Language and Identity in the Israel-Palestine Conflict

The Politics of Self-Perception in the Middle East

Camelia Suleiman

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780857732507
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

The conflict between Israel and Palestine is, and remains to be, one of the most widely- and passionately-debated issues in the Middle East and in the field of international politics. An important part of this conflict is the dimension of self-perception of both Israelis and Palestinians caught up in its midst. Here, Camelia Suleiman, using her background in linguistic analysis, examines the interplay of language and identity, feminism and nationalism, and how the concepts of spatial and temporal boundaries affect self-perception. She does this through interviews with peace activists from a variety of backgrounds: Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, Jewish Israelis, as well as Palestinians from Ramallah, officially holders of Jordanian passports. By emphasizing the importance of these levels of official identity, Suleiman explores how self-perception is influenced, negotiated and manifested, and how place of birth and residence play a major role in this conflict.
This book therefore holds vital first-hand analysis of the conflict and its impact upon both Israelis and Palestinians, making it crucial for anyone involved in Middle East Studies, Conflict Studies and International Relations.

1

INTRODUCTION

This book portrays images of the lives and struggles of Palestinian and Israeli peace activists through formal interviews I conducted with activists on both sides during the summers of 2005 and 2006. Much has changed since then. And according to the accounts of many observers, the situation worsened. Nonetheless, my intention is to draw a picture of the conflict that is more complex than is presented in the media. The stories of the lives of these people emerge as a constant effort to seek and preserve human life and dignity regardless of the national divide. These activists are united in this pursuit to testify that what unites us as humans is more than what divides us through conflict. This book is driven by hope in spite of what has been going on.

I had the privilege of co-teaching a class on ‘The Question of Palestine’ with a colleague from Serbia at a university in Oklahoma during the spring of 2006. The class was offered after a number of students went to a head of the program and asked for the class to be taught. There had never before been a class on the question of Palestine offered at the university. The location, Oklahoma, is too close to the painful experience of the ethnic cleansing of the native population of the USA. Oklahoma is the ‘memory for forgetfulness’ (to cite Mahmoud Darwish) of what happened to the Native Americans. The students were wonderful and the class was a success, even though controversy had been predicted. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much the students interacted with each other and the material under study. What engaged, but at the same time enraged, my students the most was the fact that ‘mistreatment’ of Palestinians (to be euphemistic) was still going on, and in broad daylight under the blazing sun of the world’s media. In addition, the students were intimidated by how much they didn’t know, in spite of how much exposure the topic receives in the media. The success of the class was perhaps the reason why it was never offered again.

I have lived in the USA, with intermittent returns to the Middle East, since 1994. When Americans ask where I am from and I say ‘Palestine,’ the response varies from silence, to just plain ‘oh’ and then silence, to a question of what part of Palestine ‘West Bank’ or ‘Gaza’ followed by my ‘none,’ and then an awkward bewildered silence from the part of my interlocutor, to an insistence on ‘You mean Israel?’ I had a friend who was actually trying to give the good advice that I should just say ‘Israel, you know, people here do not like to hear the word Palestine.’ Or if I choose to say I am from Nazareth (or Jerusalem), the next reaction is usually ‘You’re Jewish?’ Upon my arrival at a Florida university a colleague asked me whether I minded meeting a senior member of the department ‘because he is Israeli.’ She followed her request with, ‘I hope this is alright with you,’ which left me defenseless, deeply misunderstood and sad. I find that the American people are, generally speaking, fair-minded. When it comes to the question of Palestine, however, puzzlingly their defenses are often high. I hope by writing this book to shatter some of the conceptions or misconceptions about the conflict, but at the same time to resolve for myself the mystery of the relative misunderstanding of the Palestinians in the USA.

