their history and struggle. Current Palestinian academic writings in the West rarely if ever resort to crude distortions of history—such as the claim that there has never been a Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount—nor do they deny facts that do not suit the Palestinian narrative.15 The discussion of the origins of the Palestinian people serves as a useful illustration of the distinction between academic and popular trends. The popular-media trend insists that the roots of the Palestinian people were already in place in the Canaanite era. In academic writings a softer version of this claim is presented; rather than referring to “our forefathers the Canaanites,” the argument is that the Palestinians are “the cumulative stock that included all the races that had entered and settled in Palestine.”16 In From Haven to Conquest, Walid Khalidi gives a rather cursory treatment to the myth of Canaanite origins, dealing with it only indirectly. He also does not translate it into a rationalization for the Arab claim to Palestine. Still, the academic approach seeks to determine the earliest roots of Palestinian national consciousness. The Palestinian American historian Rashid Khalidi describes the Jerusalem notables’ opposition to the French consul’s visit in Sidon in 1701 in the context of an earlier Palestinian

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identity.17 By selecting and organizing raw historical information and transforming it into a cohesive national narrative that is evidently legitimate, the master narrative gives national meaning to events that might otherwise be seen as incidental. Historians who do not write with the goal of discovering the earliest roots of the Palestinian people may see the appeal of the Jerusalem notables as xenophobia stemming from religious feelings. Yet, as is further demonstrated here, the current academic discourse, like the other trends in the media narratives, clearly represents a historiography mobilized in favor of the Palestinian cause.

The popular media discourse Alongside the academic discourse, the official and semiofficial media of the PNA also disseminate the Palestinian historical discourse. This discourse largely revolves around events, periods, and movements well known to general audiences, including the early days of Islam, the Crusades, the Zionist movement, and the Nakba. Seeking to strengthen the Palestinian public’s feeling of belonging and to mobilize it for the national struggle, the speakers repeatedly refer to well-known events that serve as the focus of identification and of political myth, rather than attempting to cast light on lesser-known events. Significantly, the PNA media do not aim to achieve a maximum rating for the sake of financial profit, as do similar media in the West. Rather, their principal purpose is to convey a message from the PNO and the PLO to the Palestinian people and abroad. Likewise, they aim to mobilize the public in favor of the PLO. This is also the reason why Palestinian television broadcasts news programs in English, French, and Hebrew every day, even though the number of viewers of programs in the latter two languages is quite negligible. In the printed media representing the PNA, special pages are published on behalf of the PNA’s Commission for Moral Guidance and Information that reflect the “official” Palestinian position on a number of issues. In this light, the historical discourse in the media could in a sense be viewed as a message on behalf of the PNA.18 As demonstrated in this article, the discourse in the PNA media is not based on scholarly studies and does not meet any scientific criteria, even when the speaker holds a PhD in history. It contains abundant rewriting of history, as well as occasional wild conspiracy theories, and relies on Islamic religious sources as absolute historical truth. Nonacademic popular histories that do not adhere to academic rules and criteria belong to this trend as well. Among these are publications by

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Mustafa al-Dabbagh, such as the first volume of the geographic encyclopedia Biladuna Filastin [Our Land Palestine],19 and by Mahmud Fahmi Darwish, namely, Karithat Filastin [The disaster of Palestine].20 The discourse in the PNA media has a nationalist character, while PLO nationalism appropriates Islam as one of its main pillars. The result of the appropriation of Islam by Arab nationalism is that the repertoire of terms and symbols used and the historical narrative of the Palestinian nationalists strikingly resemble that of the Islamists, somewhat like bottling “the same wine in different bottles.” Borrowing symbols from the Islamic movement is simple and easy, since the vast majority of Palestinians are Muslims. At the same time, the Palestinian national movement was shaped by a struggle with Jews, who are neither Arabs nor Muslims, which has certainly also affected the development of the national discourse. In Palestinian nationalism, symbols with a religious origin, such as the al-Aqsa Mosque and the ethos of jihad, take up a central place. Yasser Arafat often described the Palestinian struggle as a religious struggle and mission: We are in a frontier land [ribat], defending the holy places of Christianity and Islam. We are not defending our lives, our blood, or our souls, but we are defending the first direction of prayer [ula al-qiblatayn, Jerusalem, toward which the Muslims prayed before Mecca was chosen], and the Third Haram [thalith al-haramayn, holy sanctuary, after Mecca and Medina], and the place from which the Prophet went up to Heaven and the place of birth of the Messiah [Jesus]. [Quoting from the Hadith:] “They will be in the frontier land until Judgment Day. A group of my nation will remain and will watch over its religion and will defeat its enemies, and its enemies will not be able to harm it, and they will be victorious. Who are they, about whom this is said, from the mouth of Allah’s prophet? In Jerusalem and in the surroundings of Jerusalem, and they will stand on the frontier until Judgment Day. Allah has decreed for us that we will be in the frontier until Judgment Day.”21

Yasser Arafat, who had been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in his youth, was well versed in the Qur’an, and religious idiom was an integral part of his conceptual world and outlook. In the Palestinian arena, the similarity between the religious and national symbols and ways of thinking often bolsters the identity between them. This intersection enables a “smooth transition” from Islamic religious education to activity in the nationalist camp, or from Pan-Arabism to join a fundamentalist Islamic worldview. Religious symbols and images have served the Palestinian national movement at least since the 1920s as instruments for mobilizing the community. An outstanding example is the 1929 conflict over the Western Wall.22 This tendency still continues today; it was not by accident that the

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Palestinian leadership named the fighting that broke out between Israel and the Palestinians in September 2000 the al-Aqsa Intifada. There have been no substantial changes in the historical discourse in the PNA media since the renewed outbreak of the fighting between Israel and the Palestinians in September 2000. Even before this, the historical message was based on the position that the Palestinians were the sole legitimate owners of the country. If Israel was recognized at all, it was only as a fait accompli at the diplomatic-political level, which the shapers of public opinion took care not to mix with Palestinian historical narrative.

Islamic historical discourse Islamic historical discourse borrows terms from Arab nationalist historiography and dresses them up in Islamic garb. In other words, the Hamas movement appropriates nationalism, transforms it into “Islamic nationalism,” and integrates it into an Islamic weltanschauung. The principle is stated clearly in the Hamas Charter: “Nationalism [wataniyya, which is the particularist nationalism of one Arab country—different from Pan-Arabism], in the opinion of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of religious faith.”23 The same article states that the nationalism of Hamas draws its spirit from the word of God, and that it is therefore more exalted because, unlike the nationalism of others, it is not based merely on human and material interests. The Hamas Charter also refers to three concentric circles of political action necessary for the liberation of Palestine—the Palestinian, the Arab, and the Muslim—thus demonstrating the fusion of Palestinian nationalism with (pan-)Arab nationalism (Qawmiyya ‘Arabiyya).24 There are qualitative differences between the approaches of radical Palestinian Islam—which accepts nationalism, appropriates it, and transforms it into “Islamic nationalism”—the radical Islamic movements in neighboring countries, and transnational radical movements like alQaeda, which reject nationalism and are prepared to accept Arabism as a mere linguistic component of Islam.25 These differences are rooted in the bitter memories of radical Islamists in Syria and Egypt during the period when these movements were suppressed by the nationalist regimes of Nasser and Hafiz al-Assad. Moreover, external pressure on Palestinian society in its encounter with Zionism prevented a head-on confrontation between the nationalist and Islamic currents in Palestinian society (at least till Arafat’s death), while encouraging both of them to adopt similar, rather than a different ethos and contrasting historical concepts. Islamic historical discourse devotes considerable space to non-Arab Muslim rulers of the past, unlike the discourse of the PNA, which seldom

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deals at length with non-Arab leaders, with the notable exception of Saladin (Salah al-Din). For example, the Mamluk Sultan Baybars, who defeated the Mongols in 1260, is rarely mentioned by the PNA media, and even when he is, it is mainly by preachers or religious figures on occasions like the Friday sermons.26 The PNA media too rarely refer to non-Arab Muslim warriors and rulers, except as incidental foreign news. One article was published in June 2000 in the periodical Filastin al-Muslima under the headline “Feats of Heroism from Muslim Turkestan—General ‘Uthman Bator.” It tells of a jihad that Bator waged in central Asia against the Chinese and the Russians during and following the Second World War, until he was finally executed by the Chinese and became a shahid (a Muslim martyr). The fact that the Hamas Charter is saturated with historical references to the clash between Islamic civilization and other civilizations does not mean that the Palestinian public is called upon to exchange the ideas of wataniyya and qawmiyya for a pan-Islamic ideal.27 For Hamas, Pan-Islamism fits in with the idea of nationalism. It acts as an additional force to help the Palestinians in their struggle and as the struggle’s ultimate goal, to be realized only in the distant future—not, however, as a substitute for nationalism.28 This “packaging” forms an incentive for the Palestinian public to join the ranks of Hamas, since the movement portrays itself as capable of recruiting powerful non-Arab movements or states to support the Palestinian struggle. In a similar vein, the Islamic discourse presents Israeli military confrontations with Arab parties as an aggression against Islam.29

Qur’anic and religious historiography Among the historical writing, especially in the Islamic trend in the media, there are a number of articles that rely almost entirely on Qur’anic verses and on Muslim tradition to explain historical facts. An example of this type of historiography can be found in a series of articles published from October through December 2001 by Salah al-Khalidi in Filastin al-Muslima on “Qur’anic Sayings about the Jews,” which elaborate on the conflicts between the Jews of Medina and the Prophet. The concept of time in this kind of writing is religious: there is a complete blend of past, present, and future. A religious concept of time does not view history as an infinite chain of causes and effects; rather, it brings together various events that are not connected temporally or causally, the only link between them being divine providence.30 The above-mentioned articles argue that the conduct of the Jews today is exactly like that of the Jews at the time of the Prophet Muhammad, and that their treatment and

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ultimate fate must therefore be similar. In all likelihood, the participants in this type of historical discourse do not view their writings as historiography, but as the inculcation of religious messages, which are by their very nature eternal and unchanging. Part II Central Historical Issues Metahistory Both the PNA media discourse and the Hamas discourse are presented in terms of metahistory—a system of deterministic laws that dictate the course of history, so that single events cannot affect its overall course. Among the most famous examples of metahistory are Marxist historical materialism, Oswald Spengler’s idea of the Decline of the West, Arnold Toynbee’s cycles of the rise and fall of civilizations, and the logic behind the book of Judges in the Old Testament.31 The metahistory of the PNA and Hamas conforms to a pattern—an ineluctable cycle, to be repeated again and again: a people (in this case the Palestinians) living on its land; a foreign invasion and occupation; a struggle (sometimes described as jihad) to expel the occupier; and, finally, liberation. Palestinian metahistory is thus cyclical and should, ideally, not reach a final point. In this sense it is different from the Marxist linear development, which reaches its final stage with Communism prevailing worldwide. Still, like most religious movements, Hamas does foresee the end of history when Islam finally rules the world. Its historical discourse applies this very same metahistory: for example, Article 34 of the Hamas Charter, “Confronting Aggressors throughout History,” discusses, among others, the debacle of the Crusader and Mongol invasions of Palestine. According to this version of metahistory, restoring Palestine to Muslim sovereignty from the invaders’ hands has been performed in the past—and will be in the future—by appealing to Allah and to Islam. Significantly, the article states that “Palestine has been the navel of the earth, the convergence of continents, the object of greed for the greedy, since the dawn of history” [author’s emphasis]. Although Islamic historical discourse deals overwhelmingly with events that took place after the appearance of Islam, the continuum of attacks, specifically since the “dawn of history,” is stressed where Palestine is involved. In other words, Hamas employs the same concepts as does Arab historiography, beginning long before the appearance of Islam. That is, it deviates from the classic Muslim approach, which belittles the period

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before Islam as the Jahiliyya—the age of pagan ignorance—which is wholly negative and insignificant. Also revealing is the claim that al-Zahir Baybars and Qutuz defeated the Tartars at ‘Ayn Jalut and that thereby “the Arab world’ [author’s emphasis] was saved from the Tartar invasion which was destructive of all features of human civilization.”32 Concurrently, religious arguments repeatedly combine with metahistory. The preamble to the Hamas Charter cites Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood—which is also metahistorical in its essence—asserting that “Israel will arise and remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors.” Shaykh Yasin similarly writes that “the Crusaders succeeded in [holding] the land of Palestine for more than a hundred years, and afterwards passed on and disappeared, and this oppressive Zionist entity will disappear with Allah’s help.”33 Filastin alMuslima, in an article analyzing statements in Surat al-Fatiha (the first surat) about the Jews in the first surat, draws the conclusion that since the Jews are called “those upon whom Thy wrath is brought down,” the Jewish entity will soon vanish.34 An additional component of Palestinian metahistory is the claim that Allah brought the Jews to Palestine in order to concentrate them there so that they may be annihilated all at once. This is the Islamic idea of theodicy in response to the question of why Allah allowed Palestine to fall into the hands of the Jews. Thus a Filastin al-Muslima article interpreting Surat al-Hashar’s (no. 59) statements on the Jews explains that since they committed evil a second time, they have been gathered (hashr) in the Holy Land as an initial stage toward their destruction.35 The borders of Palestine Benedict Anderson’s observation on the importance of maps for the purpose of “imagining” the national collective and the reality of national territory is particularly relevant to the Palestinian historical discourse.36 The Palestinian media often show a map of Palestine—always a map of Mandatory Palestine that encompasses both present-day Israel and the PNA territories. These maps are often on display in schools, on logos of Palestinian institutions and companies, in advertisements, on monuments, and in historical programs on Palestinian television.37 The discourse itself also devises imagined historical maps. Programs and historical features in the Palestinian media are regularly devoted to cities and villages in the territory of Mandatory Palestine, and usually deal at length with historical events that occurred in specific places. The sum total of all the places that shape the historical discourse creates in the audience’s mind an imagined historical map that is made up of these

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places and that coincides with the printed map that the people often encounter. Hamas also adopts the map and borders originally shaped by the colonial powers. The map appears on the logo and on each page of Filastin al-Muslima. Conceivably, the emphasis on this map in Hamas publications aims at highlighting the movement’s refusal to compromise on any part of the historical Palestine—unlike the PLO, which is portrayed as compromising with the enemy. Anderson focused on the mapping of Thailand, when “the map anticipated the territorial reality, and not the other way around.”38 In the Palestinian case, however, the map in the historical discourse is primarily intended to preserve a territorial reality that was lost in 1948. This explains why cities that were founded as Jewish cities (Netanya, Tel-Aviv, Nahariya) are not indicated at all on these maps. Conversely, Arab settlements that no longer exist or that have become Jewish cities with different names, such as Faluja and al-Majdal (Ashqelon), do appear on the maps.39 Palestinian nationalism is thus typical of postcolonial nationalist movements in which territory defines the nation.40 The function of these maps is to extrapolate from the reality of Mandatory Palestine to the past, thereby creating a “normative Palestine,” which has supposedly existed for generations. Palestinians do so while seeking to blur the unpleasant fact that there had been no distinction between western Palestine and eastern Palestine (respectively west and east of the Jordan river) over long periods of time, including the early Arab period (638–1099). Both parts of Palestine belonged to the same political entity or province, whereas the separation of Transjordan from the territory of the Palestine Mandate began with the foundation of the Emirate of Transjordan by Britain in 1922.

Conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism A number of references to conspiracy theories are mentioned in the PNA media. Their main function is to convey the historical view that the actions of hidden forces are the very actions that turn the wheels of history. In many cases, the deeds of Jews/Zionists are described as the result of a conspiracy with the imperialist West. The myth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is mentioned repeatedly, even in the weekly bulletin issued by the Authority for Political and National Guidance.41 Occasional references to the Protocols as an authentic document describing Jewish conspiracies have appeared in the press, and more recently in a tenth-grade history textbook.42 Yet, compared with the vast amount of material included in the Palestinian historical discourse, the references to the Protocols are quite limited.

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Echoes of the conspiracy theory are even found in academic literature, such as Shufani’s book, which states that Zionism employed “the method of weaving plots in the domain of politics and diplomacy.”43 In addition to the Protocols, other references to so-called conspiracies in the PNA discourse are drawn from European anti-Semitic literature, such as an article entitled “Nazareth, the City Where the Jews Murdered Her First Palestinian Son.”44 Such references, however, are relatively few. The dearth of anti-Semitic notions in the PNA historical discourse probably derives from the fear of harming the PNA image in world public opinion by uncovering it as an anti-Semitic, rather than a national liberation, movement. Thus, the Palestinian Covenant does not include anti-Semitic statements and even holds that the Jews who lived in Palestine before the “Zionist invasion” were Palestinians.45 The people in charge of the PNA media are aware that Judeophobic statements are closely monitored. Hence, they minimize such rhetoric as far as possible. In Islamic historical discourse, on the other hand, crude anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories take up a much more prominent place. The Hamas Charter deals at length with plots for world domination, citing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as their main source. Filastin al-Muslima for its part explains that the Protocols were composed by “a group of terrorists . . . to swallow up Palestine and set up their imaginary state on its ruins.”46 According to the charter “the enemy” stood behind the French Revolution, the Russian October Revolution, and a number of other revolutions throughout the world. Likewise, it declares that Jewish-controlled international organizations—such as Rotary, Lions Club, and the Free Masons—are nothing but tools for weaving plots against Muslims, such as an “invasion of culture and thought,” thus preparing the way for an imperialist invasion.47 Filastin al-Muslima also reported the translation into Arabic of a book that “reveals” that Zionism stood behind the Kennedy assassination.48 The Judeophobic statements in the Hamas discourse are based mainly on Islamic tradition, but sometimes also on Christian and European antiSemitism. Jews are described as “brothers of the apes, assassins of the prophets.”49 According to a Hamas communiqué, “in this very month, the Sons of Nadir [a Jewish tribe in Medina] schemed against our prophet, blessings and peace upon him. They tried to cast a rock at him when he was their guest and after they had signed treaties with him.”50 The Hamas periodical al-Risala recounts the tale of the 1840 Damascus Blood Libel to its readers in an article entitled “The Crime of Slaughtering Father Thomas and His Servant.”51 Filastin al-Muslima (December 2000) tells the story of Jesus according to the Qur’an and Muslim tradition, and generally blames “the Jews” of heresy, deception, and concocting “a satanic plan to

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murder Jesus.” Since Hamas does not look for support from Western powers, it freely propagates its views, including anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

Christians One of the purposes of Palestinian historical discourse is to highlight the participation of Christians in the Palestinian national struggle. This goal is achieved through the myth of a common Canaanite origin and the presentation of seventh-century Muslim conquest of Palestine as the national liberation of Christian Arabs from the Byzantine yoke (see below). Remarks in this vein have also been uttered by ‘Atallah Hanna, the archimandrite of the Greek Orthodox Church, known for his Palestinian nationalist views: “Our Orthodox church 1400 years ago welcomed the Caliph ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, who entered the Holy City as a conqueror and we today, our church and our Christian Arab people, are awaiting a new Arab conquest of Jerusalem, and its return to Arab sovereignty.”52 Furthermore, Hanna indicates his admiration for Saladin, who defeated the Crusaders in 1187, emphasizing that Christians too served in Saladin’s army. He himself made a pilgrimage to Saladin’s tomb in Damascus.53 However, the number of Christians has dwindled in Palestinian society due to emigration and lower birth rate.54 Stressing the Christian link to the struggle is thus of special significance, not only for obtaining the support of Christian Palestinians, but also so that the Palestinian struggle should not be depicted worldwide as a primarily Islamic fundamentalist struggle, especially after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. In this light, Hanna’s frequent appearances in the Palestinian media in a priest’s garb with a large cross on his chest, speaking passionately in favor of the Palestinian struggle, constitute a message for the world that the struggle is that of the Palestinian people as a whole, rather than being specifically an Islamic struggle. Yasser Arafat also often emphasized the historical role of the Palestinian struggle in defending the holy places of Christianity. He took part in Christian ceremonies and received delegations of Christian clergymen; Palestinian television covered these events at length, thereby promoting Arafat’s image as a benevolent Muslim leader who protects the Christian minority.55 The Hamas historical discourse presents a different picture. Although references to Christians are very few, primarily because they are not the “target audience” of the movement, these sparse references are quite sympathetic. For instance, an article dealing with the 1936 Revolt presented it as having had an Islamic tendency, not a fanatic, anti-Christian character.

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On the contrary, the article argued, the revolt had achieved national unity between Christians and Muslims in the struggle against British imperialism.56 Concurrently, the Hamas Charter proclaims that history proves that only under Islamic sovereignty can Christians live in peace and security.57 Part III On the Roots of the Palestinian People Like most other national movements, that of the Palestinians seeks to demonstrate the deep roots of their national identity by creating a set of national myths.58 Al-Isra’ and al-Mi‘raj: An intense political-religious myth The anniversary of the Isra’ (the Prophet Muhammad’s miraculous nightly journey from Mecca to Jerusalem on his mare al-Buraq) has become a Palestinian national holiday, imbuing Palestinian uniqueness with Islamic connotations.59 To celebrate the occasion, ceremonies are held on the Temple Mount and elsewhere. During Arafat’s presidency, speeches were traditionally made in his name, and he received congratulatory telegrams from Arab leaders, so that a link was established between the early Islamic miracle and present-day Palestinians.60 As expected, this myth also appears in Islamic historical discourse, which often refers to Palestine as the “Land of the Isra’”.61 The Muslim conquest of Palestine in the seventh century: National liberation Contributing to the metahistory that emphasizes Arab continuity in Palestine since the “dawn of history,” the seventh-century conquest by the Caliph ‘Umar is presented not only as an expansion of Muslim territory but also as an ethnic and national liberation of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine from the yoke of Byzantine foreigners. Thus, the announcer of the TV history program Jerusalem is Ours stated: It was one of the aspirations of the nation to remember Bayt al-Maqdis [i.e., Jerusalem], and to expedite its return from Byzantine hands. This was at the time of Caliph ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, who entered Jerusalem peacefully, just as they had entered into Mecca in peace, out of honor for Jerusalem. The entry into Jerusalem symbolized the unity of the nation. The Christians in

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Jerusalem, descendants of the Arab Canaanites, hugged the Muslims who had arrived from the Arabian Peninsula. Sophronius, the Christian patriarch of the city, handed over the keys of al-Quds to the Caliph ‘Umar ibn al-Khatab in 638. It was Sophronius who said, before the arrival of the Arabs in Jerusalem: “Praise to God that he sent our cousins from the south, the Sons of Ishmael, who will liberate us from the Byzantine yoke. ‘Umar gave his brothers in nationhood, the Christian Arabs in Jerusalem, the Covenant which became known as the Covenant of ‘Umar, which gives Christians freedom of worship.”62

This statement supports the general Arab claim that all ancient inhabitants of the Middle East, including the Christians, but excluding the Jews, were Arabs. The Crusaders Numerous scholars have indicated the intense preoccupation of Arab historiography with the Crusades, and with finding parallels between the Crusades and Zionism.63 In PNA historical discourse, the Crusaders usually appear in association with the Jews, who will eventually flee, as did the Crusaders; in this context they are also compared to the British and other colonialist forces. This is a classic case of the historical appraisal of the past and its protagonists in the light of a present-day worldview, thus justifying present struggles through the past.64 Emmanuel Sivan has pointed out that in such contexts the slogan “history repeats itself ” is used again and again in the historical discourse.65 The Palestinian historical discourse emphasizes the difference between the entry of the Muslims into Jerusalem in the seventh century CE and at the time of Saladin, and the Crusader takeover of the city in 1098. The Muslims entered the city without shedding blood, whereas the Crusaders entered the city after a fierce battle and massacred the inhabitants.66 The Palestinian media’s historical discourse with respect to the Crusaders is an obvious example of commemorative density; this means that a period that is central to the collective memory and image of a given group receives disproportionate representation.67 Saladin: A political myth In contemporary Arab discourse on the Crusader period, the figure of Saladin al-Ayyubi looms large in the number of references he receives— large enough to write a comprehensive study on his image in present-day Arab discourse.68 The many clips with nationalist messages broadcast daily by Palestinian television, sometimes for several hours, frequently refer to

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Saladin. In one clip, for example, a singer glorifying the PNA chairman compliments Arafat with the following words: “You are Salah al-Din.”69 Saladin is also the main hero in the television operetta The Outcry of Jerusalem, which is often broadcasted on Palestinian television.70 The Palestinian discourse does not deal intensively with Saladin’s Kurdish origins; indeed, due to a blend of Islamic and nationalist components of the Palestinian identity, this origin does not cause a problem— unlike the discourse in Nasser’s Egypt, which portrayed Saladin as an Arab.71 The historian speaking on a program about Saladin’s family’s origin in Azerbaijan commented: “We are a nation that Islam bound together, and we express our heritage in the language of Islam. There is nothing that distinguishes a Muslim from a Muslim! Or an Arab from his Muslim brother!” He went on to the theme of “purifying the land of Arabism from every invader.”72 The Ottoman Empire The rule of the Ottoman Empire in Palestine is often described longingly. The historian Jarir al-Qudwa, and advisor and relative of Yasser Arafat, said: I see from afar the days when we were under Ottoman Turkish rule. The Ottoman Turks defended us, our land, our soil and our lives. Someone came and whispered something satanic in the ears of the greatest of the Arabs, the Sharif Husayn, Sharif of Mecca, and said to him: We want to establish an independent state for you beyond the control of the Turkish sultan. The Sharif Husayn consented, and the Arab Revolt took place, in partnership with the alliance against the Turks and with the help of the English, in order to set up the Arab state. This was trickery. Since at that time, they were arranging another conspiracy . . . The government of the Ottoman sultans did not agree to give even a hair’s breadth of the soil of Palestine, nor lease it to the Zionists.73

