Everything in this limited land is a question of space.
—John Berger, A Moment in Ramallah1
John Berger, “A Moment in Ramallah,” London Review of Books 25 (24 July 2003).
This article aims to explore the development of what we define as “middle-ground” politics among the Palestinians in Israel. By middle ground, we mean the linkage between Palestine as an abstract notion and the concrete daily concerns of the Palestinians. The activities at demolished Palestinian villages and towns are one of the most salient manifestations of this middle ground. We argue that these activities create a new sense of group identity for many Palestinians and can be termed a re-Palestinization of places in Israel.
Our premise is that there is no neutral space or place2
Much of the literature makes a distinction between “place” and “space,” whereby “place” indicates an emotional tie between a person and a physical location, in contrast to “space,” which designates the abstract urban environment: see Jonathan Sime, as quoted in Patricia Yaeger, ed., The Geography of Identity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), fn. 5, 4–5. Yi-Fu Tuan places this distinction at the heart of his geographical explorations in Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977), 6. In this paper, we follow Yaeger's argument that there is slippage between space and place and therefore use the terms interchangeably.
and that individuals and groups are continuously preoccupied with generating, molding, producing, and defining their space.
3 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991 [1974]).
Michel Foucault noted that there is no space that is “dead, fixed, undialectical or immobile.”
4 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 70–71.
Especially within the post-modern context, whereby, according to David Harvey, a “collage of superimposed spatial images” descends on people,
5 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).
local communities, interest groups, and social movements try to resist.
6 In the second volume of his seminal trilogy on the Information Age, The Power of Identity, Manuel Castells dwells on the recent transformations within the nation-state. He demonstrates the dialectics between globalization processes and, specifically, the emergence of global movements, on the one hand, and the resurgence of strong community and locally based identities, on the other. Local movements, Castells asserts, are “at their onset, defensive identities that function as refuge and solidarity, to protect against a hostile, outside world. They are culturally constituted; that is, organized around specific codes of self-identification: the community of believers, the icons of nationalism, the geography of locality,” Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 65. Castells further argues that, whereas these communities initially have a defensive nature and a resistance identity, they have the potential to develop into a second stage in which they actively strive to transform society. These characteristics make sense when applied to the Islamic Movement in Israel.
Demolished Palestinian villages are currently under the focus of Palestinian movements in a reactionary manner; the ruins are perceived and constructed as mute memorials and become a place of (re)production, the locus of personal memories, village myths and legends, and national identity-building.
7 Simon Schama argues that the natural and the nurtured are both landscapes of the urban imagination: Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Vintage Books, 1995). On mental maps, see Peter Gould and Rodney White, Mental Maps (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986).
The discussion surrounding Palestine remained somewhat abstract for many years, argued Palestinian scholar Fouad Moughrabi, because macro-politics prevailed over a concrete dealing with Palestinian lives. In his words,
For generations of Palestinians in this century, politics has prevailed over anything else in life. …Except, perhaps, for some moments during the [first] intifāḍa [that erupted in December 1987], Palestinian politics were usually of the grand style, a kind of macropolitics dealing with strategy and national debate. It was rarely linked to the concrete in people's lives. In other words, it was never a politics of details. Somehow, dabbling with details was always seen as boring and tedious. Details were left to others to take care of, or better yet, postponed till later. That is why Palestinian politics always were concerned with liberating Palestine but not the Palestinians.8
Fouad Moughrabi, “A Year of Discovery,” Journal of Palestine Studies 26 (1997), 8.
It was not merely “grand politics” that dominated Palestinian public life but also cultural emblems and widespread concepts such as “al-Nakba” (the Arabic Palestinian term for the catastrophe of 1948), “uprooting,” and the “Lost Paradise.”
9 An example of the “grand politics” rhetoric is the Palestinian National Treaty (al-mīthāq al-waṭanī al-falaṣṭīnī) beginning with, “Palestine is the homeland of the Palestinian nation.” Note also classical books such as Akram Zua
iter, The Palestine Question (Damascus: Palestine Arab Refugees Institution, 1958). Schama begins and ends his long and detailed study by quoting Henry David Thoreau's journal from 30 August 1856: “It is in vain to dream of a wilderness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream.” See Schama's opening page as well as page 578.