A second reason for writing this book is that I wish to make a contribution towards resolution, no matter how minor or trivial it is. It is my tribute to the activists on both sides, and my humble appreciation for their dedication and their work. My writing is haunted by images of a past that is not too far distant, a past I was not present at, but a recent past nonetheless. I am thinking in particular of my mother and of a Jewish friend I have who are roughly the same age. In the year 1939, my mother was one month old; her father, who was active in the Arab revolt in Palestine (1936–9) lost his life on Allenby Street in Haifa. My grandmother, shocked and frightened of revenge attacks by Jewish groups, that same night left Haifa with her three young children to return to her family in Nazareth. Around that same time, my dear friend was on board a ship traveling from Romania to Palestine. She was probably confused, scared and full of anticipation as she followed her parents’ dream of a better life away from European racism and harassment. As a child uprooted from Romania, what did my friend think of changing her name, her language and her habits? What went on inside her mind? What went on in my mother’s mind as a child, deprived of her father, growing up in a town which, nine years later, capitulated to the newly emerging Jewish state without any resistance? I will never know, and these questions will haunt me until I die.

What I know for certain is that my mother went on to college, the first Arab college in the state of Israel, and studied to become a teacher. She taught elementary school for three decades and she loved her job. She silently and perhaps unselfconsciously was helping her community rehabilitate after the trauma of 1948. Her only unfulfilled dream was to get higher degrees, which was impossible at the time for an Israeli Arab in the state of Israel – not because she was a woman, but because she was Arab. But she saw her dream come true through me. My friend, on the other hand, with the confidence of a supportive state and institutions, became a professor at the Hebrew University – a very unique and distinguished professor indeed. It is my mother’s and my friend’s parallel lives, with their unspoken experience and resilience, although under different but interrelated circumstances, which have shaped my thinking about the conflict in many ways. Both experiences are too close, even if we don’t like to admit that to ourselves. I remember that, in 2001, when I was a post-doctoral researcher, an explosion shocked the Hebrew University campus and killed a number of people. Immediately afterwards, my friend gathered her graduate students and continued with her class as usual. That incident reminded me of my mother’s extreme stubbornness and steadfastness in the face of extreme circumstances. The will to live is extraordinary for both my mother and my friend. The only time I saw my mother on the verge of breaking was when Saddam Hussein was sending missiles into Israel during the first Gulf War. Hearing political rhetoric against the Arabs, she relived the 1948 trauma. She packed the necessities for each one of us to take if forced to leave. Her fear was exaggerated. But, on the other hand, her fear was not unsubstantiated, considering that the issue of the transfer of the remaining Arabs is discussed continually in the Knesset and in the media. I write this book for my mother and for my friend, as both were victims of a colonial chain reaction which started in Europe – but with the Jewish minority in Europe and the native Palestinians dealing with its consequences.

The story of this book in many ways is the story of Palestine, the personal accounts of peace activists on both sides of the national divide interlaced with my own personal analysis. Overall, I interviewed formally about 20 people from both sides. I used the transcripts of 12 of these interviews (I chose the ones with the best recording qualities). I have informally interviewed and had conversations with many more. The book is also informed by my experience of being a Palestinian from Nazareth, who studied in Israeli institutions before going to the USA, and who, upon returning to the country during the difficult years of 2000 to 2002, taught at the Hebrew University while on a post-doctoral fellowship, and held a position at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. It is these valuable experiences which shaped the ideas of this book.

Last, at an early presentation of this book at Florida International University in Miami, some people commented that the book may not give a full perspective because it does not address Palestinian terrorism per se. My answer to this is that Palestinians do not have a monopoly over terrorism or any other form of extremism. I excluded direct discussions of extremism on both sides of the equation for three main reasons. First, people who seek peace and a stop to bloodshed are not a minority on both sides, nor are they marginal to their communities. Second, I wish to shatter stereotypes about Palestinians. To see a discussion of Palestinian society as incomplete because it does not include terrorism is a very reductionist view of Palestinian society and its complexity. Palestinians have been abused, but that does not strip them of their humanity, nor should it make them abnormal. They have dreams, hopes, aspirations and feelings like any other member of the human race. The students who raised that question are engaged in a prevalent discourse in places like the USA which simply abnormalizes the Palestinian and her/his psyche. In other words, the act of ‘Othering’ the Palestinian is an act in which American society by and large is engaged for many reasons (historic, religious, political, etc.). Third, I wanted to enter into dialogue with those people on both sides who have spent a lifetime engaging with each other in order to arrive at a humanistic solution to the conflict. It is not difficult to interview people who hold extreme views about each other and show how they do that through their language. Their views are out there and they do not attempt to conceal them. However, choosing moderate people with convictions about the necessity for peace may demonstrate more subtle points about the similarities and differences between Palestinians and Israelis on issues which pertain to the conceptualization of the conflict as well as on visions for resolving it. For me it is more challenging as a research project to investigate their worldview than more extreme views. I am interested in their naturalized worldviews, in what seem to be facts of life. But, at the same time, my informants have shown a high level of self-reflexivity. Their answers generally demonstrated that they had to think intensely about different issues pertaining to the conflict, and that they have been engaged in taking on the ‘other’s’ perspective.