Such statements contradict the conventional approach of Arab nationalist historiography, which views the Ottoman period as a dark age in Arab history. They match the revisionist trend that has emerged in recent years in Arab historiography concerning the Ottoman Empire, viewing it as a worthy model of an Islamic empire and correcting what they see as the distorted perception of the Arab nationalist school. One such example is the changing attitude toward the Arab leaders who were executed by the Ottomans in 1915–16. In the Arab nationalist school, they were considered outstanding martyrs, whereas the Lebanese historian Wajih Kuthrani pictured them as they were viewed by the Ottoman government: as agents of foreign powers.74

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Islamic historiography shares the recent positive view of the Ottoman Empire. In both the Palestinian-nationalist and the Islamic discourse, Sultan ‘Abd al-Hamid II is viewed as an exemplary model of an Islamic ruler by virtue of his firm rejection of Theodor Herzl’s proposals to allow large-scale Jewish settlements in Palestine. His image has been painted in the bright colors of an ideal Islamic ruler, also because of the striking contrast between Young Turks, the army officers who deposed him in 1908, and subsequently Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1922–1938), who abandoned the pan-Islamic line in favor of secular Turkish nationalism.75 Significantly, in recent years, the Palestinian Islamic discourse is inclined to shift the blame for the fall of the caliphate from the 1916 Arab Revolt, a traditional Islamic accusation implicitly directed against Arab nationalism, to various “international plots”—a change that allows for it to refrain from directly attacking Arab nationalism.76 Part IV The Palestinian Struggle Complementing the historical discourse that expounds the deep roots of the Palestinian people in Palestine, the general discourse deals with the continued, heroic Palestinian struggle against Zionism. Each camp, the national and the Islamic, seeks to appropriate the positive aspects and events of the struggle to itself, casting the blame for failures on foreign powers. Resistance to Zionism Rashid Khalidi highlights the popular resistance to Zionism and invests a substantial effort in trying to redeem from oblivion the resistance of illiterate villagers to the Jews.77 The media discourse also emphasizes the resistance of the Palestinian people to Zionism from its inception. Dr. Rafiq al-Natsheh, for example, stated that “the problem of settlements is a political problem. It was a manifestation of Western colonialism against the Arabs in the Middle East. The phenomenon had already begun in the nineteenth century, but our people resisted it from its beginning.”78 The “Great Arab Revolt” of 1936–39 has become an important political myth that embodies the resistance of “the masses” to British imperialism and Zionism. Therefore, in Palestinian historical discourse, various political trends vie with each other for its appropriation. The PNA media glorify the uprising and its participants while implicitly appropriating it for the PLO. Veterans of the PLO depict the revolt as one of the stages in the

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national struggle of the Palestinian people.79 In an exercise in collective amnesia, the media’s historical discourse avoids the negative aspects of the revolt and its consequences (its failure, in fact) in favor of a narrative recounting the development of the Palestinian national movement.80 In fact, the revolt quickly deteriorated into a civil war within the Palestinian camp, claiming thousands of victims. Worse, its failure brought Palestinian society to the crucial test of 1948, wounded and disintegrating.81 A similar amnesia exists in the academic discourse. Elias Shufani describes the “Great Arab Revolt” sympathetically, without mentioning the internecine hostilities within Arab society and their adverse effects throughout the revolt.82 The Islamic current: Appropriation of the Palestinian struggle The main problem facing Hamas’s historical discourse is the fact that as an organization aspiring to Palestinian leadership, it joined the Palestinian struggle at a relatively late stage, in 1988. By then the PLO, Fatah, and other organizations had already been active for more than two decades. In order to make up for the delay, the Hamas Islamic historical discourse highlights the role of shaykhs and other figures allegedly sharing an Islamic worldview in the struggle against Zionism and imperialism. Hamas has thereby appropriated the struggle in favor of individuals and groups presented as Islamic. The historical section in Filastin al-Muslima, for instance, highlighted the First Congress of Religious Scholars, which convened in January 1935 under the leadership of the Mufti Amin al-Husayni, stamping people who sell land to Jews as traitors.83 Likewise, Hamas, which emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood, glorifies the latter’s activity in Mandatory Palestine in order to demonstrate the continuity of the Islamist struggle against Zionism. The Palestinian daily newspaper al-Raya published an article on the occasion of the death of Hajj Zafer al-Shawa, recounting his anti-Zionist activities over many years in the context of the Muslim Brotherhood. Attached to the article was a photograph of al-Shawa with the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna, in the port of Gaza.84 The Islamists exert every effort to appropriate the “Great [1936–39] Revolt.” The Filastin al-Muslima article “The Islamic Dimension of the Great Revolt” presents the uprising as imbued with an Islamic spirit by scrutinizing documents of the period and extracting from them Islamic terms such as jihad, quotations from the Qur’an, and directives for the establishment of courts that would judge “according to the Qur’an and the sunna of the Prophet.” Likewise, the Islamic dimension of the revolt is proven by the fact that one of those who instigated it was the Mufti of Palestine, Haj Amin al-Husayni, in collaboration with his colleagues, the ‘ulama’. It also states

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that “many of the field commanders were known for their Islamist inclinations and their religiosity, for example ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, commander of the al-Jihad al-Muqaddas [Holy Jihad] organization.”85 In another article on the same subject, “The Jihad Organization in Jerusalem in 1936–38,” the author surveys the actions of jihad warriors, focusing on the Mufti’s conduct in particular. He concludes: “The names indicated in the [British] report are a clear sign of the decisive role played by the Islamists in leading the revolt in the Jerusalem area, since the shaykhs and the ‘ulama’ played a prominent leadership role.”86 The effort to connect the Hamas struggle with these earlier struggles was particularly evident when the decision was taken to name the Hamas military arm after Shaykh ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam. Filastin al-Muslima devoted a series of articles to Qasam under the title “Initiator of Jihad in Palestine—Shaykh ‘Izz al-Din al-Qasam.”87 In 2000, Filastin al-Muslima published a series of historical articles under the title “Documentation” (Wathaiqiyat), recounting stories about the disciples and successors of al-Qassam. One of them tells the story of Shaykh Farhan al-Sa‘adi, who replaced al-Qassam as leader of the organization al-Qassam had founded, al-Jihadiyyah, concluding: “And he is the one who kindled the spark of the Great Revolt in Palestine.”88 In a similar vein Hamas is portrayed as continuing the line of faithful Muslims who fought against Zionism in the Hamas Charter, which states that “Hamas is one of the links in the Chain of Jihad in the confrontation with the Zionist invasion. It links up with the setting out of the Martyr Izz a-din al-Qassam and his brothers in the Muslim Brotherhood who fought the Holy War in 1936; it further relates to another link of the Palestinian Jihad and the Jihad and efforts of the Muslim Brothers during the 1948 War, and to the Jihad operations of the Muslim Brothers in 1968 and thereafter.”89 The attitude toward the PLO as reflected in Islamic historical discourse changes according to the state of the PLO-Hamas relations. For instance, in July 2000, Filastin al-Muslima criticized the PLO activities in the 1982 Lebanon war, speaking “of criminal negligence by the PLO leadership and of leaders who took flight, but are now ruling our people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” Conversely, positive references to the role of Fatah and the PLO in the struggle are often attributed to the Palestinian people in general rather than directly to these organizations; a Hamas communiqué, for instance, describes the battle of Karamah, “in which our people broke the legend of the Israeli army.”90 The “southern Syrian” phase: Collective amnesia The historical discourse in the PNA media contains no reference whatsoever to the brief phase when the Palestinian national movement

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maintained that Palestine was actually southern Syria.91 The first Congress of the Muslim-Christian Associations, which convened in Jerusalem toward the end of 1919, representing the whole of the Arab political community in Palestine, proclaimed the following: 1. We consider Palestine as a part of Arab Syria, since it has never been separated from it. 2. In view of the above, our desire is that our region, Southern Syria or Palestine should not be separated from the independent Arab Syrian Government, and our aspiration is to be free from all foreign influence or protection.92 The above-mentioned congress and the southern Syrian phase in Palestinian nationalism do not appear in any historiographic material in the PNA media known to the present author. Also instructive is the account of that congress by the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA): “27 Jan.–10 Feb., 1919: First Palestinian National Congress meeting in Jerusalem sends two memoranda to Versailles rejecting the Balfour Declaration and demanding independence.”93 This is an example of collective amnesia, which prefers to disregard events that do not sustain the narrative that supports the self-definition of the group, especially its distinctiveness from other groups.94 The current Palestinian academic discourse cannot ignore the southern Syrian phase, but attempts to justify it. Shufani supplies the text of the declaration by the 1919 Congress, accompanied by a long, hair-splitting explication that presents it as part of an anti-imperialist struggle that engaged the Arab nation as a whole, and also as part of the struggle against the French in Syria.95 By contrast, the Islamic historiography is not embarrassed to mention the 1919 Congress declaration. In its “From History” section, Filastin al-Muslima indicates that “the First Palestinian Congress, which stated that Palestine is a part of Syria, was held on 27 January 1919.”96

The 1948 war The central theme of the Palestinian historical discourse—of both the PNA and the Islamic organizations—is the claim that the refugee problem is the result of premeditated expulsion. This message is often propounded on programs devoted to the Nakba, especially when approaching Nakba Day, which has become a major event in the Palestinian media.97

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The discourse in the Arab states on the 1948 war is marked by the fact that Arab states hold each other responsible, and that one regime lays the blame for the failure on its predecessor, as a means to delegitimize one’s adversary and legitimize oneself.98 The Palestinians shift responsibility on to the Arab states because of the latter’s military failure against Israel.99 The only exception, which reflects present-day considerations, is the occasional praise for the Iraqi army, thus expressing solidarity with American-occupied Iraq and likening it to Palestine. Presumably, this positive view is also affected by the fact that the Palestinians do not have bitter memories of Iraq as they do of other Arab states that have been involved in the conflict with Israel (like, for instance, Jordan with the Black September events of 1970).100 Heroes and anti-heroes The role of heroes is central in any nationalist discourse and historiography. ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, who fell at the Kastel in the 1948 war, and ‘Izz al-Din al-Qasam, who was killed in 1935, for instance, have become national Palestinian heroes, accepted by both nationalists and Islamists.101 In this regard, it is worthwhile comparing the images of these military leaders with that of Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husayni, whom the PLO and Fatah have cast into oblivion. No Palestinian institution or main street has been named after him, and he is rarely mentioned in the media. A major reason for this “amnesia” is that he was still alive when the two organizations were founded, and he opposed them both. Another reason involves his former collaboration with the Nazis, which harmed the Palestinian standing in Western public opinion. A third factor is his image as the person responsible for the 1948 defeat.102 The Islamic discourse could easily appropriate the Mufti’s image since the PLO had not made him into one of its chief heroes. It rehabilitated Husayni’s image, changing it from that of a failed leader to one of a devout leader who had waged the struggle against Zionism from an Islamic vantage point. According to this Islamic discourse his refusal to compromise and his ties to Hitler are not causes for a blemish.103 Part V Perspectives on the “Other” Alongside the construction, or rather reconstruction, of Palestinian history, the Palestinian historical discourse contends with Zionist arguments for the right to the disputed territory. Consequently, the Palestinians have

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felt the need to build a “counterhistory” of the Jewish people, which would fit in with the principal Palestinian narrative. The Hebrews of ancient times The Arab national movements “arabize” all the ancient peoples that once inhabited the Middle East. The Palestinian national movement is exceptional in that it is forced to contend with a competing national movement, which also claims continuity with an ancient people—the Hebrews. Denial of any Jewish presence in the Land in antiquity is not possible since it contradicts the Qur’an, which repeatedly mentions a number of biblical events. For example, Sulayman (King Solomon) is mentioned no less than seventeen times in the Qur’an. Thus, in order to contend with, and refute, Zionist claims of a Jewish historical right to the Land, the Palestinian historical discourse uses the following arguments: 1. The ancient Hebrews were an Arab tribe, like all the inhabitants of the ancient East. Contemporary Jews are descendants of groups that converted to Judaism in various countries over the course of history—the Ashkenazi Jews, for instance, are descendants of the Khazars.104 2. The Jews lived in the Land for only a short period, and their presence was ephemeral and transitory.105 3. The true biblical prophets were Muslims. This argument is set forth because the existence of the Jewish prophets, who are mentioned repeatedly in the Qur’an, could not be denied. In order to provide grounds for this interpretation, broad use was made of the following Qur’anic verse: “Abraham was neither Jew nor Christian. He was an upright man [hanif ], one who had surrendered himself to Allah. He was no idolator” (Sura 3, Al ‘Imran, v. 70). The original meaning of the word “Muslim” is “one who has surrendered himself to Allah,” as shown in Dawood’s translation, and not necessarily someone belonging to the Islamic religion, as is commonly understood today. The widely accepted interpretation of the verse could be that it refers to Ibrahim as a full-fledged Muslim in the modern sense. The verse hence constitutes a “divine certificate,” proving the absence of a connection between these prophets and Judaism.106 Occasionally, the complementary statement to this verse is that the Jews as a whole are “murderers of prophets and apostles.”107 Therefore, there is a distinction between the prophets of the Jewish Scriptures and Jesus, who were God’s messengers, and the Jews, who were rebellious and defiant. 4. The prophets mentioned in the Bible are not the same people, and are hence presented differently from the prophets in the Qur’an.

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Dr. Hasan Khater, founder of the Encyclopedia of Jerusalem, said on Palestinian television that the Bible describes Solomon as a sinner,108 but that this could not be, since Sulayman in the Qur’an was a prophet.109 As further proof, writers mentioned the claim by the Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi that the stories in the Jewish Scriptures and the New Testament took place in Arabia.110 5. “Biblical criticism,” with the Qur’an as reflecting the Muslim viewpoint: According to Muslim conventions, the biblical books are of divine origin but were distorted and twisted by the Jews.111 Consequently, there have been several attempts to examine the Scriptures in light of the criticism from a Qur’anic viewpoint, and to “separate the wheat from the chaff ”; that is, to identify the falsified passages in the Bible. Thus biblical events that do not have a parallel in the Qur’an and Moslem theology are rejected as being unfounded.112 A series of articles were published in Filastin al-Muslima in 1997-98, under the title “Research into the Book of Genesis.” The author comments on certain passages in the Scriptures, especially the mythical passages, that cannot be true according to his theological outlook, and are therefore certainly counterfeit. One illustration thereof would be the passage in Genesis where God regrets having created man (God, of course, does not make mistakes and does not have regrets).113

The Second World War When the Palestinian media treat the Second World War and the Holocaust, several themes stand out. Sometimes they contradict each other, but taken as a whole, they are meant to present the Zionist movement in a negative light.114 A number of statements in the PNA media constitute clear-cut “Holocaust denial.” Among the most blatant is the historian Issam Sisalam’s statement that “here began the false claims that Jews were murdered here and there, and the Holocaust, and of course—it’s all lies and groundless claims. No Chelmno, no Dachau, no Auschwitz. Those are places for disinfection.”115 The fact that only a relatively small number of statements in this vein have been published apparently stems from the sharp responses to their publication in Israel and abroad. Most of the references to the Holocaust and Nazism in Palestinian historical discourse relate to the equation between Nazi crimes and Israel’s actions, which implicitly diminishes the full scale of the Holocaust. One among the many examples is this remark by a member of the Palestinian

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parliament, Bishara Dawud: “What the Israelis did to us is worse than what the Nazis did [to the Jews];”116 or, “Those who suffered from the Nazis inherited their methods.”117 The description of Israeli deeds as “Nazi” is also commonplace in the Islamic discourse. Apparently, this is because the term “Nazi” has come to be used as a generalized pejorative term. Indeed, numerous statements compare Zionist ideology to Nazism.118 While accusing Israel of Nazi conduct, and occasionally charging the Zionists with collaboration with the Nazis, the Palestinian spokesmen are aware of the damage done to the Palestinian cause by Husayni’s links with the Nazis. They have tried to deal with the matter by claiming falsification of evidence against him or by offering justifications. However, for the most part, they demonstratively avoid the issue.119 ‘Adli Sadik denied in al-Hayat al-Jadida that Husayni was a supporter of the Nazis or that he even collaborated with them. Rather, Sadik accused Zionism of manipulating his story in the same way it had done with the story of the events that led to the 2000 “al-Aqsa intifada” and resorted to armed struggle. “To this day Zionism is fond of conspiracy and fabricating facts,” he concluded. PA TV acknowledged Husayni’s activities in Germany, but claimed that Nazi massacres were not yet publicly known at the time.120 By contrast, Islamic historical discourse, which usually does not mind world public opinion, takes a clear stance denying the Holocaust. For example, Filastin al-Muslima, July 2000, reports on “an American who scientifically refuted the false claim of the Jews about Nazi gas chambers,” based on an American pamphlet denying the Holocaust , translated into Arabic in Cairo.121 Concurrently, the Hamas Charter describes the Jews as “Nazis,” while claiming that they were responsible for the Second World War and even profited from it.122 In general, academic Palestinian historical discourse does not deny the Holocaust, but there is an attempt to describe its “instrumental” aspects, especially when certain aspects of cooperation between Zionism and Nazism are emphasized. Walid Khalidi quotes Jon and David Kimche’s description of contacts in the 1930s between Nazi officials and emissaries from the Zionist movements regarding the emigration of Jews from Germany. The article states: “Hitler himself intervened and clearly ordered that encouragement be given to Jewish mass migration to Palestine.”123 Hence, the messages of both Khalidi and Mahmud Abbas, the chairman-tobe of PNA, is that Zionism, Nazism, and the European support of Zionism have a common root, namely, the European desire to be rid of the Jews.124 Apparently, this claim is meant to solve the problem deriving from the portrayal of Zionism as part of European colonialism; indeed, no European power has supported Zionism in the way that France, for example, promoted French settlement in Algeria. The idea of the European

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desire to be rid of the Jews solves this problem by presenting Europe, especially Nazi Germany, as backing the Zionist endeavor. In al-Hayat alJadida, the words were phrased sharply and simply: “Balfour is ‘Hitler with colonies’ and Hitler is ‘Balfour without colonies.’”125 Thus, the Palestinian historical discourse takes the Zionist argument that Zionism is justified because of the persecution of the Jews in Europe, and turns it against Zionism, claiming that the Palestinians too are “victims of European history”126—that is, the persecution of the Jews in Europe indirectly caused the Palestinian tragedy. Elias Shufani also employs the method of the “useful past” when dealing with the events of the war. Shufani claims that the Zionists foiled the settlement of Central European Jews in Western countries, arguing that it was “clear that the Zionist movement, and the American administration with it, were not so interested in saving the Jews of Europe, as they were in saving the Zionist project and exploiting the tragedy of the European Jews for this purpose.”127 It is indeed significant that nowhere in the many pages in which he discusses the Jews, Zionism, and Nazism does Shufani point out that the Jews of Europe were exterminated, nor does he use the terms “Holocaust” or “extermination.” Rather, throughout the discussion, he uses a number of ambiguous terms, such as “tragedy,” “the danger of Nazism,” and “distress.”128 Conclusion Mapping the Palestinian historical discourse and analyzing its meaning uncovers three major trends: the historical discourse in the media associated with the Palestinian authority and the PLO; the historical discourse in the media associated with the Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist movements; and the discourse referred to as “academic,” based on the works of academics of Palestinian origin, mainly Palestinians who emigrated to the United States. There is a close similarity between the historical discourse in the media of Hamas and of the PLO, particularly in the identical nature of their “metahistory.” That is, the general understanding in both discourses is that some kind of cosmic link (religious or otherwise) exists between Palestine and Palestinians, and that a set of historical laws shapes the past, present, and future historical development in Palestine. Consequently, Palestine is fated to be liberated from “usurpers and bandits” who invaded it through the agency of its sole, “true,” “legitimate inhabitants”— the Palestinians. The attitudes of nationalists and Islamists regarding all significant events throughout history are identical: they both accept, though with varying degrees of endorsement, the myth of a Canaanite origin; they both view seventh-century Muslim conquest as liberation, the Crusaders as evil

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conquerors, and Saladin as a heroic liberator; both express longing for the Ottoman imperial age; and both are attached to the religious world of symbols and myths. The resemblance between their narratives is considerable: each attempts to appropriate the leading role in the Palestinian struggle as a way of gaining legitimacy. The differences between the trends are mainly reflected in the greater emphasis on the religious dimension in the Islamic discourse. This sometimes blurs the nationalistic discourse since Hamas appropriates a more Islamic coloring for itself, at the expense of non-Islamic elements. Nevertheless, Hamas refrains unreservedly from attacks against nonIslamic nationalism. The difference is also evident in the Islamic effort to present historical figures who led the Palestinian struggle against Zionism in the past as close to an Islamic fundamentalist ideology. Islamic discourse puts greater emphasis on the struggle in Palestine as part of a universal Islamic struggle. However, this too is viewed as a struggle that fits in with an Arab and Palestinian nationalism that went through a process of appropriation—namely, through Islamization—rather than as a substitute for it. Islamic discourse is unaffected by considerations for its image in world public opinion when it relates to such sensitive matters as anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. Participants in the academic discourse, on the other hand, refrain from crude distortions, such as denying the existence of a Jewish Temple, which are more commonly found in the historical discourse of the PNA media. Academic discourse is also mobilized for advocating the Palestinian cause and denying the legitimacy of the Jewish state.129 The Islamic discourse is a long way from meeting the criteria of common academic historiography. Many articles on historical topics are based solely on the Qur’an and Muslim traditions; others frequently turn to Holocaust denial. Academic discourse, on the other hand, is based on history textbooks that use conventional sources to build a national narrative. The writers who identify themselves as “the voice of the nation” channel voices from the past into the present and into shaping a Palestinian identity.130 Throughout its history the Palestinian national movement has been forced to contend with the Zionist movement, which is equipped with an ancient historical cargo. The Zionist movement did not need to invent a history for itself from scratch, as it already had one. Therefore, it was satisfied with reshaping and reorganizing the age-old Jewish history into a narrative that places the emphasis on the historical narrative of its independence, freedom, and sovereignty.131 This explains both the Palestinian need to create a picture of a continuous Palestinian history, while negating similar Zionist claims, and the ongoing battle between the national movements for “control of the past.”

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Most national movements invented a splendid past for themselves. For the most part, whenever such an imaginary past was examined with a critical eye and with intent to revise it, this was done only at a stage when the nation had already achieved most of its national goals. On the Israeli side, a mobilized historiography was commonplace in the past, too. Israeli politicians and popular discourse were slow to acknowledge Palestinian nationalism. Yet, Israeli academic discourse played a pioneering role in advancing a more balanced and complex view of the evolution of Palestinian nationalism. Palestinian historical discourse includes a “negative image” of several Zionist myths that were prevalent in the past and still survive among certain groups, such as Gush Emunim. While these myths used to deny the existence of the Palestinian people, the Palestinians still insist that there is no such thing as a Jewish people. As the Palestinians are even now fighting to achieve their national goals, the mobilization of history in the service of nationalism remains a mainstream phenomenon and will probably do so for some time to come. * My thanks to Prof. Avraham Sela for his very great help with and contribution to this study. Notes 1. Stuart Hall, ed., Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage, 1997), p. 44. 2. The frequent broadcasting of programs on history is probably also connected with the low production cost of programs hosting guests in the studio. 3. Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 3. 4. Anita Shapira, “Hirbet Hizah: Between Remembrance and Forgetting,” Jewish Social Studies 7, no. 1 (2000): 1. 5. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, p. 4. For a discussion of this issue, see Introduction and Meir Litvak’s chapter (4) in this book. 6. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, p. 5. 7. Interview with Shaykh Ibrahim Sarsur, PA-TV, The Open Day, April 30, 1999. 8. For the Palestinian narrative of the Nakba, see the chapters by Esther Webman and Michael Milshtein in this book. 9. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, p. 6. 10. The usage of the word “myth” in this work does not necessarily refer to a falsehood. One of the definitions of the concept in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary is: “A popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone; especially one embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of society.” 11. Gustave von Grunebaum, “Self-Image and Approach to History,” in Historians of the Middle East, ed. Bernard Lewis and P. M. Holt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 457–83.

