When, in the Autumn of 1919, Amin al-Huseini made an appeal in the
newly founded Jerusalem newspaper Surriyya al-Janubiyya to reflect
on the dynamics of the regional scenario at that time, he used
words which, rereading them today, carry a hint of prophecy. He
stated that the Arabs "should take heart from the experience of a
people long dispersed and despised, and who had no homeland to call
their own, but did not despair and were getting together after
their dispersion to regain their glory after twenty centuries of
oppression." (quoted in Khalidi 1977,168).
Whether they listened to him or not about the Jews, the fact
remains that the Arabs of Palestine had to take heart for a
struggle of their own against their being dispersed
themselves!
The newspaper had only a short life, and was closed by the British
later in April 1920 after the Nabi Musa riots. However far-sighted
and acute he was as an observer, al-Huseini, the future Mufti of
Jerusalem, could certainly not imagine how the behavior of the
Palestinian people would come to mirror in future years that of the
Jewish people-both seeking out unity and autonomy through similar
forms and strategies.
Parallel Paths
Whether on the offensive or the defensive, Amin al-Huseini was to
follow step by step the evolution of events and the definition of
objectives that were still hazy at the time. He was to see Zionists
and Palestinians set off with determination down the same road,
thinking of themselves not only as an ethnic or religious group,
but as solid, homogeneous and compact communities. Above all - this
is the new element - they were recognizing in themselves the traits
and identity of a nation. The inhabitants of the ancient sanjak
(district) and the Diaspora Jews strove to grasp the best chance of
survival that the era offered them: creating their own national
identity. Thus they would assure their place among the peoples that
actually exist, give themselves an identity and a voice --and not
only in the list that Wilson drew up and which, as is well known,
remained on paper (On the invention of identity, see Remotti
1999).
The historical period was characterized by an international
scenario no longer content to record people, families and villages.
Rather than accepting the fluidity of groups and their
changeability, it demanded control, more classification and
circumscription, fixing of barriers and borders. It was hoped that
where armies had been forced to a halt, something real could
replace them. The concept of national identity turned out to be a
suitable one: a concept that evokes similarity, but in reality
tends to separate, to accentuate differences (see Amselle 1990). As
Kedourie explains, determining the position of each group provides
an illusion of autonomy and spontaneity ( Kedourie 1960).
In the construction of this 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. All of this perhaps occurred
through reciprocal influence, perhaps because of the models of
reference, perhaps simply because events drove them both in the
same direction or perhaps due to all of these things together. It
is undoubtedly true that the numerous analogies, the undoubted
similarities, the parallels and the mirror images are, on the one
hand, shared by the two histories. On the other hand, their
differences are accentuated with respect both to the contemporary
developments in the region and to relevant Western
experiences.
Isolation
It was not an easy task for the inhabitants of Palestine, nor for
the future Israelis, to define and circumscribe themselves, to
isolate their specific traits. Arabs had a strong feeling of
kinship with the family, the clan and the village; but as soon as
they could broaden their horizons, the ancient Bilad al-Sham,
Greater Syria, was their natural point of reference. In a
diametrically opposed dimension, the Zionists, instead, had their
only unifying element in the fact of being a community scattered
over the centuries; and, while the Arabs had to come to terms with
inclusion, the Jews found themselves fighting against dispersion.
It was, therefore, an arduous endeavor for both to leave the
natural magma in which they were immersed, to put themselves
forwards as "originals" (see, e.g., Lewis 1998).
It is not by chance that they did not initially perceive their
specificity in terms of particular traits or attributes, but rather
in terms of isolation or solitude, of the distance separating them
from "others." In this seclusion, there was a profound sense of a
vacuum that it seemed impossible to fill. This took hold of the
Palestinians and Jews in the same way, obviously at different times
and in different circumstances, but with equal intensity. At a
certain point, they realized that they would never be able to merge
with the "others" that existed around them.
The first shock for the Palestinians occurred at the beginning of
the 1920s, after Lausanne, after San Remo, after Sèvres, and
after Versailles-in other words when it was possible to draw some
overall conclusions about the hopes that the world war had dashed.