These images were somehow taken for granted and repeated automatically; they created a monumental hegemonic discourse while disregarding the applied meaning of these concepts for Palestinian individuals.
Parallel to these cultural emblems and grand politics there was also, all along, the miniature setting: the individual refugee narratives that disseminated within circles of nuclear and extended families, neighborhoods, refugee camps, and villages. These Palestinian narratives drew their imagery from the locality—a specific village, the location of one's house, certain springs and trees, fences, and mountain terraces. This world of imagery was sustained through the visits of Palestinian refugees to the ruined sites.10
We use the term “refugees” here for all Palestinians who were uprooted in 1948, despite the fact that uprooted Palestinians who remained within the State of Israel ceased to be under the auspices of United Nations Relief and Works Agency in 1952. However, as they define themselves as refugees or internally displaced, and as their practice of visiting the ruined villages is much like that of Palestinian refugees who live outside Israel, we include them in the category “refugees.”
Until 1967, these ruins were reachable only to Palestinians who had become Israeli citizens after the 1948 war. However, following the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the opening of bridges to Jordan, they became accessible to many more Palestinian refugees. During these popular, pilgrim-like visits, the former dwellers of villages and towns would come, mostly within a family setting, to uncover remains, sit by them, collect wild herbs and fruit from the pre-1948 trees, pray near the graves of their family members, and share stories of their past with those who accompanied them.
Curiously, for many years, these personal worlds of imagery, which were closely linked to the visit to one's ruined village, remained relatively isolated, circulating among people's family and friends while failing to infiltrate the “national” discourse. This state of affairs began to change in the past two decades. A general change was reflected in the development of what can be defined as a “mediating setting” between the macro and micro spheres. Personal narratives became more widespread with the publication of studies based on oral history,11
Two volumes are early examples of the usage of oral accounts: Nafez Nazzal, The Palestinian Exodus from the Galilee 1948 (Beirut: Institute for Palestinian Studies, 1978); and Rosemary Sayigh, Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries (London: Zed Press, 1979). Oral history became much more prevalent in the late 1980s and 1990s: see, for example, Sonia el-Nimr, “The Arab Revolt of 1936–9 in Palestine: A Study Based on Oral Resources” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Exeter, 1990); Rosemary Sayigh, Too Many Enemies: The Palestinian Experience in Lebanon (London: Zed Books, 1994); Lynd Staunten, Sam Bahour, and Alice Lynd, HomeLand: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians (New York: Olive Branch Press, 1994); Ted Swedenburg, Memories of Revolt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995); Adel Yahya, The Palestinian Refugees 1948–1998: An Oral History (Ramallah: Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange, 1999); Randa Farah, “Crossing Boundaries: Popular Memory and Reconstructions of Palestinian Identity in al-Baq'a Refugee Camp, Jordan” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, 2000). The Beirut-based journal al-Jana, published by the Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts, dedicated its 2002 volume to Palestinian oral history.
personal memoirs,
12 Hala Sakakini, Jerusalem and I (Jerusalem: Habesch—Commercial Press, 1987); Bayan Nuwaihed al-Hut, Al-Mudhakkarat
Ajaj Nuwaihed: Situn
Aman ma
al-Qafila al-
Arabiyya (Beirut: Dar al-Istiqlal, 1993); Edward Said, Out of Place: A Memoir (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999).
village ethnographies,
13 Prominent among these ethnographies is the series published by the University of Birzeit. However, many of the ethnographies are written independently. For example, on the village of Tirat Haifa, see
Abd al-Samid al-Hajj Yusuf Abu Rashed, Tirat al-Karmil: al-Ard wal-Insan (Tirat al-Karmil: The Land and the People) (Irbid: self-published, 1993); Ahmad Mustafa Al-Bash, Tirat Haifa: Karmeliyyatan al-Judhur, Filastiniyyatan al-Intima (Tirat Haifa: Rooted in the Carmel, Belonging to Palestine) (Damascus: al-Shajara Press, 1998); Sahira Dirbas, Tirat Haifa: Watan
asi
ala al-nisyan (A Homeland Refusing Forgetfulness) (n.p.: self-published, 1991);
Abd al-Rahim Al-Mudur, Qaryat Tirat Haifa (Birzeit University Press, 1995). See also a collection on the demolished villages of the Galilee: Jamil
Arafat, Min Qurana al-Muhajjara fil-Jalil (Of Our Abandoned Villages in the Galilee) (n.p., 1995)
and films focusing on specific villages and towns.