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12. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London and New York: Verso, 1991), pp. 114–15. 13. Elazar Weinryb, Historical Thought (A): Chapters in the Philosophy of History (Tel Aviv: Open University, 1987, in Hebrew), p. 353. 14. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of a Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); Walid Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem until 1948 (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1971); Elias Shufani, al-Mujaz fi ta’rikh Filastin al-siyasi, mundhu fajr al-ta’rikh hata Sana 1948 (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya, 1998). 15. In Palestinian Identity (see p. 15), Rashid Khalidi recognizes that the name of the Arab village “Silwan” is apparently rooted in the biblical Spring of Shiloah. 16. Walid Khalidi, From Haven, introduction, p. 28. For a detailed discussion of the Canaanite past, see Litvak’s chapter 4 in this book. 17. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, pp. 29–30. 18. Al-Hayat al-Jadida, 26 February 2001. 19. Mustafa al-Dabbagh, Biladuna Filastin, vol. 1 (Beirut: Dar al-Tali‘a wal-Nashr, 1965). 20. Mahmud Fahmi Darwish, Karithat Filastin (Baghdad: Jam‘iyyat Inqadh Filastin, 1949; repr., Bethlehem: Markaz al-Turath al-Sha‘bi, 1998). 21. PNA TV, 21 February 2002, in a speech before a delegation that had come “to renew the loyalty oath to him” (bay‘a, which is also taken from Islamic tradition). 22. Nels Johnson, Islam and the Politics of Meaning in Palestinian Nationalism (London, Kegan Paul International, 1982). Under Muslim rule, Jews suffered various restrictions on worship at the Western Wall, for instance on sounding the ritual shofar (horn). In August 1929 a group of right-wing Beitar activists blew a shofar in protest. The Palestinian leader Hajj Amin al-Husayni used the incident to claim that the Jews were threatening al-Aqsa Mosque; the incident served as a trigger for the 1929 anti-Jewish pogrom. 23. Hamas Charter, Article 12. 24. Hamas Charter, Article 14. 25. Emmanuel Sivan, “Arab Nationalism in the Age of the Islamic Resurgence,” in Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East, ed. Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). 26. See Friday sermon on PA TV, 18 August 2000. 27. Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence and Coexistence (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 45. 28. Hamas Charter, Article 14. For an analysis of Hamas’s grappling with nationalism and Pan-Islamism, see Meir Litvak, “Palestinian Nationalism and Islam: The Case of Hamas,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 2, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 500–522. 29. Communiqué no. 30 of Hamas, in Shaul Mish‘al and Reuben Aharoni, Speaking Stones: Communiqués from the Intifada Underground (Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibutz Ha-Meuchad, 1989, Hebrew), p. 244. 30. Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 24. 31. Weinryb, Historical Thought, chapter 5, pp. 156–83.

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32. Hamas Charter, Article 35. 33. “Nida' al-shaykh Ahmad Yasin mu'assis Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Hamas) bi-munasabat al-dhikra al-thaniya li-intifadat al-Aqsa al-mubaraka,” Filastin al-Muslima, October 2002. 34. Salah al-Khalidi, “Hadith Surat al-Fatiha ‘an al-Yahud,” Filastin al-Muslima , February 2001; Idem, “Hadith al-Quran ‘an al-Yahud,” Filastin al-Muslima , January 2001. 35. Salah al-Khalidi, "Hadith Surat al-Hashr `an al-Yahud," pt. 1Filastin alMuslima, October 2002, based on Surat “The Night Journey,” passage no. 4, which says “Twice You Shall Commit Evil in the Land.” All translations are taken from N. J. Dawood, The Koran (Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1956). The same statement also appeared in the foreword of Mustafa al-Dabbagh’s Biladuna Filastin , but was omitted from the reprint published in Kafr Qara‘ in Israel. (Dar al-Huda, 1991; 2001). 36. Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 170–78. 37. For example, on the program The Arabness of Palestine, broadcast on 11 March 2003, the map was displayed when the anchorperson remarked that “Palestine grew as [an] Arab [country] more than 5,000 years ago.” 38. Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 171–72. 39. Broadcast on 1 July 2003, and subsequently on numerous occasions. 40. Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 114–15. 41. “Spiritual and Moral Preparation of the Occupation Army,” in al-Tawjih (Guidance), a weekly bulletin published on behalf of the Authority for Political and National Guidance, al-Hayat al-Jadida, 25 January 2001. 42. Al-Hayat al-Jadida, 18 February 2001; al-Quds, 10 July 2001; PA TV, 10 September 2000; Sa‘id al-Bishawi et al. Ta'rikh al-‘alam al-hadith wal-mu‘asir lil-saff al-‘ashir [History of modern and contemporary world] (Ramallah: Wizarat al-Tarbiyya wal-Ta‘lim 2004), p. 63. The latter claims that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a secret document adopted by the first Zionist Congress in 1897. 43. Shufani, al-Mujaz, p. 310. 44. “Nazareth, the City Where the Jews Murdered Her First Palestinian Son,” Al-Hayat al-Jadida, 24 January 2000. 45. Palestinian National Covenant, Article 6. 46. Hamas Charter, Article 32; Salah Rashid, “al-Harb ‘ala `faris bila jawad: ta'kid lil-‘unsuriyya al-sayhuniyya,” Filastin al-Muslima, December 2002. 47. Hamas Charter, articles 22 and 17. 48. Anon, “Awraq Thaqafiyya,” Filastin al-Muslima, July 2002. 49. Communiqué no. 1 of the Hamas, cited in Mish‘al and Aharoni, Speaking Stones, p. 201. 50. Communiqué no. 31 of the Hamas, cited in Mish‘al and Aharoni, Speaking Stones, p. 246. 51. “The Crime of Slaughtering Father Thomas and His Servant,” Al-Risala, 7 January 1999. 52. PA TV, 11 April 2001. 53. “We in the Orthodox Church view him as a great commander and as the liberator of our holy places. He liberated our Orthodox holy places for us from

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54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83.

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Crusader occupation . . . He restored to us, the Arab Christians, our holy places and liberated them from foreign hands . . . He is the one who liberated Jerusalem in the Battle of Hittin.” PA TV, 15 April 2001. Danny Rubinstein, “The Empty Half of the Village,” Haaretz, 21 March 2000. Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam (London and Toronto: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 1985), pp. 78–79. Muhsin Salih, “al-Bu‘d al-Islami lil-thawra al-kubra fi Filastin, 1936–1939,” Filastin al-Muslima, January 2000. Hamas Charter, Article 31. Anthony Smith, “National Identity and Myths of Ethnic Descent,” in Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 60. Yifrah Zilberman, The Myth of the Canaanite Origin of Palestinian Society (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for the Study of Israel, 1993), p. 8. These events are also highlighted in the Palestinian media. See, for example, al-Quds, 25 September 2003. Hamas Charter, Article 14, contains a quotation from a verse of al-Isra’. Jerusalem is Ours, PA TV, 20 March 2003. Bernard Lewis, History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 82–87. Von Grunebaum, “Self-Image and Approach to History.” Emanuel Sivan, Mythes politiques Arabes (Paris: Fayard, 1995), pp. 34–36. “Salah al-Din even freed the Crusader elders and orphans without a ransom, and even gave them money to ease their way back to their countries;” PA TV, 3 May 1999; and the program Culture Club, aired on 1 February 1999. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, p. 8. Sivan, Mythes, pp. 23–24, 42–50. 4 April 2002. The Outcry of Jerusalem, 12 October 2001, 19 October 2001, 22 April 2002, among others. See for instance the Egyptian film al-Nasir Salah al-Din (1963), directed by Youssef Chahine, Cairo: Asya films>and Sivan, Mythes, pp. 41–44. The program Story of a Street, 3 November 2002, presented by ‘Isam Sisalam, who is “house historian” for Palestinian television. PA TV, 29 December 2002. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, p. 64. Filastin al-Muslima, February 2000 and ‘Imad al-Din Khalil, “al-Khandaq aladhi hafarahu kitab Allah,” September 2001. Ibid. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, pp. 92–100. PA TV, 4 May 2000. PA TV, 14 February 2000 and 8 May 2002. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, p. 9. Yehoshua Porath, The Palestinian Arab National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion, vol. 2, 1929–1939 (London: Frank Cass, 1977), pp. 249–55, 302. Shufani, al-Mujaz, pp. 455–67. Filastin al-Muslima, February 2003.

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84. Al-Raya, 3 April 2002. See also “Muqarrarat mu'tamaray al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin al-filastiniyyin 1946–1947,” Filastin al-Muslima , October 2000. 85. Muhsin Salih, “al-Bu‘d al-Islami lil-thawra al-kubra fi Filastin, 1936–1939,” Filastin al-Muslima, January 2000. 86. Muhsin Salih, “al-Tanzim al-jihadi fi al-Quds (1936–1938),” Filastin al-Muslima, August 2000. 87. Ibrahim al-‘Ali, “al-Shaykh ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam – mufajjir al-jihad fi Filastin,” Filastin al-Muslima, July, August, and September 2000, describing in detail Shaykh ‘Izz al-Din al-Qasam’s origins in northern Syria and his struggle against the French. 88. Muhsin Salih, “Watha'iqiyyat,” Filastin al-Muslima, July–November 2000. 89. Hamas Charter, Part One, Article 7 (adapted from the Raphael Israeli trans.). 90. Communiqué no. 9 of Hamas, in Mish‘al and Aharoni, Speaking Stones, p. 216. 91. Yehoshua Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918–1929 (London: Frank Cass, 1974), pp. 70–85. 92. Ibid., pp. 81–82. 93. http://www.passia.org/index_pfacts.htm (as of September 2006). 94. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, p. 9. 95. Shufani, al-Mujaz, p. 377. 96. Anon, “Min al-ta'rikh,” Filastin al-Muslima, February 2003. 97. Since this question has been analyzed thoroughly by Esther Webman and Michael Milshtein in this book, it will not be discussed here. 98. Avraham Sela, “Arab Historiography of the 1948 War: The Quest for Legitimacy,” in New Perspectives on Israeli History, ed. Lawrence Silverstein (New York: New York University Press, 1991), pp. 124–46. 99. “From the Villages that Were Destroyed—Qaqun,” al-Quds, 30 June 1999; Nasir Abu Hajla, “Bush Wants Us to Vote for Sharon,” al-Hayat al-Jadida, 25 September 2003; Hamas Communiqué no. 32 of the Hamas, in Mish‘al and Aharoni, Speaking Stones, p. 251; Shufani, al-Mujaz, p. 530. 100. Yasin al-Sa‘adi, “Ayyuha al-‘Iraqiyun,” al-Quds, 14 August 2003. 101. See al-Hayat al-Jadida, 10 January 2002, marking the date of ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni’s return to Jerusalem; al-Ayyam, 2 March 2002; and Anon, “Ma‘rakat al-qastal,” Filastin al-Muslima, May 2003. In 2003, PA TV produced and broadcasted a dramatized series on his struggle. 102. Zvi Elpeleg, The Grand Mufti: Haj Amin al-Hussaini, Founder of the Palestinian National Movement (London: Frank Cass, 1993), pp. 162–65. 103. See the articles glorifying Husayni’s role in Filastin al-Muslima, January, March, August 2000. 104. PA TV, 14 August 1998, 14 May 1999, and 2 August 2004. Such views are common among all Palestinian factions and throughout the Arab world. See Anwar Chejne, “The Use of History by Modern Arab Writers,” Middle East Journal 14, no. 4 (Autumn 1960): 395; Joshua Teitelbaum, “The Palestine Liberation Organization,” Middle East Contemporary Survey (1990): 212; “A Comprehensive Interview with the Hamas Leadership,” Filastin al-Muslima, April 1990; and Anon, “al-‘Ibriyya lughat Kan‘an,” al-Hadaf, 30 May 1993. These theories are scientifically groundless, and researchers of

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105.

106. 107. 108. 109.

110.

111. 112. 113. 114.

115. 116. 117. 118.

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eastern European Jews hold that the bulk of the Jews in eastern Europe migrated there from Germany in the Middle Ages, see Kevin Allen Brook, The Jews of Khazaria (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1999), pp. 281–83. On 15 May 2000, a program entitled Jerusalem, 3,000 Years of Civilization was broadcast on PA TV, stating that “later, a Hebrew tribe settled in Palestine,” and that there was no evidence that David and Solomon had constructed anything in the area of the Temple Mount, or that the Second Temple had even existed. The claim that Jewish settlement in the Land was short lived appeared as early as the 1920s. See Porath, Emergence, pp. 54–55. PA TV, 14 May 1999 and 9 May 2001. PA TV, 26 August 2001 and 30 October 2000. He was apparently referring to verses in the Book of Kings I, chap. 11. PA TV, 25 November 2002: “He who built the Temple, according to them, was Sulayman [Solomon], peace be upon him. Was Sulayman a prophet or king in the Jewish religion? Sulayman was a king, and a bad king, even worse than Dawud [David], according to them. We, of course, cleanse the prophets of these empty words, and we say that they were all prophets of Allah . . . But they say this and believe faithfully that Sulayman was a bad king . . . And if Sulayman was a bad king and not a prophet, and he was the one who built the Temple, then we ask you, if Sulayman was a bad king and not a prophet, from where is drawn [the religious status] of the Temple that Sulayman built?” Conventional approaches in Islam view the prophets as ma‘asumun, immune from sin or error, unlike the biblical approach, which details the sins of the various prophets. Book reviews in al-Ayyam, 26 February 2000. For Salibi’s claims, which have been universally rejected by the international scientific community, see Kamal Salibi, The Bible Came from Arabia (London: Jonathan Cape, 1985); Kamal Salibi, Secrets of the Bible People (Brooklyn: Interlink Books, 1988); and Kamal Salibi, The Historicity of Biblical Israel (London: NABU Publications, 1998). According to the Qur’an, the Torah was given by Allah. See for example, Sura 3 (al-‘Imran), v. 3. Al-Ayyam, 19 August 1999. Salah al-Khalidi, “Dirasat fi safar al-takwin,” pts. 1–7 Filastin al-Muslima, October 1997-April April 1998. For a comprehensive discussion of this issue, see Meir Litvak and Esther Webman, “Perceptions of the Holocaust in Palestinian Public Discourse,” Israel Studies 8, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 123–40; and Meir Litvak and Esther Webman, “The Representation of the Holocaust in the Arab World,” Journal of Israeli History: Special Issue, After Eichmann: Collective Memory and the Holocaust since 1961 23, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 100–115. PA TV, 29 November 2000. PA TV, 4 February 2000. Ahmad Dahbur, PA TV, 23 March 2001. Al-Ayyam, 2 August 1999: “At the beginning of his lecture Dr. Sharif Kan‘ana made a comparison between Nazism and Zionism, and clarified the similarities between the ways of thinking of each of the movements.”

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119. For these false allegations against Zionism, see Litvak and Webman, “Perceptions of the Holocaust,” pp. 126–28. On Husayni’s collaboration with the Nazis, see Elpeleg, Grand Mufti, pp. 63–78; and his own memoirs, Mudhakirat al-hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, ed. Abd al-Karim al-‘Umar (Damascus: al-Ahali lil-tiba‘a wa-l-nashar wal-tawzi‘, 1999), pp. 93–229. 120. Al-Hayat al-Jadida, 8 August 2003—the article appeared following the publication of new British documents on Husayni; Nakba Day program, PA TV, 14 May 2000; al-Quds, 28 July 2003, accused the British of fabricating evidence against Husayni. 121. Also al-Risala, 21 August 2003; Reuven Paz, “Palestinian Holocaust Denial,” Washington Institute: Policy Watch, no. 255, 21 April 2000. 122. Hamas Charter, articles 20 and 22. 123. Jon and David Kimche, “Eichmann’s Selection of Pioneers,” in Walid Khalidi, ed., From Haven, pp. 433–44. 124. ‘Abbas completed a doctoral dissertation in Moscow in 1981 and published it in 1984 under the title al-Wajh al-akhar: al-‘alaqat al-siriyya bayn al-naziyya wal-sahyuniyya (Amman: Dar ibn Rushd, 1984). Based on fabricated evidence, his thesis accused the Zionist movement of close collaboration with the Nazis, including the extermination of the Jews. 125. al-Hayat al-Jadida, 12 June 1998. 126. From the announcement of the Palestinian delegate to the Vatican on the occasion of “the Pope’s visit to Palestine,” PA TV, 14 March 2000. 127. Shufani, al-Mujaz, pp. 486–88. 128. Ibid., pp. 484–91. At the beginning of the discussion, Shufani indicates (correctly) that at a certain stage German policy encouraged Jewish emigration, but he does not indicate the change of policy or the implementation of “the Final Solution” from June 1941 onwards. 129. Shufani, al-Mujaz, p. 311. 130. This is in accord with the useful distinction, proposed by Israel Gershoni, between “the professional historian” and “the national historian.” Israel Gershoni, “Imagining and Reimagining the Past: The Use of History by Egyptian Nationalist Writers, 1919–1952,” History & Memory 4, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 1992): 6–7. 131. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots.

6

Palestinian Women and Collective Memory Hanita Brand

Introduction When one deals with a complex topic such as the collective memory of Palestinian women, a number of questions regarding the very notion of collective memory immediately come to mind. First and foremost is the question whether Palestinian women are allowed an equal share in Palestinian collective memory. Or, in other words, how inclusive, indeed, how collective is collective memory? Assuming one can recognize the various layers and strata of collective memory, one should ask how women conceive their own collective story inside the general one. Do disenfranchised groups develop their own versions of collective memory, different from the general narrative commonly accepted by the majority? Do they remember a different past? Do they envision themselves as central, viable participants in it, or as marginal to it? Finally, where and when does the act of memorizing take place, particularly in the case of Palestinian women? This chapter will analyze the various implications of these questions in the light of the vast body of data, research material, and documents at hand. In most cases, women uphold the general Palestinian collective memory, most of which can be summarized as follows: life in Palestine before the creation of the State of Israel is described in positive, even idyllic, terms, and life afterward as grim; Israel and the West are seen as the enemy; the emergence of armed organizations, generally referred to as “the revolution,” is described in very positive terms, mostly as offering solutions to

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economic and social problems, and at times even contributing to gender liberation. Women’s voices in this official narrative are not immediately apparent; nor can they be communicated easily. In order to discover the distinctive voices of women, one has to look not only at the basic narrative but also at nuances of style and emphasis, and at deviations from the general narrative patterns, all of which are expressive of an underlying female awareness. Furthermore, once the first, official version has been put forward, one must keep asking for more detailed answers. These two crucial features—that Palestinian women participate only marginally in the general, dominant collective memory, and that they gradually offer their own deviations or versions of collective memory—are indications that the prevalent Palestinian collective memory remains mostly male in nature and perception. It does not leave space for women’s unique contributions, nor does it give voice to their story. The discussion that ensues will clarify this problem, taking into consideration the different phases in the recent history of Palestinian women’s collective memory. It is important to acknowledge that the topic of women’s collective memory cannot be covered in its entirety in one chapter. Accordingly, this chapter will only deal with instances where Palestinian women present their own versions of collective memory, as distinct from the general male narrative. The picture that emerges will thus necessarily be a partial one. The research presented in the current chapter does, however, cover all the social strata and major geographic localities of Palestinian women: the interviewees are rich and poor, intellectual and illiterate, urban and peasant, modern and conservative. Among them are widely known, alongside unknown, women; women occupying leadership positions, besides rank-and-file women. The interviews, testimonies, and other materials were collected in various places—villages, towns, cities, and camps—from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to other countries in the Middle East, as well as in more distant diasporas, such as North America. One of the most noticeable elements in the women’s collective memory is that its focus tends to shift away from long-range accounts and controversies, and closer to the present. In the eyes of these women, Palestinian history can be as recent as the latest intifada, rather than the struggle against the Crusaders in Palestine. Indeed, the intifada years signify a radical change in the women’s collective memory, which is marked by a more vibrant female voice, and by more pronounced deviations from the general narrative. Another distinctive trait of Palestinian women’s narrative is their tendency to blend the official version of collective memory with real recollections— either their own or, in the case of younger women, those of other women whom they know or have heard about. This trend is extended to the works

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of women poets, who write about what is happening around them rather than about what is written in history books. Hashim Salih Mana‘, who researched national themes in Palestinian women’s poetry, wrote that “the problem with the Palestinian woman [poet] is that she concentrates on Palestine the Geography, rather than on Palestine the History, the Culture and the Personality.”1 However, the most crucial deviation from the general collective memory is the inclusion of stories and memories about women’s lives. Women tend to turn to different memories when they do not feel compelled to represent the Palestinian case officially to the outside world, or in the lack of a male presence. They then feel freer to present a different version, usually coded as “social,” rather than “political.” In these “social” narratives, the rosy picture of gender liberation is marred, at times even bluntly contradicted, and the women express their dissatisfaction even with such revered historical eras as that of the Palestinian revolution, or the sanctified era of pre-1948 Palestine. There are still other, more subtle differences. Thus, women, when left on their own, rather than seeing all Palestinians as sharing the same fate en masse, tend to raise problems of différence in the fabric of Palestinian society. Theoretical Considerations In some respects, the material at hand contradicts known definitions and theories regarding collective memory. In his famous book, How Societies Remember, Paul Connerton differentiates between three types of memory: personal memory, such as remembering events from a person’s past; cognitive memory, which is knowledge acquired in the past, such as learning mathematical equations; and habit memory, such as skills acquired to perform specific tasks (like learning to ride a bicycle). According to Connerton, collective memory refers to the third type, namely, habit memory, which must constantly incorporate repetitive commemorative public rites and cults in order to remain extant.2 For a variety of reasons, this restrictive definition does not always account for Palestinian women’s collective memory. This chapter will address only two of these reasons: 1. As mentioned above, most interviewees who were asked questions pertaining to collective memory used a mixture of different memory types, particularly personal and habit memory, in their answers. They interwove recollections of their own and their families’ daily lives—and their skills in various handicrafts and daily tasks—with the official, public narrative of the Palestinian past. It is worth noting that, ironically, although some of the women’s very skills and

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handicrafts did assume cultural significance as a means of preserving a traditional Palestinian way of life, and thus gained some public attention, the women’s collective narrative that portrayed these handicrafts and tasks remained unacknowledged at best. Not only uneducated, peasant women construed their national memories this way; even the Palestinian author Sahar Khalifa remarked: “Ironically, the occupation of the West Bank had a liberating effect on me.”3 This mixture of memory types was extended to canonic political poetry: ‘A'isha ‘Abd al-Rahman describes how Fadwa Tuqan “did not express her grief at [the loss of] her brother, but rather mixed it with the Nakba of her people.”4 2. Depending on the degree of freedom allowed to transcend the boundary separating the private and semiprivate spheres from the public sphere—where, according to Connerton, collective memory “happens”—the participation of women in the Palestinian collective memory usually acquired a rather private or semiprivate character. These acts of commemoration oftentimes took place not only inside women’s homes but also at times when the husbands and other male relatives were absent, since the men tended to wrest the task from the women and take control themselves. It was particularly at those times, when the men were absent, that the content of the women’s collective memory acquired a distinctive female quality. Thus, at least until recently, women’s quintessential collective memory was usually not involved with the public rites and cults of the general Palestinian collective memory. Just as problematic is the notion of “countermemory” as proposed by Michel Foucault. Though Foucault’s original notion does not deal with collective memory per se—but actually refers to and elaborates on Friedrich Nietzsche’s term “wirkliche Historie” (translated as “effective history”)—his interpretation of the term does allude to popularly held convictions about history. Foucault contrasts this with the official, written histories, especially by professional historians who believe in the possibility of reaching an objective truth.5 This understanding of the term fits the Palestinian women’s collective memory. However, Foucault also imbues the term “countermemory” with the idea of active and violent opposition to official history. This does not agree with the way Palestinian women have accounted for their national history. For instance, according to Foucault, this notion of memory goes against “history given as continuity or representative of a tradition.”6 Certainly, this understanding of the term is not characteristic of the women’s representation of their history, as no Palestinian woman went against the idea of a continuity of Palestinian

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history. And very few of them consciously opposed a history that is representative of tradition, though in several cases women have unknowingly given a version that contradicted the prevailing one.7 Moreover, Foucault’s understanding of countermemory is not suitable in a more fundamental way: time and again, his analysis stresses violent roles such as opposing, countering, or toppling those in positions of power by means of “effective history.” This is a far cry from the variations created by Palestinian women through their different versions of collective memory, unless they subscribe to the general Palestinian version of collective memory, and unless the people in power were foreigners (Westerners, Israelis, Lebanese, Jordanians, or Syrians). In other words, where the women’s collective memory is aligned with that of the men, it retains the power-centered character of the men’s narrative; but where it is distinct, it is not usually expressed from a position of power, and in this sense runs counter to Foucault’s assumptions. The women speak from a fundamentally different social position, a fact that impacts their versions of collective memory. For instance, Maryam, a peasant woman from the West Bank, told her interviewer Buthayna Sha‘ban—upon the release of her husband from Israeli prison in an exchange of hostages after he had served 25 years—that she had been married off to her husband at the age of thirteen, unaware of his active involvement with the PLO. He only told her about it two years after their marriage. She confessed she hadn’t had the time to get to know him, let alone love him, before he stood trial; yet, she did wait for him for twentyfive years. And though she commented, “My whole life doesn’t make sense to me,” she stayed with him after his release.8 It is quite clear that most women did not try to topple the people in power in their own society by means of their narratives, be they collective or personal. Still, while Connerton’s and Foucault’s main concepts do not fit my findings, some aspects of their understanding of collective memory do apply. Connerton, unlike Foucault but like many others before him (including David Lowenthal),9 emphasizes continuity and the connection between recollection of the past and experience of the present: “We experience our present world in a context which is causally connected with past events and objects.”10 Looking at different connections between past and present, he gives several examples of a view of the past that is affected by objectives and political desires of the present. With this type of linkage, both the historical events memorialized and the way they are presented are affected by contemporary considerations. Indeed, this will prove to be the case not only generally about Palestinian collective memory but also specifically about the women’s versions of collective memory. As to Foucault, regardless of his obsession with violence, his understanding