There was an upheaval the like of which had not been seen since the
times of the Rashidun, the "rightly guided" Caliphs of the eighth
century. Despite all the promises, there was no chance of even
talking of Arab autonomy. Crown Prince Faysal and the other leaders
had been unable to oppose the British support for Zionism. Rather
than take up the Jewish intrusion in Palestine, they were engaged
on other fronts - again with little success, with the exception of
Yemen and Saudi Arabia. With clarity and without
self-commiseration, another famous representative of the Huseini
family, Musa Kazim, expressed the same sentiment. In the
disappointment and desolation of the summer of 1920, he declared:
"Now, after the recent events in Damascus [i.e., the French
occupation] we have to effect a complete change in our plans.
Southern Syria no longer exists. We must defend Palestine" (quoted
in Khalidi 1997, 165).
Alone, faced with the Jews, who were undoubtedly by then their
enemy, they began to describe and illustrate their own specificity.
They moved forward quickly, and already at the beginning of 1923
had a school textbook available in which everything-territory,
crops, transport routes, population, former administrative
divisions-came together to underline the innate difference and
natural features that made Palestine a specific entity.
However, the more they identified distinctive peculiarities, the
more their isolation increased. It should be remembered that this
was only the beginning and worse was still to come. Not only the
disinterest of Arab brothers themselves shocked the Palestinians in
this grey dawn of the post-Ottoman era. Less than thirty years
later, even more serious was the phenomenon of those who were
readying to take advantage of the Palestinian defeat while
continuing to call themselves brothers.
Here, first and foremost was the Emirate of Transjordan, annexing
the West Bank and East Jerusalem and assuming the prestigious role
of protector of the Holy Places. And then Egypt gained control of
the Gaza Strip, nothing particularly profitable, but preferable to
having Israel and the Jordanians breathing down their neck there.
Lebanon also benefited, perhaps more than anyone, with Beirut,
rather than Haifa, becoming the unquestioned chief port of the
eastern Mediterranean, and with the oil pipeline that ran through
Palestine diverted into Lebanon.
All these were examples of looking after real, concrete, interests,
even if nobody would have admitted it publicly. On the contrary,
the Palestinian cause was still supported verbally, but always and
only in words. In reality, the isolation was to increase even more:
the Palestinians would be alone in the refugee camp of Tel
al-Zatar, alone in the night of Sabra and Chatila, alone nowadays
in this second intifada.
But the isolation of the Jews, the people on the other side of the
Green Line was also immense and continues to be so. Isolation in
the Holocaust, the greatest blow of all, in the rejection by a
Europe that encouraged concentration camp survivors to leave rather
than offering an embrace of solidarity in seeing Britain, after
Balfour's promises, washing its hands of Palestine and violating
its trust. (Why then continue to rely upon promises?) This was the
isolation of those who felt themselves encircled by anything but
benevolent Arab countries, posing real external (and even perceived
internal) threats. Then there was the isolation of new immigrants,
of every new aliya compared to the previous one. And isolation
because the prolonged use of violence towards the "enemy" had
alienated much of the initial sympathy abroad toward the Jewish
state.
Finally, there was the self-engendered isolation of the
settler-colonists in the occupied territories, suffocated by their
own aggression and by their own arrogance. This sort of isolation
was the worst advisor and the worst enemy. With the uncertainty
that it engenders, it has driven the Israelis to new conquests,
seeking confirmation of their own abilities, of their own rights,
in the only way that they seem to know, through the use of force.
It is comparable to people who, never having grown up, need
constant reassuring declarations from international public opinion
and especially from Western governments stating that Israel really
exists-that it has the right to be there and that it is not a dream
destined to be swept away at the first light of dawn.
In response to this Israeli show of strength, loud declarations
inevitably emanated from the Palestinian side: on the fact that
they too are there, that they have a history, traditions, culture
and dignity. In other words, they possess a positive identity, not
only by exclusion as had been intimated for too long. Balfour had
reduced them to a "non-Jewish community"; General Allenby on his
entry into Jerusalem was accompanied apart from his own soldiers
only by Italian and French armies. For the Zionist Zangwill the
Palestinans were absent from a land ready to welcome a different
people that had no land; Golda Meir was scathing in her well-known
negation "There was no such thing as Palestinians... They did not
exist." But the Palestinians did indeed exist and proclaimed it in
all possible ways, often with a language that seems unfortunately
at times to be the only one that is heard. That is the language of
visible demonstrations, theatrical effects, acts of terrorism,
which are nothing other than the result of desperation and, indeed,
of isolation.