14 A Danish TV production in March 1995, for example, documents Mahmoud
Issa and his family visiting the ruins of their village Lubya. See also Sahera Dirbas's film Haifawi and films by professional directors, such as Nizar Hassan, Ostura (on as-Safuriyya) (1999); Muhammad Bakri, 1948 (1998).
This convergence of micro and macro was not only an enterprise advanced from “below”—namely, individuals wishing to instill their personal experience into a collective “script.” Initiatives also came from “above,” from social and political organizations that created spaces, both metaphorically and literally, for personal “baggage” within the national-collective ways of action. Gradually, Palestinian institutions, mainly nongovernmental ones, began to address this need for a “middle ground.”
The wider political context hastened this process. Many Palestinians were disappointed that the Right of Return was being neglected by the Palestine Liberation Organization during the Madrid Peace Conference (1991) and even more so following the Oslo Accords (September 1993). The refugees within Israel felt particularly neglected. As an outcome, the preoccupation with the Right of Return and with demolished villages became a significant issue inside Israel, with organized commemoration becoming widespread. To demonstrate this phenomenon in detail, we focus on the activities of the Islamic Movement at the village of al-Sarafand. Initially, our choice to study al-Sarafand was derived from the vocal struggle that has surrounded the site in the past three years. Yet beyond this immediate reason, we hope that by reviewing the history and events at al-Sarafand, one can deduce the overall depopulation, transformation, and commemoration of pre-1948 Palestine. By highlighting examples from additional demolished villages and other Palestinian organizations, we hope to demonstrate the scope and growing importance of “middle-ground” politics and specifically organized commemoration.
The material presented here is based on two periods of field research, consisting of interviews with refugees from the area of Mount Carmel and joint visits to their obliterated villages, as well as interviews conducted with activists at al-Sarafand and with Islamic Movement public figures. As complementary sources, newspaper coverage and relevant publications on the topic were reviewed. The first research period was carried out by Ben-Ze'ev between 1996 and 1998 and provides the backdrop to describe the return visits to the obliterated villages, defined here as “personal pilgrimage.” The second research period was conducted by Aburaiya and Ben-Ze'ev between 2001 and 2003 and focused on the Islamic Movement's endeavor to redefine places in Israel as Palestinian, with special attention to the village of al-Sarafand.
THE VILLAGE OF AL-SARAFAND
In 1999, the al-Aqsa Foundation, an organ of the Islamic Movement responsible for maintaining what it terms the “holy places,” decided to restore al-Sarafand's mosque, the only remaining building of the destroyed village.15
It should be noted that the Islamic Movement does not request state permission for such rehabilitation projects—permission that probably would not be granted.
Al-Aqsa activists were on the verge of completing the restoration in May 2000 when one night the mosque was demolished by a bulldozer. Although the perpetrator is still unidentified, it was most likely someone operating with the backing of Israeli authorities. Among the suspects are the Jewish inhabitants of the nearby
moshav, Habonim (ironically, meaning “the constructors” in Hebrew).
16 Moshav (pl. Moshavim) is the Hebrew term for the agricultural settlements that are scattered throughout Israel. At other moshavim such as Bet Me'ir, located on the ruins of the pre-1948 Palestinian village of Bayt Mahsir, a similar strategy was employed. As soon as Muslims began visiting the village mosque and the surrounding houses, the people of the moshav demolished them.
In response, the al-Aqsa Foundation built a large tent over the topless and almost wall-less building, covering the floor with rugs and cushions and installing a water tank and electric generator nearby. Committed individuals spent days and nights guarding the site. On Fridays, hundreds of men were attracted to mass prayers by prominent figures of the Islamic Movement. On organized volunteer days, dozens of activists weeded the nearby Muslim cemetery and cleaned up the site. Shared meals were organized both on these days and on holidays.