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does allow for a plurality of voices to advance different versions of history, resulting in a state of affairs “that is capable of liberating divergence and marginal elements,” and in which “history will not discover a forgotten entity, eager to be reborn, but a complex system of distinct and multiple elements, unable to be mastered by the powers of synthesis.”11 No doubt, this is an inclusive, democratic view of historical memory, which has a broad enough space for women’s collective memory to claim its legitimacy. “I Am a Prisoner of Walls” Most theories and definitions of collective memory, including the ones discussed above, have erred by excluding women’s voices, just as conservative definitions and discussions of nationalism did. Cynthia Enloe’s remarks regarding the omission of women’s experiences from analyses of nationalism point to comparable problems in the analysis of collective memory: “It seemed convenient for some observers to assume that uneven task distribution had little impact on individuals’ senses of belonging or on the strategies selected for collective mobilization.”12 I will come back to the issue of a sense of belonging later, but for now let me add that both individual Palestinian men who were interviewed and scholars writing generally about collective memory tended to disregard, or omit, any consideration of uneven task distribution. However, almost all researchers who tried to conduct field research on Palestinian women and their collective memory have had to take this aspect of women’s lives into consideration. Like Foucault, Enloe discusses power, but rather than accepting violence as a legitimate strategy, she sees it as the problem, the stumbling block that prevents women from joining in as equal partners: “Decisions,” she says, “involve power. Many observers of nationalism, by ignoring women’s experiences and by trivializing relationships between women and men, have underestimated the number of decisions it has taken to construct nationalism.” She specifies the following decisions, to which feminist research drew attention: “Decisions about what to cook, decisions about who would drop out of school, decisions about what to wear, decisions about whether to use contraceptives, decisions about who should go to meetings at night—decisions that frequently have been treated as merely ‘personal’ or ‘trivial’—suddenly were shown to be significant.”13 Indeed, some of these decisions—for instance about whether a woman could join a meeting at night, or be allowed to attend classes— were mentioned either by the Palestinian women themselves or by their interviewers as the reasons why they were prevented from sharing in the Palestinian collective memory as equal partners. These particular decisions

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affected the content of their memory and its articulation. It also meant that women had to move the whole experience of sharing in the collective memory away from the public arena, to the private sphere. The poet Fadwa Tuqan remarked bitterly: “Every time political or national circumstances arose, [my father] would ask me to compose a poem on the subject. But my heart refused, protested and rebelled: How am I asked to write political poetry, while I am a prisoner of walls? From where shall I draw the material for such poetry—from reading the newspapers???”14 Another methodological consideration that demands elucidation is the question of whether literature should be included as part of collective memory. There are various types of literature to be considered, both oral and written. With regard to oral folk literature, the decision to include it is straightforward since it is inherently public in nature, usually to the point of having no recognized individual authority behind it. However, what about written literature? Is this type of literature, which in the West, particularly since the Romantic era, is conventionally regarded as the fruit of private genius, to be included in the notion of collective memory? This understanding needs adjustment not only in relation to the Middle East, as most literary theories today stress the strong impact cultural environments have on any personal endeavor. Certainly, in modern Arabic literature, the public dimension is considerably enhanced and acknowledged. For a variety of reasons even modern Arabic literary genres, which are mostly adapted from Western genres, are grasped in most Arab cultures as expressing a group identity, rather than a purely individualistic sensitivity. Women’s creative participation in literature is greater than in films. One reason for this is that it is easier for a woman to write literature than to create a film, as literature can be practiced indoors and is cheaper to produce, though a prerequisite, at least in the case of written literature, is of course that the women authors be literate. In my research I have referred to popular and to nationalist literature, both in poetry and in prose, written by Palestinian women specifically about the Palestinian struggle. According to Miriam Cooke, the nationalist literature comprises the majority of published works, as “[ever since] the Palestinian cause [became] an Arch-Arab cause, a new literary tradition was being wrought,” excluding “women’s writing which restricted itself to the private domain.”15 Most characteristic of women’s collective memory is its style, or more particularly, the hesitancy with which it is conveyed. Western social-science research emphasizes the need to make the interviewee feel at ease, but this approach relies on a Western notion of the individual, which is inadequate in Third World contexts. Hilary Arksey and Peter Knight claim that, though “complete reliability [in interviews] is not attainable,” nevertheless an interviewer needs “to create a situation in which the respondent feels

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easy and able to talk.”16 This is not so easily or immediately achieved when interviewing Palestinian women on national questions or on collective memory. Some research methods stress the importance of the place in which an interview is conducted.17 Such considerations might be important in view of the topic studied in this chapter; nevertheless, considering place per se may be insufficient. A woman’s home is usually a place in which she feels at ease; for an interview on collective memory, however, her ability to feel at ease and free to talk will also depend on whether somebody else from her family is present at the time of the interview. Here are the conclusions of Julie Peteet on interviewing Palestinian women in Lebanon: “I tried to avoid interviews when a woman’s husband or father was present. The atmosphere would become overly formal, and she would often be too intimidated to speak frankly. Occasionally when men were present they tried to speak for their wives or daughters, appropriating the right to represent their experiences and present the revolution to outsiders.”18 As will be discussed below, the same attitudes were found among male coworkers. Yet, even this might not be the only factor affecting the interviewee’s replies: referring to Arab feminist discussions of topics such as sex and sexuality, Evelyne Accad introduced the notion of autocensorship.19 This term provides an accurate description of Palestinian women’s discussions of their collective memory. Even in a woman’s home, when no one else is about, some collective memory versions were at times avoided. Julie Peteet writes, “Women used to tell me, ‘We’re all liberated now because of the resistance.’ The length of time spent in the field and observations of interactions and situations quickly dispelled these claims, components of a discourse reserved for visitors whom these women think should be presented a positive and endearing portrait of the national movement’s ability to transform traditions and confront family-based authority.”20 For this reason, she concludes, “Palestinian women have been somewhat hesitant to give written expression to their collective and individual experiences of the past fifty years.”21 This means that the work of researchers on the subject is often hampered by difficulties in attaining data. In addition to questions of the location of interviews and of selfcensorship, other factors seem to play a role in the way women imagine their participation in Palestinian collective memory: these include age, social status, education level, political involvement, influence of various ideologies, self-esteem, loyalty to one’s family and/or group, or difference in character. These factors, which I term “impact factors,” affect not only the content of women’s collective memory (that is, what they remember or commemorate) but also the way they imagine themselves in it (that is, how they remember it); these two facets are obviously not unconnected. Yet one

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must not assume that the impact factors would allow one to predict the narration a priori—that is, to prejudge what the women will say about their understanding of collective memory by what is known about them. The impact factors will only help one understand and analyze the various renditions of collective memory. “In Palestine, Men and Women Were Living Happily” Life in pre-1948 Palestine is the cornerstone of most renditions of Palestinian collective memory—both male and female. It is idealized and described as bountiful, surrounded by colorful and fragrant blossoming gardens and orchards—a lost paradise to which the present is compared unfavorably. In this case it is particularly hard to find women’s distinctive voice, as that life is the heart of the Palestinian collective memory. Peteet explains this special cluster of collective memories as follows: “The alienation of being a refugee often found expression in nostalgic comparisons to a somewhat fictitious reconstruction of social life in pre-1948 Palestine.” Thus, “the past in Palestine, even for those who never experienced it firsthand, assumed glorious proportions.”22 She gives two such examples: Umm Muhammad, a widow from Tal al-Za‘ter, “vehemently insisted that the fruits and vegetables of Palestine were far superior to those of Lebanon,” and Umm Nabil, nearly ninety years old, “refers to life in Palestine as the ‘days of paradise.’”23 Even so, some level of belated awareness of the “social” elements that made up women’s lives was conveyed by the women. Professor Hadia Shakeel and Mr. Khaled Mu‘ammar from Toronto University conducted a study on Palestinians residing in Toronto, Canada. One of the women who was interviewed (her name is not given) was president of the Women’s Association of Jaffa in the years 1936–48. She told Shakeel: “We never thought of liberation; it never occurred to us that we were oppressed!”24 Of course, there might be other reasons for the idyllic rendition of life in Palestine: according to Connerton’s understanding of collective memory, the women’s descriptions of life in Palestine in the past can be linked to the political goals of the Palestinians in the present. And indeed, due to the above-mentioned impact factors, the social awareness that the woman from Jaffa did express, albeit with the benefit of hindsight, is not usually manifested by women in refugee camps. It is worth noting that—as mentioned by Ghazi al-Khalili—the majority of refugee camp residents were originally from rural Palestine, rather than from the main cities.25 The accounts of life in old rural Palestine by women in refugee camps can be connected more clearly to their present status than to their origin in Palestine, as there are conflicting assessments

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about their social status in pre-1948 Palestine. While Kenneth Stein’s research reveals that not all Palestinians were necessarily poor sharecroppers, as was widely held, it is nevertheless still accepted that the rural areas tended to be more conservative regarding most social aspects of life.26 Whatever the reasons for the representations of the past, the descriptions of life in Palestine as given by women in refugee camps tended to be the most idyllic. Sha‘ban provides a description of this kind by Umm Mahmud, a Palestinian woman living in the al-Mukhayyam refugee camp in Damascus. Umm Mahmud, originally from al-Damur, mixes all three types of memory distinguished by Connerton in her rendition of collective memory. She makes sure that the political picture comes across in her description. But, as she delves more deeply into the details of daily village life, she adds some reassurances when the social reality she portrays clashes with the political message of her narrative. In our farming community back in Palestine, men and women were living happily and working hand in hand. The men couldn’t do all the work on the farm so the women went out to help them. Men and women used to go to the field together, come back home together and feel much closer to each other than they do now. At home, women were responsible for doing all the daily chores, looking after the children, feeding the animals, milking the cows and making all the dairy products. They enjoyed doing all that; they certainly didn’t resent it. It was as natural to them as the fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.27

As can be gleaned from this account, Umm Mahmud’s rendition of life in rural Palestine begins idyllically, with such words as “hand in hand,” “together,” and “closer,” stressing the strong community atmosphere. For instance, women’s work in the field is expressed as a voluntary act on their part to help the men. But as the description goes further and incorporates women’s additional chores at home, the narrator probably feels the need to add some reassurances. She therefore stresses that these extra chores were not in conflict with the women’s own wishes. While she first says that the women enjoyed the chores, she then qualifies her statement, adding that at least the women did not resent doing these chores. Umm Mahmud ends her description by stressing the political message: “All in all, we were much happier then than we are now.”28 “She Sees with the Eyes of Her Husband” The same lack of social awareness that characterized life in Palestine and its depiction can be seen in later periods. One of the Palestinian women

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activists in Lebanon who tried to raise women’s self-awareness in the refugee camps said about the women: “She sees with the eyes of her husband.”29 Yvonne Haddad researched women in various dispersed Palestinian communities, including Jordan. “Under Jordanian rule,” she writes, “Palestinian women . . . perceived their role primarily as supporting the men in the struggle.” Thus, they “continued to restrict their political activities to protest marches, whenever these were allowed by the authorities.”30 Women’s position in the prevailing Palestinian collective memory was a reflection of their various public activities: they perceived themselves as marginal to the collective Palestinian story and as only playing a supporting role to the men, who “owned” the Palestinian struggle.31 One must not underestimate the significance of the public aspect of collective memory: it provides the framework for the rites and cults that, according to Connerton, are vital to its existence—at least as regards one of the memory functions he discusses, namely, habit memory. Active participation in the public rites of collective memory not only helps reiterate and memorialize an existing narrative; it also allows any sector that is involved in it to have a say in how such memory is shaped. This lack of awareness of the “social” story and the reluctance to tell it publicly are self-imposed to a degree, as part of the women’s autocensorship. These prevented the women from publicly engaging in the creation of variants of collective memory, of narratives that would also integrate their own voices. This attitude continued unchanged and unchallenged until after the first intifada. The persistence of this attitude is evident in statements given by Palestinian women’s delegations at women’s conferences. As early as 1944, the president of the Arab Women’s Association in Palestine, Zlikha Shihabi, who headed a delegation to the Arab Women’s Conference held in Cairo, refused the request by the conference hosts, the Egyptian women, to join them in a declaration of women’s rights. She stated that the women in Palestine “would not demand more rights than what is allowed by Islamic law and the Holy Qur’an,” and that “demanding political rights for women is before its time.”32 The very same attitude was manifested by the Palestinian women’s delegation to the Women’s Conference in Copenhagen in 1980. Birgitte Rahbek Pedersen writes that “at this event the Palestinian women delegation also made it clear that all talk about equality, development and peace without reference to their own reality, which is occupation and war, is futile.”33 Pedersen gathered from this “to what extent the Palestinian women master this role of . . . the political work [of] international relations.”34 Needless to say, participation in women’s conferences could have provided a venue for the women’s narrative to be heard in public.

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In spite of statements to the contrary, the advent of militant organizations did not radically change this state of affairs, nor did it allow much more space for a public narrative about social issues. Some change was noted by the women themselves: for instance, Samiha Salama—known as Umm Khalil—head of In‘ash al-'Usra (Society for Invigorating the Family), a conservative women’s organization in Ramallah,35 noted in 1980 that “in the past men wouldn’t let women go to meetings; now they ask them to go.”36 This can indeed be seen as progress and is an issue Cynthia Enloe also addresses in the context of nationalist movements. Yet, even though the women’s organizations were seeking to recruit women, they were looking for what the women were ready to give to the organizations, rather than what the organizations were ready to give to the women. As Haddad summarizes, “The image the PLO tried to foster [regarding the role of women] is the mother who urges her sons and daughters to full commitment for the struggle for the liberation of Palestine.”37 Most women who joined its ranks absorbed this message, particularly women who achieved leadership positions and could have tried to change the social reality. Amal Kharisha Barghuthi, the director of another women’s organization in Ramallah, Lijan al-Mar'a al-‘Amila (Committees of Working Women), complained: “Those women who join the women’s committees are so immersed in political struggle and thought that they are unable to give sufficient attention to women’s problems and issues.”38 Though the PLO women members did not remain uninvolved in women’s issues, they also felt the pressure on them to live up to well-established expectations and behave and act accordingly. They therefore did not dare establish activities to commemorate the Palestinian women’s narrative. Nabila, a widow and executive member in a PLO-affiliated women’s organization, explains: “As a widow I feel I am treated with great respect, as long as I’m prepared to sacrifice myself for my children, the family and the national cause; once I falter in any of these duties I am sure that my worth, both as a woman and as a comrade, would be in question.”39 As can be seen, the women’s sense of belonging is not as immediate as that of the men. In fact, Nabila, who feared that her personal behavior might have affected her political and national membership adversely, reflects on the connection between uneven task distribution and a sense of national belonging, as explicated by Enloe. Women’s positions did not allow them the power Foucault has attributed to collective memory. In addition, not only did women and the women’s organizations receive their orders directly from the male leadership, but—as noted by Dr. Amin al-Khatib, the president of the Federation of Charitable Associations in the West Bank—men began heading social organizations that, prior to 1967, had

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been headed by women, while the rank-and-file membership remained female.40 The result is that both in their public activity and in their collective memory women have sacrificed “the social” for “the political.” Amal Kawar, who researched women in Gaza and the West Bank, notes the resulting “social conservatism of Palestinian society and its organization,” and remarks: “The pre-Oslo activism of Palestinian women was focused on national mobilization and nation-building rather than on women’s rights.”41 “My Experience . . . Is an Example of My People’s Experiences” The sacrifice of the social for the political agenda can be exemplified in the life and writings of the author and PLO member Liyana Badr. When interviewed by Buthayna Sha‘ban—not in her capacity as a writer but as a Palestinian refugee—Badr was asked (as were all the other interviewees) if she would prefer not to have her name revealed. Sha‘ban writes: “She surprised me by saying she would love to keep her full name in my book. ‘And I’ll tell you straight away why I would like this. In Western Europe and America, the word “Palestinian” invites suspicion and I don’t want to make things more vague by using symbols.’” Badr then added her credo: “I feel strongly that my experience does not belong to me alone; it is an example of my people’s experiences.”42 Indeed, in both her literary writings and her interviews, Badr personalizes the collective memory of the Palestinian people through her own personal narrative. As is the case with other women, her perception does not fit Connerton’s definition of collective memory as mere habit memory. The 1948 Nakba is viewed as mirrored in the lives of her parents, who were both activists, and later periods through her own years of exile and return to the land, including her involvement in the activities of the Palestinian organizations. Badr’s literary and nonliterary renditions of the Palestinian collective memory are very similar. In “Liqa'” [Meeting], one of her many semiautobiographical political stories, a character resembling the author, after marrying a military activist (Badr herself is married to Yasir ‘Abd Rabbuh of the PLO), explains to her university professor the significance of her marriage: “The thing is, Professor . . . We [the two of us] are the revolution, precisely. Yes. We.”43 Badr’s identification with the political, rather than with the social agenda, gives rise to feelings of scorn for the female universe in general and for other women in particular. It prevents her from manifesting solidarity with the fate of Palestinian women in general. In “Liqa',” rural Palestinian women are described as an undistinguished mass, in contrast to the heroine. In only one particular point does Badr transcend the image that the PLO tried to create for women: namely, in not

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providing a single example of the docile mother figure mentioned above. On more than one occasion did she publicly complain that becoming a mother had restricted her political activities. For instance, in her interview with Sha‘ban, Badr commented that though “marriage as such didn’t limit my activities . . . the consequences of marriage, namely the children, were the real obstacle . . . The children imposed certain limitations on my experiences and work. But I tried my best to make up for that through my intensive efforts in the world of journalism.”44 This resentment of her female reproductive role is echoed in her stories. “Liqa’s pregnant protagonist, trying to sneak her way into the secret headquarters of her husband’s military organization, is burdened by her belly, which feels like a foreign part not really belonging to her body: ‘Her belly, swollen like a balloon, suddenly descended on her body.’”45 About her marriage and pregnancy, the character tells her professor that procreation “has turned me into something like my mother. I am bigger now [in size] than what I am for real, and than what I would like to be.”46 To express the dire fate of the Palestinians as refugees, Badr tells Sha‘ban: “When I arrived in Damascus in 1982 with no change of clothes I felt so naked that it seemed all the shops in Damascus could not possibly cover my nakedness. There were no clothes which belonged to me and to which I belonged and felt at home in. I suffered a sudden loss of memory, and to a certain extent, loss of identity.”47 The flight to Damascus was a result of the military activities of her husband in the PLO. She recorded similar flights, among them the one to Tunisia. Of particular significance is Badr’s emphasis on her loss of identity, which connects her personal story to the general Palestinian collective memory. Nakedness—a mark of shame for a Palestinian woman, especially in the context of social narratives— is used here as a symbol underlining the political story of exile. Another writer who makes use of the same symbolism is Fadwa Tuqan, who describes widespread feelings of shame after the 1967 defeat in her poem Kalimat min al-diffa al-gharbiyya [Words from the West Bank] by drawing an image of people walking naked in the streets. Both authors use a female social symbol not for social purposes but for political ones. Promoting the political at the expense of the social also means identifying with the maleness of Palestinian collective memory. This particular facet of their writings, which is characteristic of both authors, has been noted by several critics, among others by Raja' Samrin and Hashim Salih Mana‘, in connection with a general trait they discovered in the political and national poetry of Palestinian women poets. This is not only true of the authors of Tuqan’s generation; subsequent generations of Palestinian women prosewriters and poets who commemorate later events in the Palestinian collective memory also tend to speak through male voices. For instance, Miriam

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Cooke mentions that, unlike Lebanese women authors, the Palestinian women writers in Lebanon view war the way male writers do—not as a process, but rather “as a revolution that is failing.” “What matters for both,” she says, “is to locate and overcome the enemy.”48 In her research on Palestinian women poets writing about the intifada—particularly Najla Shahwan, Hanan ‘Awwad, and Khadija Abu-‘Arkub—Ilham Abu Ghazaleh mentions that they “often use male gender as generic,” and adds: “Female authors address themselves in the masculine voice . . . This also indicates that when women take on an active role, the female poet sees them through the cultural prism of male behavior.” She concludes: “I consider this to be a manifestation of self-annulment.”49 “Women’s Political Activities and Their Participation in the Intifada Are Not Respected” The period of the two intifadas and their aftermath turned out to be particularly significant for women’s collective memory, as it was both the peak of women’s participation in the political and military struggle of the Palestinians, and the starting point of a growing awareness of the fact that they were being excluded from the collective narrative of the Palestinian struggle. In fact, Abu Ghazaleh’s research, mentioned above, is itself a product of this new awareness. Philippa Strum dates the onset of this new awareness back to 1989: “By 1989, what had seemed to be a permanent alteration in the status of women had begun to crumble. It became apparent, in fact, that the ‘permanent alteration’ was not that in the eyes of most men, who eagerly awaited both political independence and the return of no-longer-independent women to their homes.”50 No doubt, the women’s collective narrative puts a special emphasis on this recent period, which also marks a noticeable divergence from the dominant male version. The first to realize the gravity of the situation were women activists who had participated in the two intifadas and had learned how unwelcome women’s ventures were in the public perception. Khawla, an activist and teacher in the village of Tamoun, remarked after the first intifada: “Women have indeed contributed [to the intifada], but at a high price to themselves. In the media, on television, women’s praises are sung, but in the street and in the neighborhood the situation is different. Here, women’s political activities and their participation in the intifada are not respected.”51 Popular attitudes toward the participation of women in the Palestinian struggle can be gauged from their omission from folk literature commemorating the intifadas—as if the Palestinian collective memory was bent on disregarding the women’s part. Sharif Cana‘na researched the appearance of female characters in the legends about the first intifada. The conclusions

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of his research, published in 1990, were indeed grim: “The intifadarelated, contemporary narratives that were circulating by word of mouth among Palestinians in Gaza and on the West Bank portray sons as both the major characters of the narratives and as heroes in the conflict.”52 His research quantified the statistical data of male and female characters. “From a purely quantitative viewpoint, we may note that male characters appear in about 93 percent of all the narratives in which Palestinians are not represented by a community, a crowd, or an animal, while females appear in only about 28 percent of these cases.” Cana‘na summarizes: “In the 148 narratives with exclusive male actors on the Palestinian side, the actors consist mainly of members of the group we have described above—the young shabab.”53 Worth noting are the patterns and makeup of inclusion in and exclusion from these popular narratives: older women as mother figures do appear at times, but only as extensions of the abovementioned PLO image of woman as an obedient mother. They “often come to the aid, support, or protection of the males, but the males never reciprocate.”54 Of course, the women’s change of awareness was also a reaction to the religious backlash that was just making itself felt in the Palestinian streets, first and foremost by the women, whose freedom to appear in public had once more been severely curtailed. Little by little, the women activists, most of whom were young, educated members of the various factions of the militant organizations via the women’s committees, initiated alternative narratives, based on their own version of collective memory.55 For instance, Siham ‘Abdullah, a woman activist from Nablus, reports: “In the early days of the [first] intifada I took to the streets during a large demonstration along with many young women, and we all heard one of the boys from our neighborhood saying, ‘Look at the sluts. They are joining the demonstration in order to show themselves off and to meet men.’” She goes on to describe the social repercussions of her political involvement as a young woman, comparing it with that of her mother, who was also an activist: “The older generation of women is stronger because they have less to lose. They do not fear celibacy since they are already married; they do not fear not having children since they have several each. Their reputation as honest, decent women has already been established . . . The same does not apply to the younger generation of women.”56 The writer Sahar Khalifa sums up: “We must be leery of making sweeping generalizations about the gains that women made during the [first] intifada.”57 Even women in official positions in the women’s committees were beginning to publicly contribute to the nascent female social narrative. Thus, Fadwa Labadi, a women’s committee activist associated with the Jerusalem Women’s Studies Centre, made the following comment on