Founding Traumas
A group that is building its collective identity has a great
advantage if it can identify in its own past an event which can be
dated as the beginning of the road that sooner or later would lead
to the creation of a nation: an event whose meaning cannot be
challenged by anyone - inside or outside the group. This event must
possess a great emotional charge and strong legitimizing value,
better still if it has the taste of tragedy. It is when a group is
defeated, that then the need for self-assertion emerges. External
sympathy is expressed with most feelings for the victims. And both
Arab and Jew have put themselves forward as victims.
The choice of the "founding trauma, " to use Galtung's words, was
effectively a trump card. Was this not what the Serbs did recently
in recalling the ancient defeat of Kossovo Polje to announce to the
world their legitimate national status? There is certainly no lack
of traumas in Palestinian and Israeli history. The Crusaders left a
scar that has never completely healed in the land of Palestine. On
the Jewish front, there are numberless traumas from the Destruction
of the Temple to the tragic Diaspora history. But for both peoples,
the more recent traumas obviously have a stronger legitimizing
power. Thus it was the Palestinian Nakba (disaster) and the Jewish
Shoah (holocaust) in the middle of the last century that sanctioned
beyond any possible doubt the passage from vague or dispersed
entities to homogeneous groups.
Opinions are unanimous that the history of Israel as a nation
begins, or reaches a new height, with the tragedy of the Nazi
concentration camp. Lev Talmon wrote that "It is from the Holocaust
that we need to begin, from this uneliminable reality of our
history, because it allows us to understand the birth of the
Israeli state and the distant origins of the obsessive neurosis
from which our people still suffers" (Talmon, 1978). If a similar
tragedy is not to be repeated, the only solution worthy of
consideration was the passage from a community to a national
entity: the creation of a state, and of a state that was "only for
Jews"-say Avraham B. Yehoshua and many others.
In a similar way for the Palestinians, the Nakba was a tragedy that
left no one untouched, and brought many together, closing them in
the same container, the refugee camps. Shopkeepers from Haifa and
Bedouins from the Negev Desert, farmers from Jaffa and fishermen
from Galilee found themselves side by side, expropriated and
expelled. And the camps became ghettos, which few left and where
the refugees learned to know each other, to think as a group, and
to build on what they discovered about each other. "The trauma of
1948," Rashid Khalidi says, "reinforced pre-existing elements of
identity, sustaining and strengthening a Palestinian
self-definition that was already present. … That catastrophic
experience, and its impact on different segments of the Palestinian
people, is still a common topic of discussion among Palestinians of
diverse backgrounds and generations, and ultimately a potent source
of shared beliefs and values" (Khalidi 1997, 22).
And it was then that the consciousness crystallized: that return
and the creation of a state were the only possible solution to
their experience.
Promised Lands and Lands Lost
One thing is immediately clear in this process. In all of this
history, one basic element in the two hypotheses of identity is
missing - land. Not because it was considered secondary, but
because the land to which reference is made was not, so to say,
"within reach." And if for the Palestinians, the lack of land was
due exclusively to their later expulsions, for the Zionists the
idea of the return to Zion to create a nation-state around the tomb
of David did not mature at exactly the same time. Nor was it even
clear from the outset that this state would be built in the
Promised Land. It is enough to recall that the Sultan did not even
receive that unknown journalist, Theodore Herzl, who went to
Palestine only once and did not love Jerusalem. (See Hermet 1996;
Thiesse 1999).
It was even less predictable, when the Sikes-Picot agreements were
not in the minds of those who were to draw them up, that the
British would lend the Jews a hand. There was talk of Uganda, and
the name of Argentina came up often. Then, a few decades later,
came the resolution of the United Nations, the green light, almost
as if a geographical reference was enough for dispersed peoples who
spoke different languages, had different colored eyes and different
clothes. "Suddenly," regardless of all, they became one people,
with common citizenship. Thinking of this today, it was an act of
pure madness to imagine a state without the people having lived in
the land that was destined to host it! This had no precedent, no
model to refer to in a world which, for over a century, had indeed
seen the formation and organization of nation states but starting
from land as its primary element (See, e.g., Hermet 1996 and
Thiesse 1999).
The path of the Palestinians was obviously different, but for them
too the need to build a nation state arose precisely when that land
on which they had lived, worked and suffered for generations was
suddenly torn out of their hands. It is true, however, that the
expropriation of 1948 was only the last of a series of events that
had begun decades before, when the Ottoman agrarian law liberalized
the land market, allowing the Zionists as well as the rich Arab
families of the region to acquire property. The early waves of
Jewish immigration before and after the British Mandate benefited
from this.