The Israel Lands Authority (ILA), in cooperation with the police, negotiated with the Islamic Movement for removal of the tent. In spring 2001, the tent was removed by force, yet shortly after, the al-Aqsa Foundation built a new, more permanent shelter at the spot. At one point, the parties agreed that the ILA would fence the entire area, and in return al-Aqsa would remove the shelter. However, according to al-Aqsa's people, the fence was not erected in compliance with the agreed timetable and hence the shelter was not pulled down. In March 2002, a large police force came by night and pulled down the shelter. Since then there has been no shelter at the site, although al-Aqsa keeps chairs, kitchen utensils, and equipment there. Almost every afternoon, men gather for prayer, informal chat, and joint religious teachings. On Fridays, a special team brings in carpets and cushions, which are spread on the floor of the ruined mosque, and by midday dozens of men arrive to conduct a joint prayer.
The ruins of al-Sarafand are picturesquely located atop a sandstone hill (kurkār) some 100 meters from the Mediterranean coastline.
17 Like many of the names of Arab villages in Palestine, the name al-Sarafand is not derived from the Arabic, a fact that may testify to its antiquity. Two other sites in the region bear the same name. One is located near al-Ramleh, and the other near Tyre. A former villager noted that the name should in fact be pronounced al-Surfaned, and it is possible that it is derived from the biblical Sorfat.
They can be clearly seen west of the main coastal road linking Haifa and Yafa/Tel-Aviv. Early Ottoman tax records indicate that the village dates back at least 500 years.
18 A 16th-century Ottoman record notes that the village had eleven Muslim heads of families or bachelors; 25 percent of its agricultural production was paid as taxes and the inhabitants grew wheat, barley, summer crops such as corn, beans, melons, and vegetables, and raised goats: see Wolf-Dieter Hoetteroth and Kamal Abdulfattah, Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century (Erlagen: Palm and Enke, 1977), 158.
In 1948, al-Sarafand was a small Muslim village of 300 people, composed primarily of five extended families (
hamail; sing, hamula).
19 British Village Statistics, 1 April 1945, for number of inhabitants. The exact figure given for 1945, is 290 people.
The village's livelihood was based on summer crops grown along the coast (such as wheat, barley, sesame, melons, and vegetables), fruit trees planted near home and on the mountain terraces, and livestock. This was the economic basis of the many Palestinian villages that populated the coast of Mount Carmel. Al-Sarafand had close social and economic ties both to the neighboring villages and to the region's main urban center, Haifa.
The village mosque was composed of a single room with a niche in the southern wall, indicating the direction of prayer to Mecca (miḥrāb).20
The southern wall of the mosque has not been fully demolished, and the miḥrāb can still be seen at present.
As was common, the mosque was not only a place of prayer but also a center for social and communal activities. It was there that daily information was exchanged and public announcements were made; it served as a temporary shelter for passing travelers; funerals began at the mosque; and so forth. When schooling began at the end of the 19th century, during late Ottoman rule, it was at the mosque that the imam taught the village boys religious lessons. Later, during the British Mandate period (1917–48), schooling moved to a separate building opposite the mosque.
21 At al-Sarafand, elementary schooling was available only for boys. Altogether, the schooling offered to villagers under British rule was very rudimentary: see Naomi Shepherd, Ploughing Sand: British Rule in Palestine 1917–1948 (London: John Murray, 1999); Abdul Latif Tibawi, Arab Education in Mandatory Palestine (London: Luzac and Company, 1956).
Most of the villages along the Carmel coast remained intact some months after the fall of the city of Haifa into Jewish hands in April 1948. However, as a consequence of their economic dependence on Haifa, during these months they were in fact besieged, surrounded by Jewish-occupied land in all directions. Sometime during the summer, when the Jewish army exerted pressure on these “remaining” villages, the inhabitants of al-Sarafand fled to the southeast line of Wadi
Ara, where the Iraqi army was stationed. Later, they crossed the Jordan River, and since then the majority of al-Sarafand's refugees have been living in Jordan. Following the 1948 war, only one man of the entire village, Haj Fathi (Fathi Salman), remained within Israel's borders, finding refuge with his married sister in nearby al-Furidis.