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International Women’s Day in March 1992: “What has our women’s movement achieved for Palestinian women? Nothing.”58 As Kathy GlavanisGrantham puts it, “This mood is a far cry from the heady and exuberant days of the first year and a half of the intifada, at which time most women activists and commentators praised in near unequivocal fashion the social and political transformation occurring within Palestinian society in general and in women’s role and position within it.”59 “Why Do They Insist on Treating Us as if We Are Mouths Without Tongues?” Women’s reaction to their exclusion from the public narrative, and indeed, from the Palestinian collective memory, was one of growing resentment. It is true, though, that at the core of this discontent is only a minority of the Palestinian women, part of a younger, educated generation. Most women would react in other ways, mainly because of autocensorship. They would indeed find it inappropriate to utter words of criticism in the current situation, as Rosemary Sayigh sums up: “The majority would agree with L., who says: ‘I would feel guilty if I asked for more rights as a woman at a time like this.’”60 Or they would object outright to women’s participation in violent acts, as did the mother of May Mustakmil Nassar. When her daughter was imprisoned for her active involvement in militant activities, she commented: “If she was a man, I wouldn’t have worried, but a girl . . . It’s too much.”61 Yet this small minority of angry young women, though bitterly opposed by the conservative male establishment, has managed to create a new discourse by presenting their version of the collective narrative in public, thus joining in the cults and rites of collective memory. As before, telling the public story and acting in the political arena went hand in hand. The women had to tell their own story and fight their own fight. As Kawar notices, “one of the most notable changes in women activists since Oslo has been their willingness to criticize their parties for resisting the promotion of women.”62 Dr. Rita Giacaman cries out: “Why is it that the Unified Leadership sees only the contributions that women make through men, as mothers and wives? . . . Why do they insist on treating us as if we are mouths without tongues, as if our opinions are only peripheral?”63 The new awareness and the willingness to present a women’s collective narrative signaled an understanding that the women’s fight was over the use of public space and the right to join in the rites and cults of collective memory. Women have always experienced difficulties in entering the public arena. Even during “the heady and exuberant days” when women thought they had achieved a “social and political transformation,” the

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public spaces were not really open to them, as the above-mentioned findings regarding women’s participation in demonstrations clearly show. However, before the onset of the 1987 intifada, women fought to enter the political and military activities; during and after the two intifadas they also understood the importance of who tells the story of the Palestinian collective narrative publicly. One such battleground was the organization of women’s exhibitions and fairs. Because of the growing importance of women’s traditional arts and crafts in Palestinian collective memory, efforts were made to promote them at different venues. Prior to 1967, such activities were usually arranged by women’s organizations, one of their most important functions being to provide a means of subsistence for poor women. However, as Dr. Amin al-Khatib admitted, once awareness of their value for collective memory grew, they were moved from the social to the political arena, and men moved into this branch of activity, wresting it from the women.64 This took away an important outlet into the public space that women had previously controlled. Sha‘ban recounts an interesting incident from her interview with Nabila, the executive member in a PLO-affiliated women’s organization. During the interview a male comrade of Nabila’s entered the room uninvited, and started giving his own views about women. He then handed Sha‘ban an invitation to an exhibition of Palestinian women’s handicrafts, embarrassing Nabila, who knew nothing about it. Sha‘ban “started wondering why—if the exhibition was of Palestinian women’s handicrafts and was set up by the Palestinian women’s organization—the men distributed the leaflets, and how my interviewee, who was an executive member in the organization, could not have seen them.”65 However, she decided not to embarrass Nabila and refrained from asking her interviewee any questions about it. When she went to the exhibition, she noted that it was attended mostly by men. She saw the husbands of women she had interviewed—without their wives. In incidents like this, even in the public rites of women’s affairs, the collective memory of women was not directly accessible to the public, nor could it be heard without a mediator. After the experience of women’s involvement in the first intifada, and certainly in the postintifada era, women were becoming aware of the importance of such commemorative public events, and were gradually trying more and more to organize these events themselves. But they encountered insurmountable obstacles in the struggle over the public space. The Palestinian Women’s Film Festival that was held in Jerusalem in June 1992 can serve as an illustration. During the event, fundamentalist Islamic groups sent threatening letters. As a result, the women’s organizations held a press conference, with four speakers—three women and Faysal al-Husayni, a prominent Fatah

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figure. According to Kathy Glavanis-Grantham, “the inclusion of Faisal alHussaini [Faysal al-Husayni] is indicative of the women’s committees’ vulnerability in addressing publicly controversial social issues on their own and their need for political and male protection vis-à-vis the Islamic ‘fundamentalists.’”66 The speakers stressed that the threats they had received were not an isolated incident, and that the Ramallah venue of the Women’s Film Festival had been cancelled because of threats to the hosting institution. It is evident that, even with this new awareness, it is hard to know how clearly the women’s version of collective memory will be heard, particularly with a religious backlash that is gaining momentum. “What Happened to Algerian Women after Algerian Independence” Obviously, plain narratives of collective memories do not encompass the future. What then, are the projections, hopes, and fears regarding the future of Palestinian women? Throughout the various stages of women’s collective memory discussed above, one cluster of symbolic memories kept reappearing: the Algerian example and its importance as a symbol for the Palestinians. This symbol, which has recently resurfaced, points to the women’s concerns and to their hopes and fears about what lies ahead. The adoption of a chapter from the history of another Arab country is not unique to the Palestinians. The story of Algeria and its fight for independence has captured the imagination of many people in the Arab world. As mentioned by Raja' Samarin and Hashim Salih Mana‘, many Palestinian woman poets wrote about the Algerian struggle even before the public declaration of the Algerian revolution. The subject surfaced in poems of Palestinian women in the mid-1940s and has kept appearing regularly ever since. The Palestinians identified with the Algerian struggle and saw in that country’s attainment of independence a symbol of hope for their own cause. For instance, the poet Asma Tubi wrote a poem in 1962 to congratulate Algeria in the name of Palestine for gaining its independence: From afar From the peaks of Jerusalem the martyr From the lurking Karmel From beyond the borders A shout calls, “Hurray for Algeria With the blood of its free gallant men and women The glorious victory was written.”67

However, this symbol also changed its signification and acquired different meanings according to the vicissitudes of the Palestinian and Algerian

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women’s social condition, thus affecting their collective memories. The reappearance of the Algerian symbol in the Palestinian women’s collective memory is strongly felt in the postintifada period, though it is regarded as a bad omen, or a fate to be avoided, rather than as the symbol of hope it used to be. Amal Barghouthi, for instance, notes that: “it is our fear that what happened to Algerian women after Algerian independence is going to happen to us; we all talk about it. Certainly we want to avoid their fate.”68 And indeed, when listening to the voices of postindependence Algerian women, one also hears some of the very concerns raised by Palestinian women. Farida, a young Algerian woman whose mother was active in the Algerian revolution, is quoted in Sha‘ban’s book as protesting vehemently to her mother: “There is no hope for women . . . We are going backwards, not forwards.” And she adds bitterly: “I feel that the Algerian men used the Algerian women in the revolution.”69 Conclusion This chapter has followed the distinctive narrative of Palestinian women’s collective memory—sometimes referred to as the “social” rather than the “political” story—in all its developments and vicissitudes. It traced the various phases the women’s recounting of their history has gone through: from a tacit acceptance of the general narrative, with small variations of tone, style, and nuance, to a more vigorous collective tale after the outbreak of the first intifada. Along the way, the women’s stories expressed various concerns, aspirations, and fears, making use of various means, literal and poetic, including the use of symbols and narrative and commemorative techniques that are unique to them, thus separating their version from the male-dominated official public memory. The chapter demonstrated time and again that the women’s efforts were met with resistance by the men, who took increasingly restrictive measures to curb the women’s freedom to tell their own story—from behind-the-scenes maneuvers to open threats and other, violent measures. This, in addition to the women’s own autocensorship, made the task of analyzing the Palestinian women’s collective memory quite difficult. The chapter has outlined some of the theoretical difficulties. Doubtless, the story of the Palestinian women’s collective memory is still going on. As they are looking for ways to enter the mainstream, both by political activism and by demanding the right to tell their own story in the public domain, the women need to use, with growing sophistication, the know-how and experience they have acquired—perhaps in order to compose a tale of hope, different from that of the Algerian women, whose fate they fear and attempt to avoid. Recent changes in the Palestinian political

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scene, such as religious backlash, are among the new challenges faced by Palestinian women. They play a more prominent role in Palestinian life and should be added to the impact factors outlined so far. Only the future will tell how the story traced in this chapter will continue; however, taking into account the lessons learned from this research, one may predict with a high degree of confidence that Palestinian women will find more ways to make their voices heard in the general collective memory of their people.

Notes 1. Hashim Salih Mana‘, Al-Qadaya al-qawmiyya fi shi‘r al-mar'a al-filastiniyya min sanat 1948–1974 (Kuwait: Sharikat Kazima Li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tarjama wa-l-Tawzi‘, 1984), p. 150. This book is the published MA thesis of the author, written at ‘Ayn Shams University in Cairo. All translations quoted from the Arabic sources in the chapter are mine. 2. Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 22–23. 3. Suha Sabbagh, “An Interview with Sahar Khalifeh, Feminist Novelist,” in Palestinian Women of Gaza and the West Bank, ed. Suha Sabbagh (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), p. 137. 4. ‘A'isha ‘Abd al-Rahman, Al-Sha‘ira al-‘arabiyya al-mu‘asira (Cairo: Dar alMa‘rifa, 1965), p. 75. 5. Foucault elaborated this notion on several occasions, but the core of it can be found in his article “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bouchard (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977), pp. 138–64. 6. Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” p. 160. 7. One such case was a peasant woman from the West Bank, who was interviewed by Buthayna Sha‘ban. To the question “How did you manage your lives under the Israeli occupation?” she gave the following answer: “To tell the truth, we didn’t notice their presence a great deal. Our village was quite far off and we carried on working on the land and living off our crops.” For details of this interview, see Buthaina Shaaban, Both Right and Left Handed: Arab Women Talk about Their Lives (London: Women’s Press, 1988), p. 139. 8. Ibid. 9. David Lowenthal elaborated on his groundbreaking understanding of collective memory in some of his works. Note especially The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); and The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 10. Connerton, How Societies Remember, p. 2. 11. Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” pp. 153, 161. 12. Cynthia Enloe, The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 102–3. 13. Ibid., p. 103.

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14. Fadwa Tuqan, “Safahat min mufakkira,” Al-Adab , February 1970, p. 22. 15. Miriam Cooke, War’s Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 87. 16. Hilary Arksey and Peter Knight, Interviewing for Social Scientists (London: Sage, 1999), pp. 52–53. 17. An interesting research, in which business managers were interviewed on train journeys, clearly illustrates the importance of place in interviews. “What struck [the researchers] was the extent to which the views and opinions of the managers, off-guard and to a person they were unlikely to meet again, contradicted the ‘reality’ contained in much contemporary management literature.” Quoted in Mark Easterby-Smith, Richard Thorpe, and Andy Lowe, Management Research: An Introduction (London: Sage, 1991), p. 78. 18. Julie M. Peteet, Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 13. 19. See Evelyne Accad’s discussion of autocensorship in “Sexuality and Sexual Politics: Conflicts and Contradictions for Contemporary Women in the Middle East,” in Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 237–50. 20. Peteet, Gender in Crisis, p. 17. 21. Ibid., p. 39. An example of autocensorship is also recounted in Sahar Khalifa’s novel, Bab al-saha, about women in the intifada. Not only is the presence of foreigners a cause for autocensorship, but even neighbors are shunned, both in political and personal matters, for fear of being overheard while expressing unfavorable or undesired opinions. Barbara Harlow, who discusses this novel, draws attention to the following examples: when discussing a husband who beats his wife, a female character reacts “What will people say?” and tells other women, “Lower your voices. Someone might hear you.” See Harlow’s article, “Partitions and Precedence: Sahar Khalifeh and Palestinian Political Geography,” in Intersection: Gender, Nation, and Community in Arab Women’s Novels, ed. Lisa Suhair Majaj, Paula W. Sunderman, and Therese Saliba (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002), p. 127. 22. Peteet, Gender in Crisis, pp. 78, 81. 23. Ibid., p. 78. 24. Shakeel’s research appears in an article by Yvonne Haddad, “Palestinian Women: Patterns of Legitimation and Domination,” in The Sociology of the Palestinians, ed. Khalil Nakhleh and Elia Zureik (London: Croom Helm, 1980), pp. 170, 172. 25. Ghazi al-Khalili researched the makeup of the Palestinians in the refugee camps. See his discussion in his book, Al-Mar'a al-filastiniyya wal-thawra: dirasa maydaniyya tahliliyya (Beirut: Markaz al-Abhath, Munazzamat alTahrir al-Filastiniyya, 1977), particularly pp. 89–91. 26. Kenneth W. Stein, The Land Question in Palestine, 1917–1939 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), p. 26. 27. Sha‘ban, Both Right and Left Handed, pp. 152–53. 28. Ibid. It is interesting to compare Umm Mahmud’s words with words used by women in rural Palestine in the past. One example is given by Hilma

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29. 30. 31.

32. 33.

34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

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Granqvist, who conducted an ethnological study among Palestinian Arabs in the village of Artas in the years 1925–31. After explaining that most of her material was derived from the women in the village, she wrote: “One must not, however, expect to find statements as to the women being happy or unhappy. Certainly at times they feel their lot heavy—and the fellahin men would agree—but in general they are too practical to devote themselves to reflection and analysis of their moods.” It seems that though the women’s autocensorship made them reticent about their feelings in front of a foreigner, the overall impression is that they did not view their lives as idyllically happy, as Umm Mahmud did. See Hilma Granqvist, Marriage Conditions in a Palestinian Village (Helsinki: Akademische Buchhandlung Helsingfors, 1931), p. 21. Quoted in Peteet, Gender in Crisis, p. 89. Haddad, “Palestinian Women,” p. 161. A similar attitude can be seen in women’s participation in politics in the national arena. I have discussed Middle Eastern women’s sense of belonging to their national groups as it is expressed in their appearance in the national sphere in Hanita Brand, “Loyalty, Belonging, and Their Discontents: Women in the Public Sphere in Jewish and Palestinian Cultural Discourse,” Nashim, no. 6, (Fall 2003): 84–103. This statement appeared in the newspaper Filastin on 13 December 1944. Birgitte Rahbek Pedersen, “Oppressive and Liberating Elements in the Situation of Palestinian Women,” in Women in Islamic Societies: Social Attitudes and Historical Perspectives, ed. Bo Utas (London: Curzon, 1983), p. 188. Ibid. Although Salama herself was affiliated with the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [DFLP], the organization itself was conservative. Quoted in Rosemary Sayigh, “Encounters with Palestinian Women under Occupation,” in Women and the Family in the Middle East: New Voices of Change, ed. Elizabeth Warnock Fernea (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), p. 197. Haddad, “Palestinian Women,” p. 161. Sabbagh, Palestinian Women, p. 199. Quoted in Sha‘ban, Both Right and Left Handed, p. 178. Dr. al-Khatib’s words are given in Sayigh’s article, “Encounters with Palestinian Women,” p. 196. Amal Kawar, “Palestinian Women’s Activism after Oslo,” in Sabbagh, Palestinian Women of Gaza and the West Bank, p. 233. Sha‘ban, Both Right and Left Handed, p. 153. Liyana Badr, “Liqa',” in Jahim dhahabi (Beirut: Dar al-Adab, 1991), p. 21. Sha‘ban, Both Right and Left Handed, pp. 161–62. Badr, “Liqa',” p. 20. Ibid., p. 21. Sha‘ban, Both Right and Left Handed, p. 163. Cooke, War’s Other Voices, p. 23. Ilham Abu Ghazaleh, “Gender in the Poetry of the Intifada,” in Sabbagh, Palestinian Women of Gaza and the West Bank, p. 106.

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50. Philippa Strum, “West Bank Women and the Intifada: Revolution within the Revolution,” in Sabbagh, Palestinian Women of Gaza and the West Bank, p. 70. 51. Sabbagh, Palestinian Women of Gaza and the West Bank, p. 195. 52. Sharif Kanaana, “Women in the Legends of the Intifada,” in Sabbagh, Palestinian Women of Gaza and the West Bank, p. 133. The stories were probably collected in the years 1987–90, but as is generally the case with folk and popular literature, it is hard to pinpoint the exact time of their actual creation. 53. Ibid., p. 121. 54. Ibid., p. 122. It should be added that not only women are ignored in these legends: the two sectors most conspicuous by their absence are young women and older men—the father figures. The latter, if they do appear, “are pitiful, cringing figures, defended by their wives or young sons against verbal or physical abuse by Israeli soldiers.” Ibid., p. 133. 55. Mira Tzoref raises an interesting point regarding one public place where such women could meet, associate, and discuss their problems: the universities of the West Bank, which, ironically, were established by Israel. Indeed, many of these young women are university students or graduates. See her article, “The Sabra as Other: Constructing the Sabra Myth in the Palestinian National Memory,” Bikoret u-Parshanut 34 (Summer 2000): 159–75 (in Hebrew). 56. Quoted in Sabbagh, Palestinian Women of Gaza and the West Bank, p. 193. 57. “An Interview with Sahar Khalifah,” Ibid., p. 144. 58. Kathy Glavanis-Grantham, “The Women’s Movement, Feminism and the National Struggle in Palestine: Unresolved Contradictions,” in Women and Politics in the Third World, ed. Haleh Afshar (London; New York: Routledge, 1996): p. 174. 59. Ibid., pp. 174–75. 60. Sayigh, “Encounters with Palestinian Women,” p. 200. 61. Sabbagh, Palestinian Women of Gaza and the West Bank, p. 207. 62. Kawar, “Palestinian Women’s Activism,” p. 239. 63. Quoted in Sabbagh, Palestinian Women of Gaza and the West Bank, p. 205. 64. Cited in Sayigh, “Encounters with Palestinian Women,” p. 196. 65. Shaaban, Both Right and Left Handed, p. 179. 66. Glavanis-Grantham, “Women’s Movement,” p. 172. 67. Asma Tubi, “Hubbi al-kabir,” in idem, ‘Abir wa-majd (Beirut: n.p., 1966), p. 94. 68. Sabbagh, Palestinian Women of Gaza and the West Bank, p. 200. 69. Quoted in Shaaban, Both Right and Left Handed, pp. 184, 186–87.

7

A Dream of Severance: Crisis of Identity in Palestinian Fiction in Israel Mahmud Ghanayim

Introduction As I pondered the title of the paper from which this chapter has taken shape I could not help thinking about the changes it had undergone from one conference or symposium to another. Thus, when I was preparing its tentative draft to give as a lecture at the Arab University of Jerusalem in 1998, at a conference devoted to the Palestinian novel, the correspondence I had with the organizers of the conference contained a kind of silent dialogue concerning the last part of the title, which alternately included expressions such as “in the land occupied in 1948,” “inside the occupied land,” “on the inside,” “inside Israel,” and so on. Under whatever appellation, whether dialogue, conflict, or crisis, the issue is suggestive, especially in light of the fact that its first version was presented to an audience of Israeli intellectuals at Tel Aviv University in the same year as part of a symposium, “Fifty Years of Israeli Literature.” Although this symposium was part of the festivities commemorating fifty years of Israeli independence, it was naturally not of a festive nature but rather a cultural-intellectual event intended for study, inquiry, self-criticism, and the like, as befitted such an elite group of intellectuals. Another issue that I wish to address through this title is the fact that the literary establishment in Israel, as the symposium mentioned above made clear, considers the Palestinian literature written within Israel as one of the currents of Israeli culture.

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These remarks can in my opinion serve as a good introduction to the topic of the present chapter, in which three sides take part: the Palestinian and Arab literary-cultural establishment, the Israeli literary-cultural establishment, and the discourse of Palestinian literary writer or storyteller inside Israel, who moves between the two. These three literary-cultural sides are of course not devoid of political content. If we turn now from reality to literary fiction, and from metaphorical to direct expression, it may be said that the identity crisis, as the classical expression used in describing the political life of the Palestinian minority inside Israel, consists of a feeling that this minority has of belonging to the Arab nation and the Palestinian people on the one hand, and on the other, of existing as Israeli citizens and a distinct minority within the state of Israel, which itself lives in a state of nearly total hostility with the Arab world and the Palestinian people. In the present chapter I intend to follow the struggle that is operative within the Palestinian minority as reflected in its literature, specifically its prose, both novel and short story. As a result of the sharp historical changes that this minority has undergone over the past fifty-six years, it would be very difficult indeed to disregard the historical-diachronic perspective when dealing with the topic in question. While it may be possible to examine the contents propagated by these texts, I believe that it is more important to investigate the effect that this phenomenon has had on the ways of expression, styles, structures, and literary genres of the texts in question. I shall be basing my investigation into this issue on the hypothesis that the identity crisis as reflected in Palestinian literature inside Israel has deepened, and the ways it has been expressed have become more varied, over the past fifty-six years (i.e., during the lifetime of this literature). This hypothesis is based on the following observations: (1) the evercloser ties between Palestinian fiction and politics; (2) changes that have occurred in the nature of the readership of Palestinian literature over the past twenty-five years; (3) the connection between feelings of injustice and the perception of the Other (the Jews), on the one hand, and the aggravation of the problem of identity, on the other hand—the sharper the feeling of injustice, the more the Other is perceived in a negative light, and the more acute the identity crisis is; and (4) the abiding influence of the literary traditions and conventions of Arabic literature in general. I shall use the outline of a short story entitled “Nuzha Layliyya” [Nightwalk] by Riyad Baydas (b. 1960) from Shfar‘am for presenting the problem’s various manifestations.1 In the story, the first-person narrator sets up his tent on a green lawn on the promenade and decides to enjoy himself at the seaside, to grill some meat and listen alone to some songs

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by Sabah Fakhri (a Syrian singer) and Leonard Cohen (a Jewish Canadian singer). He makes the necessary preparations and begins setting up his meal. He prepares two plates and two pitah breads; from one plate he eats and the other remains full, as if he is waiting for a guest. He begins slumbering and dreaming, when a veiled woman appears before him and introduces herself as Sheherazade. They eat and talk. From their conversations we learn that Sheherazade likes quiet, fish, fireflies, sand, and small children. Afterward they take a walk on the beach; he wants to go west but she prefers the east. The narrator tries to embrace her waist and make love to her, but she scolds him and reminds him that they are still Arabs. Later as she walks around, some children and adults collect around her, and she hands out sweets to them. This makes them happy and they cheer her. The narrator asks her to tell him a story, and this is what happens: They say that there was a king . . . I interrupted her in a teasing tone of voice: Do me a favor and don’t tell me about kings and princes . . . then I added, explaining: I’m sorry, but I want to hear something else. Maybe you can change the heroes of your stories? She laughed and said: There’s no need to apologize. I’ll tell you the story without mentioning any names. I said: I love to hear stories that are like children’s stories. And this is the story she told: [a nightingale] reigned over the birds, who lived a life of freedom and happiness in their land, where everything was good and healthy. Until one day the great vultures came and drove [the nightingale] and the other birds from their land. Naturally, the exiled birds did not stop longing for the land from which they had been forcibly expelled. They tried many times and in many ways to return, but many of them were killed, and [the nightingale], too, died of sadness and despair. The remaining birds are still trying to return.2

After Sheherazade finishes telling her story, they approach each other until their shoulders touch. Then suddenly they hear “a great deafening tumult: the tinkling of iron chains, the sound of doors being slammed shut in a strange delirium, shrieks of terror and heavy-booted steps.”3 The narrator finds himself in prison faced by a heavyset man with many stars and medals on his shoulders. The man asks him angrily what he was doing on the beach. “I awake, move my lips and answer spontaneously and in a voice full of provocation: Only the sea sat across from me!”4 This story by Baydas conducts an intertextual dialogue with a variety of literary texts: first, with romantic stories of the genre that describe two lovers who walk along the beach and make love; but this “romantic” story begins with a night excursion by the narrator alone, goes on to an internal excursion, in a dream, with no embraces or lovemaking, and ends in

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prison. Second, it echoes the stories of The Arabian Nights, in which Sheherazade tells Sheherayar stories about kings and princes. In Baydas’s story, however, Sheherazade tells a different story, about birds driven out from their homeland by vultures; and instead of Sheherazade keeping quiet so the king can sleep (sakatat ‘an al-kalam al-mubah), there is the sound of chains, and the narrator/“the king” finds himself in prison. There is no doubt that the ironic dialogue pursued with these texts is used in order to present the sad state of the Palestinians in Israel who are searching for their spirit in a place where attractive values such as originality, purity, and silence are missing, and who, since they do not find these values in reality, search for them in dreams. But the fate of the dream is as the fate of reality, and it is against this harsh reality that it shatters. Sheherazade symbolizes these lost values. The new Sheherazade symbolizes the values to which the Arab in Israel yearns to return: innocence, naturalness, tranquility, and beautiful oriental dreams. The fact that she accompanies him to the east, while he prefers the west, symbolizes his feeling of belonging to the orient, to the Arabs, and to the Palestinian people. This sense of belonging helps dissipate the fears he feels both as an individual and as a minority surrounded by danger. He stands on the shore, which expresses the threat to his life, and dreams as a way to escape to safety. There is, however, another conflict inside the narrator, which is illustrated by his listening to both Arab and Jewish songs: he suffers from an identity crisis that takes the form of a double, or split, identity. The story related by Sheherazade tells in black-and-white of the nightingales/refugees and how they were expelled by the vultures/the Israeli establishment. This establishment is represented by a large-bodied man whose shoulders are full of insignia and signs of rank. In short, the scales in the end tip toward Sheherazade, who represents the adherence to Arab and Palestinian values. There are in the story no Jewish characters described in any degree of breadth or depth. Although the time and the place are both Israeli, no welldefined Israeli human types are portrayed. People on the beach, presented in a positive manner, stand in the background of the scene; and the thickset man is reminiscent of the typical portrayal of Israeli soldiers in modern Arab literature and art in general. This, in short, is the central issue addressed by this chapter: the oriental orientation of Palestinian fiction. For despite the double identity evinced by this literature, there have been many attempts to shift decisively toward a distinctive identity that would break the tie with Israeli reality. Needless to say, the theme of conflict and double identity is unique to the Palestinian literature in Israel; in effect, it is one of the main differences