The ones who always lost out were the fellahin, farm labourers and
sharecroppers: when the property passed into Jewish hands, they
lost their jobs, as it is well known that only Jews were allowed to
work on Jewish land. The anti-Zionist revolts were immediate,
starting with Petah Tiqva, where Jews settled at the end of the
nineteenth century. The response was not particularly patriotic,
however-just protests of an economic nature, the explosion of rage
of those who were suddenly chased out of the land that their family
had in many cases cultivated for generations. But the rage
gradually grew, gained in substance and became political
consciousness. And this also increased in the course of time, in
direct proportion to the land that disappeared. When everything was
lost, the consciousness became total.
Diaspora and Return
Far from the land, in other words in the diaspora, came the
experience which was and is decisive in the construction of the
national identity of both actors. Unsurprisingly, therefore, their
existence as a nation is based on a shared slogan, that of return:
the Jewish "Law of Return" and the Palestininan "Right of Return."
The desire to return and the consequent refusal to integrate or to
be integrated elsewhere forced a continuous redefinition of their
own status and rules of life. Historical changes in a distant past
for the Jews and relatively recently for the Palestinians, were the
essential condition for continuing to exist as a group. For the
people of David, it was perhaps the captivity in Babylon that made
the initial mark in Jewish people-hood. Nissim Rejwan explains:
"Judaism was to survive, and it is clear as we know it today was
the creation of an era of the long Babylonian exile" (1999, 54). It
was then that the priest caste was founded and the theory of return
was conceived.
Centuries later, but in the same state of exile, the Palestinians
also reached a turning point obviously a different one, but of the
same impact. The trigger was the conflict with the people around
them. Their life style clashed with the coarseness of King
Hussein's Bedouin army. Relations with the Egyptians were
difficult. In the countries in which they had sought shelter, their
degree of acceptance swung back and forth, subject to the
prevailing interests of the moment. In Syria, taken up in constant
feuds and the search for political stability, they were barely
tolerated. In Lebanon, where they seriously unbalanced the
proportions between the different religious components, they were
kept rigidly separated. In Jordan, the situation was more flexible
since the Hashemite intentions were to confirm territorial
enlargement. Finally, in the oil-producing countries they were
granted only the status of temporary workers, with no hope for most
of taking their families with them, of acquiring a plot of land or
building a home. Manifestly, they were discriminated against and
felt alien wherever they went. But this only reinforced their
dignity: their pride as a group turned out to be a good refuge. And
as has been said, they adopted survival strategies that were to
leave a deep mark on their communities and especially on their
external relations.
In continuity with the choices during the British mandate, priority
was given once again to education, an intangible asset that nobody
could take away from them. Literacy and culture were primary
objectives, and the results became visible. Palestinians occupied
management positions in the oil fields of Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi
Arabia. They gave to the world writers and poets like Fadwa Tuqan,
Gassan Kanafani and Mahmoud Darwish. They brought out people of the
stature of Edward Said, Naji Ali and Ibrahim Souss, and they
reached the big screen through the names of Michel Kleifi or Akram
Safadi. In other words, they demonstrated that they were capable of
producing, even in exile, a rich and complex culture, certainly a
culture worthy of a nation.
The Enemy and the Alliance with God
The growing self-definition-always as a nation-also corresponded to
another term of comparison fundamental to both, that of the
"enemy." Each has been the enemy of the other or in other words,
the two parties in competition played a reciprocal role of
reinforcing what was, in the dawn of 1948, still confused. They
have left a strong trace in emphasizing, or minimizing, the
distinctive features of each other.
Under the constant threat-whether real or presumed is of little
importance-of an enemy ready to take advantage of any sign of
weakness, Israel fitted together as best it could the pieces of
what would be Israeli citizenship. It tried to identify the most
acceptable solutions to questions that the survivors of the
Holocaust certainly had not posed, and on which not even the
leaders had clear, or shared, ideas. Was Israel to be an
exclusively Jewish state or an Israeli state? A state with European
characteristics and philosophy or Middle Eastern ones, as its
geographical location and part of its population would suggest?
Should it adopt a theocratic or a secular policy? What legal status
was to be envisaged for non-Jewish citizens? And so on. These were
not minor questions: time would be needed to draw up a
constitution-in which, significantly, Israel did not succeed-but
there was no time.