I am optimistic that the conflict will be resolved, there will be a future without bloodshed. My position does not arise out of naiveté regarding the political conditions of the conflict and of the forces which keep it alive. To the contrary, I am well aware of all that; however, my optimism is a political statement. If we all engage in hate, then there is not much to use to pull ourselves away from the edge of the abyss which both peoples are close to falling into.

The book will proceed as follows: Chapter 2 outlines the historical events which led to the conflict. The history of the conflict is divided into four time periods: (1) the late Ottoman period until World War I, (2) the British Mandate to 1948 – the year the state of Israel was established, (3) from 1948 until 1987 – the year the first Palestinian intifada started, and (4) from 1987 until today. Chapter 3 discusses who the interviewees are and how I interviewed them. I chose interviews of six female and six male activists. Of the twelve: six are Israeli Jews, three are Palestinians from Ramallah and Jerusalem, and three Palestinians from Israel who hold Israeli citizenship. Chapter 4 explains the theoretical framework which drives the book – namely, the relationship between discourse, identity and perspectivity. It takes into consideration that identity is socially constructed through power relations in and among societies. Meaning in language is always perspectivized, which means that it is always the individual’s psychological expression of a collectively constructed understanding of social life. Sense-making is an ongoing process, never finalized, and always brought out through dialogue. Chapter 5 is the first chapter which refers directly to the interviews. It discusses the physical-national boundary-setting between the two groups through discourse. Palestine as a space emerges out of these interviews as metaphorically more complex for the Palestinians than for the Israelis. Chapter 6 presents the interviewees’ visions of peace. To the activists, words such as ‘justice,’ ‘dignity’ and ‘equality’ emerge as ingredients for peace. They also discuss more concrete and practical suggestions for achieving peace, such as drawing the (physical) borders for two states. Chapter 7, as a prelude to chapter 8, is a brief theoretical introduction of the gendered nature of activism among both groups, as well as a short account of the historic phases of women’s activism for both the Palestinians and the Israelis. Chapter 8 discusses the tension between nationalism and feminism for both the Palestinian and the Israeli activists. It seems that the question of the compatibility between the national project (for both groups) and feminist demands concerns women from both groups more than men. However, men also gave accounts of how it is harder sometimes to work for peace since both societies tie militarism and nationalism to masculinity and peace to femininity. Chapter 9 outlines the activists’ visions of a resolution to the conflict. Activists on both sides emphasized the pursuit for human dignity for all parties involved in the conflict. Chapter 10 concludes with a call for more understanding of each other on both sides. What emerges from my interviews is a concern for human rights which transcends national as well as gender boundaries. This shared vision is what I hope will lead both groups in the future to come closer together in ending the conflict.

2

A NOTE ON THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE

Palestine (Filistin/Falastin in Arabic, and at times Eretz Yisrael in Hebrew) is the sliver of land, roughly 10,500 square miles (27,000 square kilometers) between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and is a crossroads between Asia and Africa. It is a land of ancient civilizations and peoples: the Philistines, the Canaanites, the Jews, the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks, Romans and Persians, and the Arabs. Ancient cities of Palestine include: Acre, Haifa, Yaffa, Asqalan, Gaza, Hebron, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nablus, Lydda, Ramlah, Nazareth, Tabariyya and Jericho. It is sacred to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, with Jerusalem at the center of three faiths; and in more recent times the country is also associated with the Baha’i faith (see Smith, 2004; Suleiman, 2008). With the birth of Islam in the seventh century, Palestine became primarily Arab and (Sunni) Muslim with Arabic as the main language. It was administered from Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo as part of a succession of Islamic empires. The Ottoman Empire ruled the province from Istanbul from 1516 to 1918.