The village houses were not immediately demolished by the Israelis and remained empty for many years. When they were eventually destroyed, the mosque was the only building spared. Al-Sarafand was not an exception: in many places the mosques remained undamaged.22
Much of the Arab-built environment was not demolished in 1948 but was gradually erased in the decades that followed. It seems that the Israeli government had a policy not to harm mosques. This policy was only partially implemented.
Decades later, these mosques were to become the locus on which the al-Aqsa Foundation of the Islamic Movement was to center its activities.
THE ISLAMIC MOVEMENT AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE AL-Aqsa FOUNDATION
The Islamic Movement in Israel appeared on the public scene in the late 1970s as part of a global Islamic resurgence, and specifically after the success of the Iranian Revolution in 1978–79. In its preliminary phase, it acted as a community-based movement, providing educational services such as day nurseries and afternoon activities for children, health clinics, charity for the poor and for orphans, and other welfare programs.23
Issam Aburaiya, “Developmental Leadership: The Case of the Islamic Movement in Umm al-Fahem, Israel” (master's thesis, Clark University, Worcester, Mass., 1991); R. Mayer, “The Development of the Islamic Movement in Israel,” Arabs in Israel 3 (1993): 2–20; Thomas Meir, The Resurgence of the Moslems in Israel (Givat Haviva: Center for Arab Studies, 1998).
By the late 1980s, the movement had gained many followers and supporters and expanded its activities to the political arena, first at the municipal level and later moving to national politics and running for the Knesset (Israeli Parliament).
24 In 1996, the Islamic Movement decided to run in parliamentary elections. One faction strongly opposed this decision, and the movement subsequently split into the “northern” and “southern” factions. The latter is represented in the Knesset. As a consequence, the al-Aqsa Association also split between north and south. This article is about the northern branch.
However, its backbone was and remains within the communal and social realm.
The strength of the Islamic Movement derives from its ability to provide concrete answers and pragmatic solutions to the pressing needs of the Palestinian population in Israel. More precisely, its growing influence in Israel is related to a certain detachment it creates between local affairs and the national struggle. While the activities of most Palestinian political groups have an explicit national character, the Islamic Movement places its emphasis on the local-religious dimension. The movement's religious prestige enables it to advocate Islamic values while adopting a more pragmatic approach in its relationship with the Israeli establishment.
25 Umm al-Fahim is the stronghold of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement. On Umm al-Fahim, see Danny Rabinowitz, “Umm al-Fahem—Dilemmas of Change,” Hamizrah Hehadash 37 (1995): 178.
This is in contrast to the secular Arab movements in Israel (such as the Communist Party and Abna
al-Balad), which frame local issues within the larger national context. The Israeli government, which has always been geared toward a “localization” of the Palestinians' demands, inadvertently joins hands with the Islamic Movement's approach. In other words, the Islamic Movement has been effective due to its ability to juggle its religious ideology with a flexible and compromising praxis.
In the early 1990s, the movement began to show increasing interest in what it defined as the “holy places”—namely, old Palestinian cemeteries, shrines (maqāmāt), and mosques. These “holy places” were often the sole remains of the villages and towns erased in 1948 and its aftermath. The momentum to preserve them was intensified after the grave of
Izz al-Din al-Qassam was vandalized at the village of Balad al-shaykh, not far from Haifa. Al-Qassam was a leading Islamic figure and a protagonist of Palestinian resistance during British Mandatory rule in Palestine. He organized a fighting band that was crushed by the British forces in 1935, and he himself was killed. With time, he was mythologized and became a symbol combining Palestinian nationalism and Islamic devotion.
26 The image of al-Qassam was resurrected time and again. During the first Intifada in the Occupied Territories, the military arm of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) was named after al-Qassam. It was during that time that al-Qassam's grave was found and damaged, most likely by Jewish Israeli hooligans. Following this vandalism, the Islamic Movement within Israel was motivated to begin its rehabilitation of graves, cemeteries, and mosques. Al-Qassam's symbolism re-emerged once more in the second Intifada that erupted in September 2000. Both Hamas units and their improvised missiles were named after al-Qassam.
It was during the struggle over al-Qassam's grave in the early 1990s that the Islamic Movement institutionalized the preservation of holy places by establishing the al-Aqsa Foundation.