The enemy was at the gates and it was necessary to define, clarify
and accompany the physical barriers with ideological ones, to reach
compromises where the divergences were most serious, and to
sacrifice, where necessary, what seemed least urgent at the time.
Because of the perceived external threat, agreements were signed on
the home front that were to become milestones, or rather millstones
around the neck (quoted in Rejwan 1999, 105). (Such is the case
with the agreement between the Zionist coalition and Agudat
Yisrael, 19 June 1947.) In the future social organisation, the lay
and the orthodox were in conflict from the start but no concession
or compromise seemed too great if it kept the storm at bay. David
Ben-Gurion was later to explain: "I was prepared to limit my
program to the basic urgencies and offer concessions on what I
regarded as subsidiary issues" (quoted in Rejwan 1999, 105).
And so it was that Zionist secularism ended up being strangled by
the power of the synagogue, and at regular intervals the rabbis
continue to threaten reprisals and government crises, though their
power has always been proportionally stronger than their
parliamentary representation. But each time, the concessions seemed
less serious than the risk of breaking up national unity. And,
naturally, as a form of justification, was not religion the chief
element that distinguished a Jew? And could internal schisms be
tolerated and explained to the World Zionist Organisation without
risking the loss of Diaspora support, especially financial
support?
And thus economic dependence, and the constant military conflict
delivered great power into the hands of the Rabbinate, though this
is alien to the life of most Israelis, both those born there and
new arrivals. This power applies, for example, in preference for
the orthodox stream in the field of education, or in the absence of
civil marriage, divorce, and burial. It was claimed that there was
no alternative course of action if the Jews wanted to remain united
against threat from outside. The enemy thus became the element
capable of uniting people who had very little in common.
For the Palestinians the Jews "played" the part of the enemy, first
as Zionists and then as Israelis. They were, first, powerful
acceleration of a process that would have been spread over a rather
longer period of time if left to evolve naturally. The proof of
this lies in the fact that the Palestinians felt themselves to be
Palestinian much quicker than the Jordanians felt themselves
Jordanian or the Syrians Syrian. It is true that national kinship
was also forced on other groups in the Middle East, following the
lines traced on the maps of Mandatory Palestine. But once these
divisions were accepted, each group followed its own history in a
"linear" fashion: first independence, then the struggle between
factions for power. Thus they discovered that they were Jordanian,
Syrian, Iraqi, as if this had always been true. The UAR, the
short-lived United Arab Republic, was only a brief episode in a
world that was finding its equilibrium in inter-state
relations.
Faced with an enemy ready for anything, the Palestinians
accelerated the process of closing ranks. The enemy often became
everything that manifestly impeded their revenge, the realization
of their aspirations: first the British, then the Americans, even
anything to do with the West in the moments of greatest
exasperation. Everything was labelled "enemy" and became the target
of antagonism.
Hence comes the power acquired by Hamas, the evocative capacity of
the Jihad and fundamentalism in general, in a society where
secularism and education have always gone together. This is but one
result of the intensification of the conflict, a desperate reaction
when faced with an enemy perceived as implacable and merciless.
Facing such a danger, why not accept the help of God and call on
Him to support one's own side. There is no need to elaborate and
explain how much this has had and continues to have an impact on
the construction of identity. It should be no surprise if the
Palestinian shabab in the alleys of Jerusalem's Old City play at
being hezbollahs, the soldiers of God, imitating the only ones who
have so far obtained some victory over the enemy.
References
Amselle, J.L. 1990. Logiques Métisses: Anthropologie de
l'Identité en Afrique et Aailleurs. Paris: Payot et
Rivages.
Hermet, Guy. 1996. Histoire des Nations et du Nationalisme en
Europe. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Kedourie, Elie. 1960. Nationalism. London: Hutchinson.
Khalidi, Rashid. 1997. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of
Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia UP.
Lewis, Bernard. 1998. The Multiple Identities of the Middle East.
London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
Rejwan, Nissim. 1999. Israel in Search of Identity:Reading the
Formative Years. Gainsville: Press of Florida.
Remotti, Francesco. 1999. Contro l'Identità. Roma-Bari:
Laterza.
Talmon, Lev. Article in La Repubblica. 11 May 1978.
Thiesse, A.M. 1999. La Creation des Identites Nationales: Europe
XVIII-XX Siècle. Paris: Editions du Seuil.