In that historical perspective, the ‘question of Palestine’ is only about a century old. Nonetheless, it is one of the most lasting conflicts of modern times. The modern history of Palestine can be divided into four time periods: (1) the late Ottoman period until World War I, (2) the British Mandate to 1948 – the year the state of Israel was established, (3) from 1948 until 1987 – the year the first Palestinian intifada started, and (4) from 1987 until today. Generally, authors mark the end of the third phase with 1967, the year Israel took control of the entire area of the mandate for Palestine. Instead, I choose the year 1987, which marks the beginning of the first Palestinian intifada against Israel. This year marks clearly the conflict as the beginning of a Palestinian conflict, rather than being solely defined as a regional Arab conflict with Israel.

I first opened my eyes to the world in one of the most special and most beautiful and most melancholy places on earth. I was born in Nazareth. The beauty of Nazareth compelled me since I knew myself. It compelled me with its deep blue skies, and with its reddish hills that surround and blend with the reddish-brick old and spacious houses around the souq. However, when I was born, my family had moved from the souq to a piece of land east of the Catholic Annunciation church, where my ancestors had built a house sometime in the eighteenth century in the middle of an orchard. Our house was new and close to the old ancestral house where my paternal grandparents lived. What did I know of my existence, and of the tragic circumstances of the people I was born into? I knew nothing. And it was going to take me a while until I could grasp the enormity of the circumstances and of the tragedy of Palestine.

As mentioned earlier, the question of Palestine is a little more than a century old, thus making it one of the most lasting conflicts of our modern times. Why is that? Is it really an intractable situation? Is it a clash of civilizations, as some respectable scholars would like us to think? Or is it yet another story of colonialism, a disruption of an old life and rhythm and the emergence of new realities for the indigenous people that at the beginning were not of their making. I tend to believe the latter. In this brief account of the history of the question of Palestine I am inspired by the work of two great historians, Albert Hourani and Ilan Pappé, who both see history, any history, as an incomplete account. I offer an account, an interpretation or a narrative, a perspective that, it is hoped, will aid the reader in understanding the lives of the women and men under study here, and to come to terms with the fact that no account is a complete account. However, I will offer an account interlaced with my family’s personal history, showing how the particularity of the experience of the conflict of my family has shaped my own perspective on the conflict.

Avi Shlaim (1995: 4) reminds us that:

The involvement of greater powers is not a unique feature of the Middle East but one that affects, in varying degrees, all regions of the world. What distinguishes the Middle East is the intensity, pervasiveness, and profound impact of this involvement. No other part of the non-Western world has been so thoroughly and ceaselessly caught up in great-power politics.

Shlaim states that we should not consider Middle East leaderships as passive recipients of colonial dictates. To the contrary, Middle East politics shows that the people have interacted with foreign intervention in many innovative and creative ways and tried to get the most out of these situations (1995: 5). I will start with the first stage of the conflict, or the stage of no conflict.

The late Ottoman period

From the year 1517 until World War I, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. In late Ottoman times, it was administratively divided into three provinces; Acre (the north), Nablus (the center) and Jerusalem (the south), with both the Acre and Nablus Sanjaks belonging to the larger province (wilaya/vilayet) of Beirut and the Jerusalem Mutasarifiyya having a special status, reporting directly to Istanbul. As a result, it has been often argued that Palestinian identity did not take its distinctive shape until it encountered Zionism. Rashid Khalidi (1997), in an exhaustive account, demonstrates how Palestinians had a sense of ‘Palestinianness’ long before the encounter with Zionism, in a similar manner to the rest of the population of the Ottoman Arab provinces (see also Armstrong, 1996; Pappé, 2004).

In addition, during this time of European imperialism, two main factors drove Ottoman policy: the British occupation of Egypt in 1882 and Ottoman indebtedness to foreign banks. Ottoman Palestine, like any other Arab Ottoman territory, was affected by the Ottoman reforms (Tanzimat), which were launched at the beginning of the nineteenth century and which attempted to modernize the empire and catch up with the global economy (Maoz,...