Al-Aqsa's activities complemented a pre-existing Palestinian tradition, begun shortly after 1948, of visiting the destroyed villages and towns. Whereas for many decades these visits remained within family circles, in the past few years they have also become part of a communal activity, with al-Aqsa intensifying the process. The following section delineates the nature of the personal and family visits that have been performed in the past half-century.
PERSONAL PILGRIMAGE
The policy of the Jewish institutions both before and after the establishment of the State of Israel has been to “Judaize” the land, be it by establishing Hebrew settlements (hityashvut), encouraging “Hebrew labor” (‘avoda ivrit), “Judaizing the Galilee” (yehud hagalil), etc.27
See the work of Oren Yiftachel on the political geography of the conflict, specifically his “Ethnocracy: The Politics of Judaizing Israel/Palestine,” Constellations 6 (1999): 364–90. See also Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
The most dramatic expression of this “Judaization” policy was the depopulation of roughly 400 villages and towns in 1948 and the physical destruction of the built environment of these places. At the symbolic level, from its inception the State of Israel was involved in imprinting the physical space with Hebrew, Jewish, and biblical names at the expense of Palestinian signs.
28 Ironically, Arab names often preserved ancient biblical names and hence indicated the Jewish past: see Meron Benvenisti, “The Hebrew Map,” Teoria Ubiqoret 11 (1997): 7–29.
However, this Judaization process was not fully accomplished for four primary reasons. First, the nascent state needed Palestinian buildings to accommodate newly arrived Jewish immigrants. The maintenance of these structures indirectly contributed to the preservation of the Palestinian character of the built environment. Second, not only buildings but also other elements existed that could not be transformed, despite the Jewish policy of “dressing the homeland with concrete and cement.”29
Dressing the land with concrete and cement (nalbishekh salmat beton vamelet) was a common Zionist phrase used to describe the modernization project.
Hence, old stone fences, mountain terraces, and fruit trees remained scattered throughout the countryside. These were perceived as mute memorials in the eyes of Palestinians.
30 See, for example, Laila Allush's poem, “The Path of Affection”: “On the startling road [to Haifa]…the trees were smiling at me with Arab affection,” in Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature, ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 106–107.
Third, Palestinian names were vast in number and so deeply ingrained in the local vernacular that they occasionally penetrated the Hebrew language. Even today, many springs, ruins, road junctions, and city neighborhoods retain their original Arabic names in official Israeli documents and maps.
31 Road junctions are still commonly known by the names of the nearby Arab villages that were destroyed fifty-five years ago, such as Masmiyyeh, Qastiana, Beit Lid. Neighborhoods of West Jerusalem, though inhabited now by Jews, still bear Arab names: Talbiyyeh, Qatamon, Baq
a, etc. In some cases, the road signs give the new Hebretized names (for instance, Beitt Lid Junction is Tsomet Hasharon), though few Israelis know and use the Hebrew names.
The fourth obstacle to the Judaization of the landscape was the fact that approximately 156,000 Palestinians remained within what became the State of Israel. Some 15 percent of them were “internally displaced” refugees who were uprooted from their villages and towns but remained within Israel's borders.32
The number of internally displaced Palestinians is controversial: see Hillel Cohen The Present Absentees: The Palestinian Refugees in Israel Since 1948 (Jerusalem: Institute for Israeli Arab Studies, 2000), 21–23. Joseph Schechla claims that the proportion of the internally displaced was more than one-quarter of the total Palestinian population in Israel, yet the basis for his estimate is unclear, see Joseph Schechla, “The Invisible People Come to Light: Israel's ‘Internally Displaced’ and the ‘Unrecognized Villages,’” Journal of Palestine Studies 31 (2001): 20–31.
As newly built Jewish neighborhoods and forests planted by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) spread, covering the Arab landscape, Palestinians continued to visit their villages and make their presence felt.