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between Palestinian-Arab literature inside Israel and literature written by Palestinians elsewhere. This is the third stage that characterizes the present situation of Palestinian literature in Israel since the 1980s, which I refer to herein as “the aggravated crisis and the turn to the orient.” However, the path to this stage was quite long and went through a number of phases and turns; it is crucial, therefore, to go back to the beginnings of this process, in the 1950s. The First Stage: An Identity Dissolved and Flattened In the 1950s the Arabs who were left in Israel were but a small minority, consisting mostly of illiterate villagers, cut off from the Palestinian people and the Arab nation by a Jewish majority that imposed its own conceptions and codes of behavior. The quality of fiction just after the establishment of the State of Israel deteriorated markedly in comparison to what was being written before Israel came into being. The main reason for this was the mass emigration of the urban educated population. Only a very small number of young writers at the beginning of their literary careers were left in the country. Among these were Emile Habibi (1921–96), Hanna Ibrahim (b. 1927), and Najwa Qa‘war (b. 1923). In general it was such that most of those working in the fields of journalism and literature were new and inexperienced. Immediately after the establishment of the State of Israel, there existed only very few literary platforms in the country. Al-Ittihad, the official organ of the Israel Communist Party, was the only really active newspaper, but its activities in the domain of literature were quite limited. Emile Tuma (1919–85), a prominent literary critic and ideologue of the Israeli Communist Party, toward the end of the 1950s and during the 1960s, claims that Arab culture at the time of the establishment of the State of Israel was more aptly described as being in a state of beginning than in a state of continuity. There were two reasons for this, according to Tuma: first of all, there was the fact that the number of educated Arabs in the country was small, as the war of 1948 had driven them away; second, the “river of general Arab culture” could no longer irrigate the Arab minority in Israel.5 During the years 1950–51 the Jews of Iraq immigrated to Israel. Among these newcomers there were many authors and others who worked in the field of composition, translation, and journalism. These writers helped to revive literary activity in the country. Some wrote for the Communist press, and others published their writings in the newspapers of the Histadrut trade union organization or in other semiofficial newspapers.6 I do not regard these authors as part of Palestinian culture in Israel. For

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instance, they did not share the same problems as Palestinian writers, but they contributed to literary activity in Arabic during these years. In 1948, the semiofficial newspaper al-Yawm came into being. It was not long before it added a literary supplement edited by Jewish writers. The newspaper published the writings of authors who declared that they were not affiliated with any political party. Another semiofficial journal edited by Jewish writers was Haqiqat al-Amr, which had begun appearing before the establishment of the State of Israel (1937–59) and belonged to the Cooperative Company of Jewish Workers in Palestine.7 In 1951 the journal al-Jadid was founded, at first as a supplement of the newspaper al-Ittihad.8 Many Jewish immigrants from Iraq contributed articles to it, mainly for political and ideological reasons, for the Israel Communist Party wished to be a party of both Jews and Arabs.9 In 1954 the journal al-Mujtama‘ was founded in Nazareth at the instigation of the poet Michel Haddad (1919–97). This journal published the works of writers who were to have a considerable influence on Arab literature in Israel, such as Rashid Husayn (1936–77) and Jamal Qa‘war (b. 1930), as well as Jewish writers such as Salim Sha‘shuwwa‘, who was the first chairman of the Union of Arab Poets founded by the journal al-Mujtama‘ in 1955.10 Another journal with an interest in literature was al-Akhbar al-Kanasiyya, whose literary editor in the 1950s was Najwa Qa‘war. The journal appeared in the years 1926–57, after which it was published in Haifa under the name of al-Ra'id in the years 1957–61.11 Between the years 1958 and 62, an important magazine that carried the name al-Fajr was published by the Company of Arabic Books (Sharikat al-Kitab al-‘Arabi), a publisher founded by the leftist Zionist party (Mapam). The magazine devoted a good deal to literature under the control of its literary editor, Rashid Husayn.12 This same period saw the beginnings of competition among a number of literary-political currents that were vying for the attention of readers. The most important of these currents was that represented by the Communist Party, which disseminated its ideas through a series of publications with an ever-increasing impact. At the head of this pyramid stood al-Jadid and al-Ittihad, thanks to their revolutionary ideals and the quality of their writers.13 When we connect these historical facts with the identity problem, two major trends in Palestinian literature in general, including narrative fiction, can be discerned—each of these trends, in its own way and for its own purposes, highlighted the positive aspects of the new state. The Communist trend laid stress on matters of class, paying less attention to the issue of nationality. Thus Communist writers such as Emile Habibi,

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Hanna Ibrahim, and others worked in cooperation with Jewish writers in Arabic. The other trend consisted of writers whose work appeared in official and semiofficial media that were supported by the Israeli government, the Histadrut, or Zionist political parties. The writers of this trend stressed the positive values the new state was trying to promote. As a result, many works of literature described the situation in a favorable light and tried to diminish the Palestinian minority’s feelings of defeat.14 Najwa Qa‘war, a woman writer from Nazareth belonging to the latter trend, had by 1963 published three collections containing some thirty short stories altogether.15 Only very few of these deal with political issues; most tell romantic tales with only the barest connection to a definite time or place. Qa‘war’s stories lack any specific mention of the identity problem.16 Among the writers of the former trend whose writings do address political issues is Muhammad ‘Ali Taha (b. 1941), a member of the Communist Party who belongs to the second generation of authors and who began writing at the beginning of the 1960s. His story “‘Asifa fi ‘Ush” [A storm in a nest] appeared in a collection entitled Likay Tushriq al-Shams [So that the sun may rise].17 The story itself is a simple allegory describing a debate between two Israelis, an Arab and a Jew, whose boat has sunk at sea. Each of the two had his own previous convictions about the other, but in the end they are both convinced that someone plotted against them and escaped from the boat when the storm broke out.18 They have the following discussion: The man who meets with you furtively on the boat and incites you against me is the same one who meets with me and incites me against you. He is the one who killed the poor Arab bread seller, cut off his ears, tongue and nose, and brought him back to you in Jaffa. He is also the one who killed the poor Jewish farmer, cut off a part of his body, and brought him back to us and said: “The Arabs ate that part.” -... - Did you see? - The friend is the foe. - Were he a friend to you or me he would not have climbed into the lifeboat and escaped when the storm broke out over our ship and we were in the middle of the raging sea. When he left you, or left me . . . to fight against death. - The fox, it was his intention that we die. - But we won’t die. - We’ll live in spite of him. - But Hayim.

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- What is it, Ahmad? - When the storm broke out and destroyed the ship, it scattered my brothers, who were fledglings in a nest . . . and when the wind scattered its straw every one of them fell exhausted in a different place. - My friend, my brother, my right arm, come, you and your brothers, and let us rebuild the ship together.19

The story clearly puts the blame entirely on a third side, the British, or the imperialist states, whereas the Arab and the Jew, as simple people, find a common language in which they understand each other. The Israeli identity is clearly in evidence in this work, and the crisis has nearly disappeared completely. The 1960s produced a new state in Arab society and literature inside Israel, which found its expression in the increasing influence of the Socialist-Communist trend in literature, the abolition of military rule, the promotion of a moderate degree of freedom of expression, and the import of publications from the Arab world, most of which consisted of censored, nonpolitical novels and short stories. In the 1960s another aspect of the identity crisis appeared in the form of attempts by certain writers to write nonpolitical works, attempts that were met with strong opposition as a result of increasing nationalist trends. The first serious attempt to detach literature from politics was made in 1963, in an artistically successful novel, al-Mushawwahun [The perverted] by Tawfiq Fayyad (b. 1939).20 The novel describes the concerns of a secondary-school student who came from his village to study in Nazareth. He suffers from feelings of solitude as a result of his inability to adjust to open urban society. The protagonist is unprepared for the situation in which he finds himself, and as a result he rejects the values of the village while at the same time feeling contempt for the values of the city. He thus lives in solitude, alone and without belonging. This motif is of course found frequently in modern Arabic literature, beginning with al-Tahtawi (1801–73) in his famous work describing Paris, Takhlis al-Ibriz fi Talkhis Bariz (1834), and on through Hadith ‘Isa bin Hisham [Isa bin Hisham’s story] (1907) by al-Muwaylihi (1858–1930), ‘Usfur min al-Sharq [Bird from the east] (1938) by Tawfiq al-Hakim (1898–1987), Qindil 'Umm Hashim [Umm Hashim’s lamp] (1944) by Yahya Haqqi (1905–92), Ana Ahya [I live] (1958) by Layla Ba‘labakki (b.1936), Mawsim al-Hijra ila al-Shamal [Season of migration to the north] (1966) by al-Tayyib Salih (b. 1929), and others. In Arabic literature the stamp of realism has been attributed to this theme, and it has therefore been accepted as a motif expressing a significant reference of reality.

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In spite of all this, the literary, social, and political forces affecting Arab society within Israel raged against Fayyad’s novel. The criticism leveled at The Perverted ensured that it remained a literary lapse not to be repeated again. Anyone who reads the reviews that the novel received can feel the sharp debate it engendered, especially in Nazareth and its vicinity. There was a general consensus that the story deserved to be condemned and forgotten. According to the critic ‘Isa Lubani (1931–99), social factors played a major role in the novel’s downfall, since it was considered immoral and was understood as constituting an attack on Nazareth and its inhabitants.21 The Perverted can thus be seen as an example of the curse that can befall a work of literature if confronted with a closed society and a readership that does not treat it as a fictional literary work but rather as a factual autobiography—a view credited to the fact that the author did in fact study in Nazareth during the years in which the fictional events related in the novel took place. But the social dimension was not the only reason for the attack on The Perverted. No less important were artistic reasons: the writer Suhayl ‘Atallah in his review of the novel treats it from an educational-romantic perspective and accuses it of being overly gloomy and pessimistic, and of interfering with the attempts of young people to learn and receive an education.22 However, it was the Communists who expressed the most vehement opposition to The Perverted. They pounced on the novel, which they perceived as being in opposition to their ideology and its required mode of thought. Lubani is perhaps the critic who best expressed this way of thinking, promoted by the journal al-Jadid. Lubani points out that certain characters in the novel are deviant: “Our friend Tawfiq was wrong when he took deviation, and sexual deviation in particular, as the basic material and main foundation in the construction of his novel.”23 He goes on to suggest that it would have been better had Fayyad dealt with the many problems faced by young people and intellectuals, in addition to the issues of repression and deprivation afflicting our society. Furthermore, he does not agree with the author that Arabs’ lives in Israel are permeated with deception and hypocrisy and that their society is perverted. Lubani does not restrict himself to these comments, which revolve around the ideas of socialist realism and Marxist thought, but also explicitly expresses what really bothers him in this novel: I find it difficult to believe, as would anyone else as well, that students, urban or rural, have no problems other than sex, chasing girls and fooling around with them. Do students never think about their dire financial situation? Or

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about what they will do after graduation? Do they not think about the suffering of their people and the injustice committed against them as a result of military rule and odious repression of racism?24

Lubani ends his article on an explicit ideological note, casting doubt on the novelist’s patriotism: It is literary treason to see hunger and write about the tables of those living in luxury, to see the sheep of the herd being taken by the wolf one by one and remain unmoved, to see slaves and not cry out with the shout of Abu Dharr [‘Umar Ibn al-Khattab]: ‘When did you enslave people whose mothers gave birth as free ones?’25

The Perverted can serve as a good example for the way readers and a literary establishment can react to a work that repudiates their social, political, and literary values, despite the fact that by generally accepted critical criteria it is not inferior to other works published elsewhere and is greeted with favor by the literary establishments there. The Perverted was a failure, following which its author turned to writing works of literature that were politically committed. We can thus see that during the 1960s political and literary forces influenced by Marxist ideology were becoming prominent in Palestinian society inside Israel. These forces worked toward the establishment of a distinctive political identity for the Arab minority inside Israel. This marked the beginning of a split within the Communist Party, so that two parties were formed, one with a predominantly Jewish membership and one with an Arab majority. It was the latter party, which allowed more national feeling than the former to come to the surface and to become the motive force among the Palestinian minority in Israel. The Second Stage: An Identity Crisis in the Center The Six Days’ War in 1967 exposed the Arab world before its own citizens and before the Palestinians in Israel as a society weighed down with very serious political and social problems. One would have expected such a state of affairs to have caused the Palestinians in Israel to strengthen their ties with the state in which they lived and at the same time to distance themselves from the Arab world. However, the opposite happened; the war had the effect of opening cultural bridges to the Arab world and establishing connections with the sources of Arab literature and culture. These connections grew even stronger after the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt. The Six Days’ War coincided both with the abolition of Israeli military rule, to which Arab citizens of Israel had been subject since 1948, and with a more

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relative liberalization regarding the individual rights of the country’s Arab minority, encompassing such matters as freedom of expression and freedom of movement, among others. Another factor that played an important role was the relative increase in the number of high-school and college graduates, as well as certain fundamental changes in the curriculum that made it more relevant to Arabs. These political and cultural changes were accompanied by an increase in national consciousness and by the shaping of a Palestinian personality among the Arab minority, at the same time as the Palestinian resistance movement took shape and the War of 1973 occurred.26 All of these factors certainly had an effect on Palestinian literature in Israel. However, theoretically any particular factor could have had its own distinct effect, so they did not necessarily work together in one direction. For example, the abolition of military rule meant greater freedom, which in turn would have led to a greater rapprochement between Arab citizens and their Israeli government, and to a greater feeling of equality and belonging. All of this would be expected to be reflected in literature; however, in fact this was not the case, perhaps due to the existence of other factors that brought new concerns to the attention of the Arab minority, such as the issue of equality, which occupied the Arab public during the 1970s when new developments were making the Arabs aware of their distinctive Palestinian identity. The identity crisis represented by the conflict between being a Palestinian Arab and being an Israeli is a prominent motif in Emile Habibi’s collection of stories Sudasiyyat al-Ayam al-Sitta [The Hexad of the six days], which was published immediately after the war in 1967.27 All the stories in this collection show very clearly the split personality of the Palestinians living inside Israeli society. In his story “wa-Akhiran Nawwara al-Lawz” [At last the almond blossomed],28 Habibi presents the problem as follows by the protagonist Mr. M.: Sidney Carton was removed from the album of my heroes on my first shave. But the title of Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities stayed with me and kept on bewitching me and affecting my taste over the years. Its influence would appear in ways which would embarrass me at first, but then I gave in to it and even felt affection toward it, prizing it like someone carrying around his neck an amulet which his mother had hung there when he was child. At the beginning of my pact with this strange influence I started writing A Tale of Two Cities of my own, about two cities in my land, Haifa and Nazareth. I had written the first chapter when I saw that the story came to an end and I threw it away. Then I decided to specialize in two subjects, English and law, but nothing came of that. I wrote verse in English and Arabic, but nothing came of that, either. I was very sorry that I had sired just one son, for I had a very strong desire to have two. If you ask your son whom

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I teach in high school he will tell you that I only give them two books to read at one time, and two poets to memorize, and two authors to compare, and two hours for the exam. Other things in my life as well, which need not be mentioned here, demonstrate the control which this duality, this magic title A Tale of Two Cities, has over my taste and mind. But you must certainly have noticed this when we were friends as young. Have you forgotten that you would all call me “two beards”?29

This introduction was made in order that Mr. M. could tell us how when he traveled from Nablus to Ramallah after the Six Days’ War of 1967 he was very moved when he passed by the crooked elevation of alLibban,30 where he had experienced a love story before 1948. But he had, or pretended to have, forgotten it and continued to feel bothered as he tried in vain to remember something from his past. Then he found in this duality an explanation that gave him some peace. Now the elevation of alLibban is reminiscent of another twisted elevation between Nazareth and Haifa, that of al-Abhariyya. Mr. M., according to the narrator, “killed his memory”31 and forgot his ties to the past, in order that he may enjoy the new situation and keep his position in Israel. In modern psychological terms, he internalized this duality and directed or projected it in other directions. In the narrator’s words: “I am certain that Mr. M. is sincere in his forgetfulness, as he is sincere in his desire to remember. A strange internal wish has truly made him forget that he was himself the person who had this beautiful love story.”32 The story has an optimistic ending: Mr. M. does finally recall the story of his love and bring to mind his beloved. Another interesting story from this collection is “Hina Sa‘ida Mas‘ud b-Ibn ‘Ammih” [When Mas‘ud was happy with his cousin].33 Mas‘ud is the child of a poor family living in a village in Galilee. He lacks an extended family to which he can belong, like the other people in the village. He is therefore very happy when a magnificent car stops in front of his house. It turns out that relatives of his have come from the West Bank to visit his family. Among his relatives is a boy of his own age. Mas‘ud takes his cousin on a walk through the village and introduces him to his friends. The children get into a verbal fight about the war: - May God curse the father of King Husayn. - May God curse your own father. - May God curse the father of Jordan. - May God curse the father of Israel. This frightful argument took place just between the son of Ratiba and Mas‘ud’s cousin . . . because of the overwhelming awkwardness of the children

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who felt at a loss and were unable to decide which side to take. But Mas‘ud did not hesitate for a moment. Despite what he had heard at home from his “philosopher” sister, who was already in tenth grade, and despite the insults from the radio that had reached his ears, he decided to take the side of his cousin’s king, because he was his cousin, and because his king was defeated, and because they [the Israelis] must withdraw.34

The war solved Mas‘ud’s problem of solitude and isolation; he now has uncles and cousins of his own. But Mas‘ud fears that the situation would revert to what it was before; if Israel withdraws from the occupied territories, he would again lose his cousin and be left without relatives. He begins to doubt his elder sister’s conviction that the withdrawal is inevitable. Mas‘ud is aware of a conflict within himself and keeps asking the grownups about it. His questions can be understood as indicating that he prefers his personal interests over those of the nation. His internal conflict remains: withdrawal means that the Palestinian people would be divided again, whereas occupation means unity for the Palestinian people. It should perhaps be pointed out here that this was one of the first stories to propose the political solution of two states for the two people, with open borders. The identity crisis produced a special literary genre in Palestinian narrative fiction in Israel, which later influenced Arab fiction in general. The novel al-Waqa‘i‘ al-Ghariba fi Ikhtifa' Sa‘id Abi al-Nahs al-Mutasha'il [The strange story of the disappearance of Sa‘id `Abi al-Nahs the pessoptimist]35 by Emile Habibi has classical stylistic and structural tendencies that are welded to descriptions of everyday life and features of popular literature. This mixture provides an interesting representation of the identity crisis in question. The duality of the novel plays an important role in raising and lowering its style and contributes to the creation of an ironic, derisive work that can be classified truly under the category of modernism.36 The amalgamation of high and low style fits in with the lack of consistency in the character of Sa‘id Abi al-Nahs al-Mutasha'il, who moves between reality and fantasy. On the one hand he lives in modern times, but on the other he behaves as characters that are detached from reality. Sa‘id’s character is full of contradictions, which match with the linguistic and stylistic discrepancies. The initial contradiction is that Sa‘id lives in the State of Israel thanks to the fact that he agreed to cooperate with the Israeli authorities. He then demonstrates excessive loyalty to the state, but at the same time also displays contempt toward that loyalty. His life is also full of contradictions: he is happy and miserable, optimistic and pessimistic, simple-minded and pretending to be simple-minded. At one moment he relies on a man from space to extricate him from the clutches of the authorities, at another he is ready to take the initiative himself.

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While he may find it unpleasant to sit on the top of a blunt stake, he also refuses to come down. In the structure of the text of al-Mutasha'il there is a sharp contradiction. A first reading leaves the reader with the impression that this is a classical or neoclassical novel written in a high style, similar to the didactic stories and novels written at the beginning of the twentieth century by writers such as Muhammad al-Muwaylihi (1858–1930) and Mustafa Lutfi al-Manfaluti (1876–1924). However, a more careful reading exposes a text rich in contradictory meanings. Take the dialogue, for example: it is based on the illusion of realistic technique and at first glance gives the impression of live, realistic dialogue; but in fact it is quite detached from reality and possesses the characteristics of classical dialogue. The use of indirect dialogue, the avoidance of situations of dialogue, the use of dialogue without mention of its manner of execution (such as “said with joy,” etc.) are typical features of classical and neoclassical Arabic literature. Aspects of the high language as well as classical literary and structural features, such as paronomasia (jinas), parallelism, rhymed prose, short reports (khabar), transition from one topic to another (istitrad), and others coexist with colloquial word and sentence meanings, journalistic style, and the style of folk tales. This mixture causes the boundaries of language to break down. The language explodes and begins anew: the classical language loses its “classicism” just as the popular language loses its popular aspect. Below are some examples to clarify this phenomenon: When the watermelon season began I sold it in season [lit., sweet on the knife] (hulw al-madhaq ‘ala al-sikkin), and when I was turned over to the municipal inspectors I sweetened their mouths (hallaytu afwahahum), and when the children of the neighborhood stoned me because of my nickname I received it from them (istahlaytuha minhum), and then they let me stay in the neighborhood in security ('ahullu).37

Hulw al-madhaq, hallaytu afwahahum, istahlaytuha, `ahullu: this play on words and the literary structure (fusha) of the sentences raise the style, but this is undermined by the colloquial (‘ammiyya) meanings of some of the words: hulw al-madhaq ‘ala al-sikkin, hallaytu afwahahum, istahlaytuha minhum. The following example sheds more light on the discussion: I heard the voice of the radio announcer calling on the defeated Arabs to raise white flags above the roofs of their houses, so that they may be spared by the soldiers passing through like arrows (al-mariqun muruq al-siham), and sleep in their homes in peace. This order confused me (ikhtalata ‘alayya 'amr hadha al-'amr): Whom did the announcer order (ya'muruh), those

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defeated in this war or those defeated in Rhodes? I said: To be defeated is the best result! And so I convinced myself that if my lapse appeared it would be attributed to my good intentions and my clear conscience (bayad tawiyyati). So I made a white ('abyad) flag out of my bed sheet (bayad firashi), hung it on a broomstick and raised both on the roof of my house on al-Jabal Street in Haifa, a flag (liwa') of excessive loyalty (al-wala') to the state. But who, one might ask, was I trying to impress?38 No sooner was my sheet (sharshaf) overlooking ('ashraf) everyone that my master Jacob honored me (sharrafani) with a very prosaic visit (‘atil), without a greeting. Nor did I greet him back. He was shouting: Take it down, you mule!39

This text confronts the reader with many expressions and words that do not have just a single or denotative meaning, or that arouse irony through a play on words. For example, the expression “passing through like arrows” (al-mariqun muruq al-siham) contains a pun that enhances and heightens the text. Yet, on closer scrutiny, multiple meanings are revealed, for the word mariqun has both an overt meaning, “passing through,” and a covert meaning, “corrupted.” Even the first meaning itself, supported by the verbal noun muruq, has two denotations, each belonging to a different linguistic level: the first, higher level is derived from literary Arabic, for there the word is used in classical texts with the meaning of “breaking through”; a second, lower level reflects the colloquial language, in which the verb maraq is used with the meaning “to cross/pass through.” The covert meaning, “corrupt,” nevertheless bears a high connotation. Thus the play on words provides us with a text that has multiple and rich meanings. In addition to this pun, there are a number of plays on words, as in the following sentence: “This order confused me (ikhtalata ‘alayya 'amr hadha al-'amr): Whom did the announcer order (ya’muruh)?” as well as these words and expressions: “my clear conscience (bayad tawiyyati),” “my bed sheet (bayad firashi),” and “a white ('abyad) flag”; the phrase “flag (liwa') of excessive loyalty (al-wala')”; and, finally, the words “overlooking” ('ashraf), “sheet” (sharshaf), and “honored me” (sharrafani). Habibi uses a journalistic style whose level and composition differ markedly from the style of narrative prose. The former uses a canonized, standard language, whereas in literature the language employed is a high or low nonstandard one. Journal articles also have certain recognizable features, such as the way they begin and the way dates are written; the purpose of writing the article is explained, headlines are formulated, ideas are connected, and so on. Habibi made use of the possibilities provided by the journalistic article and adapted it to the narrative style in a way that draws one’s attention to the novelty and duality of his style. In the following example we can see how this mixture of journalistic and literary styles was achieved:

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On the tenth of September in the year 5 AW (After the six-day War), which equals the year 1971 AD, your newspaper al-Ittihad reported, quoting Ma‘ariv, who quoted Haaretz, who quoted the Israeli general police, who quoted the Israeli Lydda police, that an old lady, Mrs. Thurayya ‘Abd al-Qadir Maqbul, seventy-five years of age, returned from Jordan to her homeland and native city Lydda, as part of the open bridges policy for the summer vacation, after having remained away from her town for twentythree years which she had spent as a refugee in Amman with her husband and children.40

The opening sentence “On the tenth . . . al-Ittihad ” is a familiar formula used in newspaper writing, including the traditional way of mentioning the date. In addition, the sentence includes the phrase “your newspaper al-Ittihad reported,” pointing to the source of the news item, as is commonly done in the press. The quote also contains the woman’s name and age, where she came from, her hometown, the reason she came and why she had been absent from her homeland, and other details typical of journalistic writing. Even so, this adaptation vacillates between the journalistic and literary styles, as witnessed by the chain of ascription “your newspaper al-Ittihad reported, quoting Ma‘ariv, who quoted Haaretz, who quoted the Israeli general police, who quoted the Israeli Lydda police.” This passage is subtly conveyed by means of the preposition (‘an), here meaning “from a source” (‘an‘ana); a technique that the writer borrowed from classical Arabic literature. The multiple or fluctuating meanings in al-Mutasha'il function to create an ironic text that criticizes certain phenomena in Israeli society. The three examples discussed above illustrate this: in the first example, the criticism lies in the fact that Sa‘id, the protagonist, is forced to sell watermelons for a living after having refused to cooperate with the authorities, who threatened that he would die of hunger. The municipal inspectors try to prevent him from working, but he manages to rid himself of them by paying a bribe. He is able to communicate with the children of the neighborhood, but the authorities, represented by “the big man” in the novel, do not leave him alone. In the second example, the author speaks with bitterness about Sa‘id’s split personality. In the 1967 war Israeli radio broadcasts told the people of Gaza and the West Bank to raise white flags over their houses in order to be left in peace by the Israeli army. But Sa‘id does not know whether he has been defeated together with the people of the occupied territories with whom he empathized, or is victorious, since his state won the war. In the end, the feelings of defeat overcome the feelings of victory, indicating that

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his feelings of solidarity with the Palestinians of the occupied territories are stronger than his feelings toward his state. The third example consists of an excerpt from the story about the refugee who comes back to her native city of Lydda after an absence of twenty-three years during which she endured great hardship. She hopes to be able to find the jewelry that she hid in her house in Lydda. She informs the Israeli police of her intention, because she wants them to accompany her to the house where she hid her gold. After she finds her way and attains it, the state confiscates it. The novel al-Mutasha'il poses in an acute manner the problem of literary genres. It marks the appearance of a new literary type of novel, one of whose components derives in a clever and complex way from classical Arabic literature. The old structures and styles are broken and played with. As the critic Sa‘id ‘Allush wrote, al-Mutasha'il is “a collector of genres.”41 This literary genre began with Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (1804–87)42 and Marun ‘Abbud (1886–1962).43 With al-Mutasha'il it reached an important stage in its development, and now it is evolving further through the works of Jamal al-Ghitani (b. 1945),44 Sun‘allah Ibrahim (b. 1937),45 and others. Some Palestinian writers in Israel such as Muhammad ‘Ali Taha and Muhammad Naffa‘ (b. 1939) began in recent years to develop this literary genre.46 Habibi’s novel thus represents a new stage in Palestinian narrative fiction in Israel. The novel did not appear out of nowhere, for it was preceded by the story collection Sudasiyyat al-Ayyam al-Sitta [The Hexad of the six days], in which one can already perceive the beginnings of the duality as a literary genre: creation of the ironic trend in which classical elements contrast with elements of everyday life and folk culture. The Third Stage: Aggravated Crisis and the Turn to the Orient During the 1980s and 1990s literary works stressed the distinct identity of the Arab minority inside Israel and the growing national awareness of this minority. Sasson Somekh claims that an important change came during the 1980s in the readership to which the Arab writers in Israel addressed their works. Writers began appealing to a broader readership throughout the Arab world instead of limiting themselves to the local Arab public.47 This phenomenon was the result of other factors that wrought a great change in Palestinian narrative fiction in Israel. Among the political, social, and cultural factors that have affected this distinct identity is the intensification of ties to the Arab world after the peace accord with Egypt, signed in 1979.

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These connections grew even stronger after the war in Lebanon and the solidarity with the Intifada. Many writers saw to it that their works were published outside the country and in the Arab world, especially in Lebanon and Cyprus, by Arab and Palestinian publishers;48 at the same time, Jewish readers evinced a growing interest in local Arab literature. Other factor that influenced Arabic literature in Israel include change in the Ministry of Education curricula for Arab schools, which brought a greater concentration on issues specific to Arabs and Palestinians. Finally, it is difficult to underestimate the change that occurred to the literary fora (newspapers, journals, etc.) available to Arab writers in Israel. Some of the official fora dependent on the government or the Histadrut collapsed, while others failed to present themselves as alternatives to platforms provided by the Communist party or to other platforms focusing on issues concerning the Arab minority. This state of affairs has brought about a split in the identity of this literature. On the one hand it caters to readers in the Arab world and so contains remarks intended for that readership, including extremely unfavorable descriptions of Jewish characters based on old preconceptions; on the other hand, local writers also wish to appeal to the Hebrew readership. This mixture is most obvious in the writings of Emile Habibi, in particular his novel Khurrafiyyat Saraya Bint al-Ghul [The tale of Saraya, the demon’s daughter].49 The fact that Habibi in this novel addresses the discourse to Anton Shammas, the translator of his books into Hebrew, and directs comments to some Israeli Jewish writers is thus not coincidental, but rather a result of this duality: Arab readership abroad and Hebrew readership inside Israel. In Khurrafiyya the Jewish characters are depicted as animals without feelings. The scene begins with the writer/narrator’s relating of John the evangelist’s New Testament vision of the Cherubim and Seraphim who, having taken the form of four animals, guard the divine throne. The first resembles a lion, the second looks like a calf, the third has the appearance of a human being, and the fourth is in the form of an eagle.50 After this introduction, the narrator tells the story of his aunt Naziha, an old woman in her eighties, who travels together with her husband to join her son in the United States. The narrator mentions that after arriving at Ben Gurion Airport, his aunt is carried from the ground to the plane on a stretcher operated by an electric lifting apparatus. He also relates that he was an eyewitness to this event, and that she could have walked on her feet had it not been for the inspection, undressing, and interrogation she was earlier subjected to, which resulted in her inability to walk and in her becoming convinced that she herself is both a terrorist and the aunt of a terrorist.51

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The narrator was able to witness these events because he is a member of the Knesset. At one point, his aunt glances at him furtively, as if saying, “Do you understand, my nephew?”52 thus signaling her belief that what she suffered has happened because he was a member of the Knesset for the Communist party. Later, the narrator turns to the officials responsible in order to protest what has happened. Suddenly, he sees that she is being brought back from the plane to the tarmac of the airport, lying on the stretcher with her eyes shut. She is struck by actual physical paralysis: The inspectors surrounded her from all sides. She was carried by some of them to the inspection room for a second time; this time, she was lying on the “litter” (al-‘arsh). Surrounding the stretcher and carrying it to the inspection room, their appearances took on different forms, as if they were cherubim: like a lion, like a calf, like an eagle, like a goat, like a cow, like an ox, like a mule, like a donkey, like a she-ass, like a peacock, like a she-camel, like a buffalo, like a buffalo cow, like male and female hippopotami. But I did not see among them the appearance of a human being.53

The narrator mentions that his aunt ascribed this “honor,” that is, the relentless inspection and her total nakedness, to her being one of his relatives. Her husband escaped a similar fate because he told the inspectors that he was not related to the narrator by blood, that he is merely the husband of the narrator’s aunt. The author also declares that he is relating this story in al-Mutasha'il for the purpose of “eternal revenge, . . . a revenge that is passed on from generation to generation, for what they did to his aunt, Naziha.”54 In Khurrafiyya he returns to the story in a more remorseless fashion, concluding the above scene by asking: Until when will their frivolity make them believe that they are able to assume characteristics that can only be assumed by the mighty and great Creator, who does not change: they undress them and they exile them.55

In the adapted text above we can see how the writer, in addition to presenting the Jewish characters in an unfavorable light, also appeals to Egyptian readers by referring to sayyid ‘ishta and sitt ‘ishta 56: the former is the word in the Egyptian dialect for “hippopotamus,” while the latter, which means “female hippopotamus” and is a play on sayyid (Mr.) and sitt (Mrs.), is intended as a joke. The following excerpt provides another example in which the writer appeals to Egyptian readers through the use of the expression habba habba (slowly slowly):

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For the first time he smiled before me and said: Carry me slowly, just as I have carried myself for a long time. And let me carry this truth to you habba habba just as it plucked me slowly slowly.57

However, in the same page, Emile Habibi does not forget his Hebrew readers either, as shown below, where he addresses his Hebrew translator: I answered: Nothing distanced me except what appeared here [as the real cause] (ma ‘ada ‘illa hadha alladhi bada) and that [reason] will never appear and will never return [to be an effective factor] (wama lam yabdu ma ‘ada walan ya‘ud). I would challenge Anton Shammas to see if he could translate these contrasting yet similar expressions into any language, be it close or remote, and especially into the kind of ungrammatical and foppish language our press uses to its disgrace, as if to compensate for what they [speakers of Hebrew] have taken from us beside other things which they have taken from us as al-manqal, kassah, dakhilak, tislam, dabka and mabsut or mabsuta, which can be also turned into a masculine plural form, mabsutim, and a feminine plural form, mabsutat.58

The following footnote in the novel explains who Anton Shammas is: A well-known and skilled scholar and writer who translated my novels al-Mutasha'il and Ikhtayyi into Hebrew. Experts in the twin languages claim that he has enriched the Hebrew language—the author.59

In another place Habibi mentions the Israeli-Jewish writer Sami Michael and addresses his comments to him: Always we, we and not our enemy, were the victims of violence. Therefore you have no right, Samir Marid [Sami Michael] the friend of the young, to question the sacrifice made by your comrades, to wonder if it was in vain. It was not in vain. They did not go as victims of their will, but as victims of the violence of our enemy, oh Samir Marid. One does not blame the victim for being a victim, but should rather blame our enemy for not going away. “Don’t blame the victim”—Do you remember?60

In a footnote he explains that Samir Marid is the well-known Israeli novelist Sami Michael, originally from Iraq.61 All these developments bring us back to the beginning of this chapter and to the writer Riyad Baydas, with whom we conclude our discussion. One of the few stories in which Baydas focuses on a Jewish character is “Bakiran, fi Had'at al-Sabah” [Early in the calm morning].62 Rahel, the owner of the house in which the narrator (Israeli-Arab) lives, stops by the

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apartment one morning in order to talk to him. She tells him how happy she was when she was growing up in Iraq and asks him, as a journalist, to write her life story. She tells him of her dream of visiting Iraq, even for just one day. She also tells him about her aunt, who was in love with an Arab in Iraq but was forced by her relatives to come with them to the Promised Land. Rahel complains about the false promises about life in Israel made to her before her immigration. Another time, she comes to tell him that the war between Iraq and Iran has ended and that Iraq has emerged victorious. She believes that her dream is about to be realized. Then she invites him and his girlfriend to a meal of Iraqi specialties. Rahel continues to urge the narrator to write her life story because she cannot express herself well in Arabic. The narrator is interested in the story and promises to set it down on paper but takes his time in doing so. Then Rahel falls ill and enters the hospital, still urging him to hurry up and write the story. In the end, Rahel dies believing that the narrator has carried out her request. The story ends with a comment by the narrator: “I wanted to write a documentary book or a long story on her life. However, I did not succeed. All I could do was to write down one word only: ‘dream.’”63 This story presents an unhappy woman who cannot adapt to Israeli society and who yearns to return to Iraq, so much so that she is happy when Iraq wins the war. Superficially, the plot seems to focus on the narrator’s understanding of the woman’s situation. But actually it does not differ from other stories in that it confirms a perception that is widely held in the Arab world: that the Jews were forced to immigrate to Israel despite the excellent conditions under which they lived in their countries of origin. It is worth mentioning that the writer’s orientation toward the Arab world is the reason he chose to use the name “Rahel,” which has a negative connotation and implies that its bearer is a woman of doubtful character and manners, that is, a whore, a usurer, or the like.64 Although Rahel is presented as a suffering, tormented woman due to her inability to adapt to Israeli society, the narrator cannot write her story or identify with her. The most he can do is to jot down the title of her story, which remains unwritten: “Dream.” This story thus exemplifies the growing tendency among Palestinian writers in Israel in recent years to avoid any encounter with Jewish characters and the Israeli environment. This is what Baydas’ hero does: he fails to keep his promise to Rahel to write her story and does not empathize with her, for he has problems of his own that distract him from his social ambience. These problems egg him on in his quest for a unique identity, which, in effect, implies severance from the Israeli reality.

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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

9.

10.

11. 12. 13. 14.

15.

16.

17. 18.

19.

Riyad Baydas, Sawt Khafit (Nicosia, Cyprus: Dar Farah, 1990), p. 7–12. Ibid., p. 11. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid. Emile Tuma, “Hal Tata'aththar al-Thaqafa al-‘Arabiyya bi'l-Mujtama‘ alYahudi?” al-Jadid, 1–2 (1963): 6. See also Ghassan Kanafani, Adab alMuqawama fi Filastin al-Muhtalla, 1948–1966 (Beirut: Dar al-'Adab, n. d.), p. 9–12. Shmuel Moreh, “Arabic Literature in Israel,” Hamizrah Hehadash 9, nos. 1–2 (1958/9, in Hebrew): 27. S. Moreh, Fahras al-Matbu‘at al-‘Arabiyya fi Isra'il (Jerusalem: Mount Scopus Center, 1974), pp. 95–96. For studies on al-Jadid, see Mahmud Ghanayim, al-Jadid fi Nisf Qarn (Beit Berl and Kufr Qar‘, Israel: Center of Arabic Literature Studies and A. Dar al-Huda, 2004); Nabih al-Qasim, al-Haraka al-Shi‘riyya al-Filastiniyya fi Biladina (Kufr Qar‘, Israel: A. Dar al-Huda, 2003). On the literary product of Jewish writers from Iraq, see Shimon Ballas, “al-Tawajjuh al-Waqi‘i fi Qisas Shalom Darwish,” al-Karmil 10 (1989): 27–60; Shmuel Moreh, al-Qissa al-Qasira ‘Ind Yahud al-‘Iraq (Jerusalem: Magnes, Hebrew University, 1981). Shmuel Moreh and Mahmud ‘Abbasi, Tarajim wa-Athar fi al-'Adab al-‘Arabi fi Isra'il (Jerusalem and Shfar‘am: Public Council for Culture and Arts, Arabic Culture Department and Harry S. Truman Research Institute, Hebrew University and al-Mashreq Publishing House, 1987), p. 117–19. Moreh, Fahras al-Matbu‘at, 1974, pp. 92, 97. Moreh and ‘Abbasi, Tarajim wa-Athar, 1987, pp. 65–66. Al-Qasim, al-Haraka al-Shi‘riyya, 2003, p. 27–28. A similar theme appears through the dealing on the Jewish characters by Sasson Somekh, “Cold, Tall Building: The Jewish Neighbor in the Works of Arab Authors,” Jerusalem Quarterly 52 (Fall 1989): 113–18. Najwa Qa‘war, ‘Abiru al-Sabil (Beirut: Dar Rihani, 1956); Najwa Qa‘war, Durub wa-Masabih (Nazareth: Matba‘at al-Hakim, 1956); Najwa Qa‘war, liMan al-Rabi‘ (Nazareth: Matba‘at al-Hakim, 1963). For details see Mahmud Ghanayim, al-Madar al-Sa‘b: Rihlat al-Qissa al-Filastiniyya fi Isra'il (Haifa and Kufr Qar‘: Manshurat al-Karmil and A. Dar al-Huda, 1995), pp. 61–105. Muhammad ‘Ali Taha, Likay Tushriq al-Shams (Nazareth: Matba‘at al-Hakim, 1964), pp. 99–108. A similar theme appears in “Sulha fi Mustashfa al-Majanin” by Mahmud ‘Abbasi, which was published in 1970. In that story the Arab and Jewish inmates in a hospital for the mentally ill discover that it is the foreign patients who are stirring up trouble between the two sides. See Mahmud ‘Abbasi, fi alHazi‘ al-Akhir (Jerusalem: al-Sharq, 1973), pp. 27–32. Taha, Likay Tushriq al-Shams, 1964, pp. 107–8.

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20. Tawfiq Fayyad, Al-Mushawwahun (Haifa: Matba‘at al-Ittihad, 1963). For details see Ghanayim, al-Madar al-Sa‘b, 1995, p. 109–147. 21. ‘Isa Lubani, “al-Mushawwahun,” al-Jadid 5 (1964): 39. 22. Suhayl ‘Atallah, “al-Mushawwahun,” al-Yawm, May 15, 1964, 5, 7. See also Michel Haddad, “Nisa' wa-Khubz wa-Tuma'nina,” al-Yawm, June 15, 1964, 5. 23. Lubani, “al-Mushawwahun,” 1964, p. 40. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. For more details, see, for example, Sammy Smooha, The Orientation and Politicization of the Arab Minority in Israel (Haifa: Jewish-Arab Center, University of Haifa, 1984); Sammy Smooha, Arabs and Jews in Israel. vol. 1: Conflicting and Shared Attitudes in a Divided Society (Boulder, CO, and London: Westview, 1989); Sammy Smooha, Arabs and Jews in Israel. vol. 2: Change and Continuity in Mutual Intolerance (Boulder, CO, and London: Westview, 1992); Elie Rekhess, ed., The Arabs in Israeli Politics: Dilemmas of National Identity (Tel Aviv University: Dayan Center Press, 1998) (Hebrew); Kamal Abdel-Malek and David C. Jacobson (eds.), Israeli and Palestinian Identities in History and Literature (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999); As‘ad Ghanem, The PalestinianArab Minority in Israel, 1948–2000 (Albany: SUNY, 2001). 27. Emile Habibi, Sudasiyyat al-Ayyam al-Sitta wa-Qisas 'Ukhra (Haifa: al-Ittihad, 1970). First published in al-Jadid 4 (1968): 7–8, 35; al-Jadid 5: 5–7, 38; al-Jadid 6: 11–13; al-Jadid 7: 8–10; al-Jadid 8: 6–7; al-Jadid 9–10: 11–15. 28. Habibi, Sudasiyyat al-Ayyam, 1970, pp. 65–76. 29. Ibid., pp. 68–69. 30. Name of a place. A famous crooked elevation between Nablus and Ramallah stated here as a parallel to another elevation: al-Abhariyya, between Nazareth and Haifa. 31. Habibi, Sudasiyyat al-Ayyam, 1970, p. 71. 32. Ibid., p. 75. 33. Ibid., pp. 55–62. 34. Ibid., p. 60. 35. Emile Habibi, al-Waqa'i‘ al-Ghariba fi Ikhtifa' Sa‘id 'Abi al-Nahs al-Mutasha'il. This novel was published in a number of editions, the first of which was by Manshurat Arabesque (Haifa, 1974). The quotes in this paper are from Salah al-Din Publications (Jerusalem, 1977). For further details see Mahmud Ghanayim, Fi Mabna al-Nass (Jatt, Israel: al-Yasar, 1987), especially pp. 137–40. 36. On irony and humor in The Pessoptimist, see Fakhri Salih, Fi al-Riwaya alFilastiniyya (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Hadith, 1985), pp. 37–54; Faruq Wadi, Thalath ‘Alamat fi al-Riwaya al-Filastiniyya (Acre, Israel: al-Aswar, 1985), pp. 129–40. 37. Habibi, al-Waqa'i‘, 1977, p. 178. The translation is mine. See also the English translation of Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Trevor Le Gassick, The Secret Life of Saeed, The Ill-Fated Pessoptimist, A Palestinian Who Became a Citizen of Israel (NewYork: Vantage Press, 1982), p. 135. 38. See Jayyusi and Le Gassick, Secret Life of Saeed, 1982, p. 120. 39. Habibi, al-Waqa'i‘, 1977, pp. 155–56.

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40. Ibid., pp. 119–20. 41. Sa‘id ‘Allush, ‘Unf al-Mutakhayyal al-Riwa'i fi 'A‘mal Emile Habibi (Beirut: Markaz al-Inma' al-Qawmi, n. d.), p. 6. 42. A. Faris al-Shidyaq in his book al-Saq ‘ala al-Saq fi Ma Huwa al-Faryaq, published in 1855. On the book and the author, see Suleiman Jubran, Kitab alFaryaq, Mabnahu, Uslubuhu, wa-Sukhriyatuh (Tel Aviv: Dirasat wa-Nusus Adabiyya Series, Tel Aviv University, 1991). 43. See Marun ‘Abbud’s narrative and critical works, for example: Min al-Jirab (Beirut: Dar al-Thaqafa, 1966). 44. See, for example, Jamal al-Ghitani, al-Zayni Barakat (Damascus: Wizarat alThaqafa wal-Irashad al-Qawmi, 1974); al-Zuwayl (Baghdad: Manshurat Wizarat al-I‘lam, 1974). 45. In the novel Dhat (Cairo: Dar al-Mustaqbal al-‘Arabi, 1992), Sun‘allah Ibrahim breaks with certain basic elements of the traditional novel, such as that of the narrator for example, and at the same time adds a new element to the novel, the use of newspaper clippings. 46. Early signs of this trend can be seen in Taha’s collection al-Nakhla al-Ma'ila (Kufr Qar‘: A. Dar al-Huda, 1995), particularly in his stories “al-Nakhla alMa'ila” and “Ma Tayassar min Surat Zahrat al-Mada'in,” pp. 5–14, 113–25; and in Muhammad Naffa‘’s story “Khuffash ‘ala al-Lawn al-Abyad,” al-Jadid 12 (1986): 62–74. 47. Somekh, “Cold, Tall Building,” 1989. 48. For details see Mahmud Ghanayim, “A Magic Journey: The Admission of Arabic Fiction in Israel to the Arab World,” Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures 1, no. 2 (1998): 206–7. 49. Emile Habibi, Khurrafiyyat Saraya Bint al-Ghul (Haifa: Arabesque, 1991). 50. Ibid., p. 104. 51. Ibid., pp. 112–15. 52. Ibid., p. 113. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid., p. 114. 55. Ibid., p. 115. 56. Ibid., p. 113. 57. Ibid., p. 151. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid., footnote no. 11. 60. Ibid., pp. 155–56. 61. Ibid., p. 156, footnote no. 15. 62. Baydas, Sawt Khafit, 1990, pp. 47–52. 63. Ibid., p. 52. 64. Somekh mentions that the two names “Rachel” (in its French pronunciation, not Rahel) and “Esther” have a negative connotation for the Arab reader, Somekh, “Cold, Tall Building,” 1989, p. 125. It seems to me that “Rahel” also falls into this category.

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Notes on Contributors

Sariel Birnbaum: PhD candidate in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Published “Historical Writing of Sayyid Al-Qimni” in Qeshet Hakhadasha (Hebrew). Hanita Brand: Lecturer of Arabic and Hebrew literatures at the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo. Coauthor of Adwaa Daniya: A Guide for High School Teachers of Arabic (Tel Aviv: Massada, 2002, in Arabic). Published numerous articles on Palestinian and Israeli women’s literature and on the construction of Palestinian national narrative. Mahmud Ghanayim: Professor and Chair, Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Tel Aviv University. Author of A Magic Journey. Palestinian Fiction in Israel: Between Literature and Politics (Wiesbaden, Germany, 2008); On the Structure of the Text: Study on Emil Habibi’s Novel, “The Strange Story of the Disappearance of Sa`is Abi al-Najs the Pessoptimist” (Jatt, Israel, 1987, in Arabic); Stream of Consciousness in Modern Arabic Novel: A Stylistic Study (Beirut, 1992, in Arabic); Arduous Orbiting: The Course of Palestinian Fiction in Israel (Haifa, 1995, in Arabic); in addition to numerous articles in scholarly journals. Meir Litvak: Associate Professor at the Department of Middle Eastern and African History, Senior Fellow the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University. Author of Shi`i Scholars of Nineteenth Century Iraq: The `Ulama’ of Najaf and Karbala’ (Cambridge, 1998); coauthor of From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust (London and New York, 2009). Edited Middle Eastern Societies and the West: Accommodation or Clash of Civilizations? (Tel Aviv, 2006). Michael Milshtein: Fellow at the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. Author of Between Revolution and State: Fatah and the Palestinian Authority (Tel Aviv, 2004, Hebrew); Hamas: A Social Profile (Tel Aviv, 2008, Hebrew).

238

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Esther Webman: Research Fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and the Roth Center for the Study of AntiSemitism and Racism, Tel Aviv University. Coauthor of From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust (London: Hurst and New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). Published numerous articles on Arab anti-Semitism, on Islamist ideology, and on Middle Eastern responses to globalization.

Index

Abbas, Mahmud (Abu Mazen), 61, 69, 159 ‘Abd al-Hamid II, 152 ‘Abd al-Jawad, Salih, 64, 78, 93 ‘Abd al-Nasir, Gamal, 33, 51, 142, 151 ‘Abd Rabbuh, Yasir, 61 ‘Abd al-Rahman, ‘A’isha, 172 ‘Abdullah, Siham, 184 ‘Abidi, Mahmud al-, 100 Abu-‘Arkub, Khadija, 183 Abu Lughod, Ibrahim, 76, 88, 108 Accad, Evelyne 176 Acre, 30, 42, 61, 67, 80, 82, 83 Aegean Sea, 113 ‘Ahd al-, 2 Ahl al-dhimma, 63 Al-Ahram, 45 Al-Ahram Weekly, 38 Algeria, 159, 187, 188 ‘Ali, Naji al-, 92, 94 Amman, 104, 208 Anderson, Benedict, 7, 8, 10, 11, 145, 146, 164, 234 Al-Aqsa. For al-Aqsa Intifada, see Intifada martyr’s brigade, 123 Mosque, 107, 119, 120, 123, 132, 141, 165 Society, 89, 96 Arab Cultural Organization, 104 Arab Higher Committee, 2, 3 Arabian Gulf, 100 Arabian Peninsula, 99, 100, 150 Arabic, 2, 5, 6, 8, 23, 29, 34, 38, 42, 88, 92–94, 98, 100, 118, 126–29, 139,

147, 159, 189, 197–99, 203, 207, 213, 216 Arabism, 2, 8, 11, 22–23, 30, 51, 98, 100, 103–4, 126, 141–42, 151 Arab League, 3 Arab League Summit, 1964, 52 ‘Arafat, Jamil, 88 Arafat, Yasser, 33, 53–55, 57, 58, 64, 66, 69 Aramaic, 117, 118 Archeology, 101, 112, 115, 116, 121 ‘Arif, ‘Arif al-, 38, 73, 91, 100, 101, 126 Arksey, Hilary, 175 Art(s), 16, 42, 55, 57, 78–82, 90, 93, 106, 108, 186, 196 ‘Ashrawi, Hannan, 118 Assad, Hafiz al-, 142 Association of Forty, 85 ‘Atallah, Rawda, 87 ‘Atallah, Suhayl, 201 Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal, 152 Auschwitz, 37, 158 ‘Awawda, Wadi‘a, 87, 89 ‘Awd, Sa‘ud ‘Awd, 107 Al-‘Awda Organization, 78, 86, 92 ‘Awdah, Iman, 88 ‘Awwad, Hanan, 183 ‘Ayn Hud (Ein Hod), 84, 85, 87, 96 ‘Ayn Jalut, 119, 145 Al-Ayyam (daily), 42, 57, 66, 67, 82, 92, 166, 167, 210 Ba‘ath, 51 Badil, 45, 87 Badr, Liyana, 181

240

INDEX

Baghdad, 119 Bakhari, Baha’ al-, 82 Bakri, Muhammad, 40, 83 Balad Party, 52 Balfour (Declaration), 50, 119, 138, 155, 160 Ballas, Shimon, 23, 80, 94, 214 Banna, Hasan al-, 145, 154 Banu-Can‘an tribe, 100 Barakat, Taysir, 82 Barghuthi, ‘Abd al-Latif al-, 106 Barghuthi, Amal Kharisha al-, 180, 188 Barghuthi, ‘Umar Salih al-, 99, 126 Al-Barwa, 73, 79 Basel, 50 Basil, Abu, 117 Basiso, Mu‘ayn, 79 Al-Bayan, 41, 45 Baybars, 143, 145 Baydas, Riyad, 194–96, 212, 213 Bedouins, 107, 108, 113 Beersheba, 56, 67–68, 92 Beisan, 56 Ben Gurion, David, 64 Bilad Al-Sham, 2, 11 Bir‘am, 85, 86, 90, 94, 95 Bir Zayt University, 75, 78, 82, 92, 104, 109 Bishara ‘Azmi, 29, 52, 66, 86, 87 Bowman, Glen, 2, 11, 21, 24 Budayri, Musa al-, 75 Byzantine, 107, 148–50 Caetani, Leone, 99 Camp David, 120 Canaanites, 5, 12, 13, 16, 18, 21, 23, 97–134, 139, 148, 150, 160, 163, 165 Cana‘na, Sharif, 183, 184 capitalism, 7–8 Christianity/Christians, 2, 8, 16, 34, 62, 85, 101, 118, 123, 132, 141, 147–50, 157, 165 cinema, 31, 38, 41, 42, 83, 94 colonialism, 50, 102, 138, 152, 159

commemoration, 14–16, 19–21, 25–27, 32–34, 37–39, 55, 57–59, 75, 88–90, 92, 116, 131, 172 Committees of Working Women, 180 Communism, 3, 51, 82, 143, 197–98, 200–201 Party, Israel, 79, 104, 105, 107, 197–99, 202, 210, 211 community of memory, 19, 48, 72, 90, 95, 103 Company of Arabic Books, 198 Connerton, Paul, 171–73, 177–79, 181 Cooke, Miriam, 175, 183 Cooperative Company of Jewish Workers in Palestine, 198 countermemory, 21, 172, 173 Covenant, Palestinian, 32, 106, 136, 147 Crusades, 101, 127, 140, 150 Crusaders, 102, 119, 144, 145, 148, 150, 160, 165, 170 Culture Ministry, Palestinian, 50 Cyprus, 210 Dabbagh, Mustafa Murad al-, 73, 91, 100, 101, 110, 126, 129, 133, 141, 163, 164 Dajjani, Ahmad Sidqi al-, 32, 43 Dakkak, Ibrahim, 27 Damascus, 9, 91, 94, 106, 126, 147, 148, 178, 182 Blood Libel, 147 Dar Al-Dhakira, 55 Darwish, Mahmud, 34, 54–56, 73, 75, 79, 80, 90, 92, 93, 111, 141, 162, 214 Dawaiymeh, 41 Dawud, Bishara, 159 Dead Sea, 117–18 Scrolls, 117 Declaration of Independence Israeli, 10 Palestinian 1988, 10, 11, 109 Declaration of 1965, PLO, 32 Deir al-Balakh, 61 Deir Yassin, 40, 92 project, 40

INDEX

Department of Culture, Palestinian, 104 diaspora Jewish, 34, 35, 124 Palestinian, 49, 52, 71, 76, 77, 86, 104, 115, 170 Ein Hod. See ‘Ayn Hud Elections, January 2006, Palestinian, 51, 58, 125 Emorites, 100 Encyclopedia Palaestina. See Palestinian Encyclopedia Enloe, Cynthia, 174, 180 Ethnie, 7, 11 Europe(an), 7, 8, 11, 16, 34, 50, 63, 77, 99, 147, 159, 160, 167, 181 Al-Fajr, 106, 111, 198 Faluji, ‘Imad al-, 54 Fanni, Dr. Ibrahim al-, 115 Faruqi, Sulayman Taji al-, 29 Fatah, 4, 21, 23, 32, 51–53, 56–59, 66, 68, 81, 103, 112, 118, 123, 152, 154, 156, 186 Al-Fatat, 2 Faurisson, Robert, 34, 43 Fayyad, Tawfiq, 81, 93, 200, 201 Federation of Charitable Associations, 180 Filastin (biweekly), 8 Filastin al-Muslima (monthly), 59, 68 Filastin al-Thawra, 106, 108, 110 Foucault, Michel, 172–74, 180 France/French, 9, 11, 15, 34–36, 159 Franklin-Lytle, Paula, 11, 24 Galilee, 67, 73, 82, 84, 85, 88, 107, 108, 204 Gaza Strip, 4, 27, 28, 32, 39, 49, 53, 58–59, 61, 66, 73, 82, 86, 89, 111, 129, 154, 170 Gellner, Ernest, 5–7, 12 Gerber, Haim, 9 Germany, 158–60, 166 German(s), 35, 36, 63, 64, 77, 91, 159, 160, 167, 168

241

Gershoni, Israel, 14 Gertz, Nurith, 41 Ghazaleh, Ilham Abu, 183 Ghitani, Jamal al-, 209 Giacaman, Rita, 185 Glavanis-Grantham, Kathy, 185, 187 Greek Orthodox Church/Christians, 85, 148 Greeks, 63, 100, 117 Gush Emunim, 124, 162 Haaretz, 208 Habash, Sakhar, 53 Habibi, Emile, 81, 84, 94, 197, 198, 203–5, 207, 209, 210, 212, 215, 216 Haddad, Michel, 198 Haddad, Yvonne, 179, 180 Hadith, 119, 121, 122, 141, 200 Haidar, Aziz, 3, 22, 23 Haifa, 41, 67, 72, 80, 83, 88, 93, 198, 203, 204, 207, 215 Al-Hakawati, 83, 116 Halbwachs, Maurice, 13, 17–18 Hamas, 10, 12, 16, 20, 21, 58, 59, 89, 112, 114, 117, 119, 121, 123–25, 136, 142–49, 153, 154, 160, 161 Hamas Charter, 136, 142–45, 147, 149 Hamid, Salim, 115 Hanna, ‘Atallah, 148 Haqiqat al-Amr, 198 Harkabi, Yehoshafat, 23, 42, 43, 66, 72, 126 Hasan, Bilal al-, 118 Hasan, Nizar, 83 Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. See Jordan Al-Hayat (daily), 35, 38 Al-Hayat al-Jadida (daily), 38, 57, 118, 159, 160 Hazima, Ibrahim, 82 Hebrew Language, 23, 72, 81, 83–85, 117, 120, 140, 210, 212 People, 100, 110, 111, 113, 116, 120, 157, 167

242

INDEX

Hijra, 35 Hillawi, Majid, 34, 35 Histadrut, 197, 199, 210 Hittin, 102, 123, 164 Hobsbawm, Eric, 5–7, 12 Holocaust, 10, 27, 28, 34–40, 43–45, 61, 77, 78, 86, 93, 147, 158–61, 167, 168 Husayn, Rashid, 80, 198 Husayni, ‘Abd al Qadir al-, 31, 154, 156 Husayni, Faysal al-, 187 Husayni, Mufti Hajj Amin al-, 2, 102, 153 Husayni, Muhammad Baqir al-, 107 Husayni, Musa Kazem al-, 2 Hut, Shafiq al-, 31, 78, 92 Ibrahim, Hanna, 81, 197, 199 Ibrahim, Hasan, 137 Ibrahim, Saad Eddin, 29 Ibrahim, Sun‘allah, 209 Ikrit, 85, 95, 96 Imperialism, 9, 98, 108, 149, 152, 153 Initiative Committee to Defend the Rights of the Uprooted of 1948—Citizens of the State of Israel, 87 International Women’s Day, 185 Intifada Al-Aqsa, 40, 58–60, 64, 75, 89, 123, 142, 164, 170 First, 16, 20, 32, 106, 135, 151, 179, 182–86, 188, 210 Iraq, 2, 6, 9, 48, 83, 105, 107, 113, 123, 156, 165, 197, 198, 212–14 Al-‘Isa, ‘Isa and Daud, 8 ‘Isa, Maruth, 89 Islamic Movement, in Israel (IM), 89 Israel, State of, 3, 10, 27, 29, 36, 55, 78, 84, 86, 87, 97, 169, 194, 197, 198, 205 Arab citizens, of, 10, 19, 80, 90, 138, 193, 202, 203 Israelites, 100, 106, 110–11, 113–15 Al-Isra’ wal-Mi‘raj, 102, 119, 120, 149

Istiqlal Party, 98 Al-Ittihad, 197–98, 208 ‘Izzat, Mahmud ‘Arfa, 29 Jabra, Ibrahim Jabra, 48, 50, 65 Al-Jadid, 107, 198, 201 Jaffa, 8, 41, 56, 61, 67, 78, 83, 88, 90, 91, 177, 199 Jahiliyya, 112, 114, 145 Al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya (daily), 29 Jebusites, 100, 117, 120 Jenin, 40, 60, 69 Jerusalem, 2, 9, 27, 72, 75, 83, 100, 102, 107, 110, 112, 116, 119–22, 139–41, 148–51, 155, 158, 184, 186, 187, 193 Jerusalem Center for Research and Documentation, 115 Jerusalem Women’s Studies Center, 184 Jesus, 118, 141, 147, 148, 157 jihad, 32, 68, 124, 141, 143, 144, 153, 154 Al-Jihadiyya, 154 Al-Jihad al-Muqaddas, 154 John Paul II, 37, 118 Jordan (Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan), 4, 8, 9, 24, 28, 32, 33, 40, 44, 45, 51, 66, 71, 77, 92, 98, 104, 123, 128, 131, 156, 173, 178, 204, 208 Jordanian University, 104 Jordan River, 9, 100, 146 Judaism, 100, 113, 116, 118, 157 Juha, Amia, 82 Kafr Eyn Siniya, 55 Kafr Kana, 84 Kafr Qasem massacre, 87 Kanafani, Ghassan, 30, 80, 88 Kansteiner, Wulf, 15, 25 Karmi, ‘Abd al-Karim al-, 56, 79 Karmi, Ghada al-, 71–72, 75 Kawar, Amal, 181, 185 Khadr, Hasan, 61, 74 Khalidi, Rashid, 34, 35, 38, 62, 76, 139, 152 Khalidi, Salah al-, 143

INDEX

Khalidi, Tarif, 99 Khalidi, Walid al-, 28, 73, 139, 159 Khalifa, Sahar, 172, 184 Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre, 38 Khalil, Umm. See Salama, Samiha Khalili, Ghazi al-, 177 Khan Yunis, 61 Khater, Hasan, 158 Khatib, Amin al-, 181, 186 Khatib, Hajj Muhammad Nimr al-, 72 Khazars, 100, 113, 154 Khleifi, George, 41 Khouri, Elias, 37, 41, 81 Khouri, Rami, 40 Kimche, Jon and David, 159 Knesset, 52, 86, 95, 211 Knight, Peter, 175 Kuthrani, Wajih, 151 Labadi, Fadwa, 184 Land Day, 87 Latin America, 8 Lebanon, 3, 4, 9, 28, 56, 71, 77, 79, 82, 83, 107, 154, 175, 177, 179, 183, 210 Mount, 107, 108 Le Bon, Gustave, 58 Levinger, Matthew, 12, 25 Literature, Arabic, 43, 80, 175, 194, 200, 206, 208–10, 214 Lonni, Ada, 34 Lowenthal, David, 18, 21, 25, 173, 189 Lubani, ‘Isa, 201, 202 Lydda, 41, 208, 209 Ma‘alul, 84, 86 Ma‘ariv, 208 Mahfuz, Najib, 88 Majd al-Krum, 88 Mana‘, ‘Adel, 88 Mana‘, Hashim Salih, 171, 182, 187 Mandate, British, 2, 7, 9, 32, 98–101, 103, 104, 106 Manfaluti, Mustafa Lutfi al-, 206 Mapam, 198 Masalha, ‘Umar, 102

243

Mash’harawi, Rashid al-, 83 Mash‘ur, Lufti, 89 Massad, Joseph A., 36 Mawlid al-Nabi, 102 Mazini, Ibrahim ‘Abd al-Qadir al-, 28 Mecca, 35, 141, 149, 151 Media, Palestinian, 40, 53, 62, 111, 112, 119, 122, 135–68, 183, 199 Medina, 35, 141, 143, 147 Mediterranean, 100 Metahistory, 138, 144–45, 149, 160 million persons’ march, the, 33, 57 Ministry of Education, Palestinian, 55, 129, 131 missionary activity, 6 Mongols, 119, 143, 144 Mount Carmel, 85 Mu‘ammar, Khaled, 177 Mujtama‘ al- (journal), 198 Muhammad, ‘Awad Muhammad, 35 Muhammad, the Prophet, 35, 102, 112, 119–21, 123, 141, 143, 147, 149, 153 Muslim Brotherhood, 58, 89, 141, 145, 153, 154 Muslim-Christian associations, 155 Muwaylihi, Muhammad al-, 200, 206 myths, 10–11, 18, 21, 27–35, 48–49, 58, 61, 71, 73–75, 97, 112, 114, 115, 117, 119, 121, 122, 138–40, 146, 148–50, 152, 160–62 Nabi Musa festival, 102 Nablus, 52, 116, 124, 187, 204 Naffa‘, Muhammad, 209 Naja, Ibrahim Abu, 57 Najib, George, 80 Nakba, 3–4, 10, 14–17, 21, 27–96, 103, 116, 117, 125, 36, 140, 155, 172, 181 Day, 88 Nashashibi, Nasser al-Din al-, 80 Nasro, Fathiyya, 75 Nassar, ‘Azzam, 74 Nassar, Issam, 30 Nasser. See ‘Abd al-Nasir, Gamal

244

INDEX

Natsheh, Rafiq al-, 152 Natshe, Yusuf Sa‘id al-, 106 Nazareth, 84–86, 118, 147, 164, 198–204, 215 Arab Culture Society of, 87 Nazis, 37, 78, 156, 158–60 Nazism, 36, 158–60, 167 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 172 Nora, Pierre, 13, 14, 17, 55, 123 Nusseibeh, Sari, 62 Occupied Territories, 86, 104, 205, 209 October clashes, 2000, 87–89 Oslo Accords, 58, 83, 111, 181, 187 Ottoman(s), 6, 8, 71, 72, 89, 107, 108, 151, 161 Ottoman Empire, 2, 5, 6, 62, 108, 151, 152 Pax Ottomanica, 8 Palestine Mandatory, 9, 10, 47, 84, 129, 145, 146, 153 Ottoman, 8 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 4, 10, 12, 19, 20, 27, 31, 32, 36, 49, 51, 58, 59, 64, 71, 73, 78, 79, 83, 87, 103–7, 110, 111, 136, 139–41, 146, 152, 126, 160, 173, 180, 181, 182, 184, 186 Provisional Political Program, 39 Palestinian Authority, 33, 73, 76, 160 Palestinian Encyclopedia, 81, 104–6 Palestinian Executive Committee, 2 Palestinian National Authority (PNA), 12, 34, 38, 53–59, 62, 73–74, 76–78, 81, 86–89, 97, 111–15, 117–21, 124–25, 135–68 textbooks, 32, 55, 66–67, 114, 118–19, 122–24, 132, 135, 146, 161 Palestinian National Charter, 1964, 39 Palestinian National Theater. See alHakawati Palestinian Women’s Film Festival, 186–87

Pan-Arabism. See Arabism Partition Plan, 1947, 3, 27, 50, 63, 190 peace process, 32, 91 Pedersen, Birgitte Rahbek, 179 People’s Appeal, Palestinian, 34, 37 Persian(s), 111, 121, 123 Peteet, Julie, 176 Philistines, 100, 113 Press, 8, 27, 76, 81, 104, 115, 126, 136, 146, 186, 197, 208 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 146, 147 poetry, 16, 30, 31, 79, 80, 82, 90, 105, 107, 171, 172, 175, 182 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), 24, 59, 88 Qa‘awar, Jamal, 80 Qa‘awar, Najwa, 80 Qashu‘a, Sayyid, 81, 89 Qasim, Samih al-, 105, 107 Qassam, ‘Izz al-Din al-, 31, 109, 124, 154 Qaymari, Ata, 34 Qidwa, Jarir al-, 121 Al-Quds (daily), 38, 62, 82 Al-Quds, 150 University, 62, 75 Qudwa, Jarir al-, 151 Qur’an, 8, 113, 117, 121, 122, 132, 133, 143, 147, 153, 157, 158, 161, 167, 179 Al-Ra’id (journal), 198 Ramallah, 55, 83, 180, 187, 204, 215 Ramli, Kushajim al-, 107 Al-Raya (daily), 153 rebellion, of, 1936–1939, 2, 28, 29, 32, 126, 148, 149, 152–54, 165, 166 Refugees, 3, 4, 19, 21, 29–33, 36, 38, 39, 47, 51, 52, 54, 56, 59–64, 71, 72, 76, 78–87, 90, 137, 177, 181, 196, 208, 209 Camps, 3, 4, 14, 28, 32, 38, 40, 52, 59–61, 63, 72, 77, 82, 83, 86, 177–79

INDEX

return, Palestinian, 29, 31–34, 38, 39, 41, 48, 49, 51, 52, 54, 56, 59–64, 72–87, 181, 208 Israeli law, of, 38 Al-Risala (daily), 147 Riyan, Shaykh Kamal, 89 Russia, 41, 56, 108 Sa‘adi, Shaykh Farhan al-, 154 Sadik, ‘Adli, 159 Al-Safafari, 85 Safed (Safad), 41, 56, 108 Saffuriyya, 83, 85 Safi, Talal al-, 106, 111 Saghiya, Hazim, 35 Saladin, 102, 143, 148, 150–51, 161 Salama, Samiha, 180 Salibi, Kamal, 158 Samrin, Raja’, 182, 187 Sarsur, Shaykh Ibrahim, 137 Sayigh, Rosemary, 3, 22, 23, 37, 44, 45, 66, 75, 185, 191, 192 Sayigh, Yezid, 75 Schwartz, Barry, 15 Semites, 99–100, 110 Sha‘ath, Ghalib, 83 Sha‘ban, Buthayna, 173, 178, 181, 182, 186, 188 Shahwan, Najla, 183 Al-Shajara, 82 Shakeel, Hadia, 177 Shammas, Anton, 41, 81, 210, 212 Shamut, Isma‘il, 82 Sha‘shuwwa‘, Salim, 198 Shawa, Hajj Zafer al-, 153 Shfar‘am, 194 Shihabi, Zlikha, 179 Shufani, Elias, 139, 147, 153, 155, 160 Al-Sinara (weekly), 89 Sirhan, Nimer, 50 Sisalem, ‘Issam, 113, 120 sites of memory, 13, 14, 16, 55, 97, 123 Sitta, Salman Abu, 39, 41, 60, 76 Sivan, Emmanuel, 49, 123, 150 Sliman, Ilya, 83

245

Smith, Anthony, D., 7, 10–12, 23–24, 65 Spain, 29, 37 Spengler, Oswald, 144 Society for Invigorating the Family, 180 Solomon, King. See Sulayman Somekh, Sasson, 209 Sorel, Georges, 58 Soviet Union, 6 Stein, Kenneth, 178 Steinberg, Mati, 31, 42, 66 Strum, Philippa, 183 Sulayman, (King Solomon), 121, 157, 158, 167 Supreme Court (Israeli), 85 Supreme Monitoring Committee, 88 Supreme Muslim Council (SMC), 101, 102 Sykes-Picot Accord, 50 Syria/Syrian/Syrians, 2, 4, 9, 21–23, 28, 49, 61, 80, 83, 94, 99, 105, 109, 143, 154, 155, 166, 173, 195 Taha, Muhammad ‘Ali, 81, 93, 199, 209, 214, 216 Tamari, Salim, 33, 41, 43, 45, 69, 76, 91, 92 Tamoun, 183 Tartars, 145 Tawtin, 62, 69, 82 Tel Aviv University, 193 Temple (Jewish), 110, 120, 121, 139, 149, 151 Torah, 118, 165 Toynbee, Arnold, 144 Transjordan. See Jordan Tuma, Emile, 105, 107, 108, 197 Tunisia, 182 Tuqan, Fadwa, 52, 79, 172, 175, 182, 190 Turk, Rif‘at, 88 Turki, Fawaz, 23, 42, 66, 72 Turks, 23, 63, 108, 151, 152 Tut, Mahmud al-, 79 Tutah, Khalil, 99, 126–28, 131

246

INDEX

‘ulama’, 153, 154 ‘Umar, Caliph, 148–50, 202 ‘Umar, Zahir al-, 108, 124 Umayyads, 107, 110 UNESCO, 106 Union of Arab Poets, 198 United States of America, 1, 15, 26, 43, 72, 76, 92, 139, 148, 159, 160, 168, 180, 210 Ur Salem, 116 Wall, Western, 120, 121, 141, 163 War 1967, 30, 31, 77, 102, 202, 203, 208 1973, 31 World War I, 2, 9, 20, 98, 121 World War II, 63, 77, 143, 158, 159 West Bank, 4, 27, 28, 32, 39, 42, 49, 53, 58, 61, 66, 68, 71, 73, 86, 89, 104, 110, 111, 125, 128, 154, 170, 172, 173, 180–82, 184, 188, 189, 191, 192, 204, 208 White paper, 1922, 9 Winkler, H.A., 99

Women’s Association Arab, 179 Jaffa, 177 Yasin, Sheikh Ahmad, 136, 145 Yasin, Subhi, 101, 126, 127 Al-Yawm (daily), 198 Yiftachel, Oren, 11 Zabidi, Subhi, 83 Za‘ter, Tal al-, 177 Zerubavel, Yael, 16, 18, 136, 137 Zionism, 88, 97–99, 102, 105, 108–111, 116, 122–25, 138, 142, 147, 150–56, 159–61 Zionist(s), 2, 3, 9, 11, 19, 31–36, 40, 50, 98–100, 102, 105, 109, 113–15, 118, 120–22, 137, 145–47, 151, 154, 156, 157, 159–62, 198, 199 Congress, 50 immigration, 3, 122 movement, 2, 100, 112, 140, 158–61 Ziyad, Abu Ziyad, 62, 69 Zurayq, Qustantin, 28, 33, 42, 43