Until 1966, the Palestinians in Israel were under military rule (mimshal tsva'i), which imposed severe restrictions on their freedom of movement, even between neighboring villages. Hence, it was difficult for the internal refugees to gain access to their obliterated villages other than on the Israeli Day of Independence, when freedom of movement was granted. However, Palestinians continued to visit their villages, and they do so to this day. Following the Israeli conquest of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 and the opening of bridges to and from Jordan, many more Palestinian refugees have made these visits. Whereas for Palestinians who live in Israel the visits were ongoing and repetitive, for those who came from a distance it was usually a one-time occasion, imprinting a strong impression. For all these visitors, the visit further served as a kind of temporary return.
The visits took the form of pilgrim-like voyages, requiring an effort on the part of the traveler. Pilgrimage, noted Victor Turner in his classic work, is a voyage to a sacred place in the periphery that is temporarily transformed in the eye of the pilgrim into a center.33
Victor Turner, “The Center out There: The Pilgrim's Goal,” History of Religion 12 (1973): 191–230.
The practices and mini-rituals carried out in one's village further resemble a pilgrimage: they breach the usual sense of order and linear time; they cause emotional turbulence and consist of bodily practices and performances.
34 These visits are somewhat similar to Jewish tours to Poland. For accounts of the pilgrimage-like nature of Jewish tours to Poland, see Jack Kugelmass, “The Rites of the Tribe: The Meaning of Poland for American Jewish Tourists,” YIVO Annual 21 (1993): 395–453; Jackie Feldman, “Following the Israeli Holocaust Survivor: Israeli Youth Delegations to Poland and National Identity,” Teoria Ubiqoret 19 (2001): 167–90.
Pilgrimage here, as in other instances, creates a unique combination of the solitary experience and the power drawn from making the act in the company of others.
The embodied nature of this pilgrimage contributes to the effectiveness of the visit. The Palestinian refugees roam through the ruins, sit together on the ground to share a meal, collect and eat the local plants, and attend to the decaying graves. Moreover, they take this embodied experience back home by collecting earth (especially those who reside far away) and exhibiting it, picking plants while preparing some as dishes and distributing them among family and friends, or taking still pictures and video films to be screened for others who did not attend.35
Efrat Ben-Ze'ev, “Narratives of Exile: Palestinian Refugee Reflections on Three Villages,” Tiret Haifa, Ijzim and
Ein Hawd (D.Phil. thesis, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, 2000).
Haj Fathi of al-Sarafand, whose current home is in al-Furidis, regularly visited the ruins of his village after its destruction. He noted that he would go with his sons, visit his parents' graves, and clean the mosque and its vicinity. During these family visits, he was able to express his yearning for home and make use of the setting to transmit the social significance of the place to his children and grandchildren.
Salmeh's description of her return visit demonstrated the salience of embodiment during the pilgrimage. Salmeh, in her sixties, has lived for most of her life of exile in Irbid's refugee camp in Jordan. Toward the end of an interview at her home, she spoke of her two visits to her village of origin,
Ein Hawd (on the western slopes of Mount Carmel), the first in the 1970s and the second in the 1990s. During the second visit, her relatives (who live near
Ein Hawd) took Salmeh and her family to
Atlit's beach, located 2 kilometers west of
Ein Hawd. She recalled:
…in the afternoon, after we had eaten, we went down to the beach…. We went and we sat and my son and his cousin rolled their pants up and went to the sea, and I started shouting at them to return, so that they would not drown…. And when I managed to make them come back, my leg sank in the sea and I fell. They said to me: “stand up, stand up,” but I wouldn't and I remained sitting in the sea…. I sat on the seashore (jamb al-shaṭṭ), and a wave approached me and overcame me and retreated, and I still sat there. And the waves approached me and broke over me and I was still sitting. And they [the relatives] were shouting at me, and I still sat there.36
Salmeh's narrative, translated here from the Arabic, is edited from a longer passage. She actually began by noting the elevating experience of being covered by the waves and only later explained the exact circumstances that had brought her to the beach.
Clearly, this unintended and overwhelming experience of bathing in the Mediterranean was engraved in Salmeh's memory. Its significance was clarified when she noted that, during her childhood, she never went to the beach because she was afraid. “And it stayed in my thoughts” she said, “that I should go to the sea and see it…. This was my life's hope to go and see the sea.”
37 On the role of embodiment in the Palestinian return visits, and specifically on taste and smell, see Efrat Ben-Ze'ev, “The Politics of Taste and Smell: Palestinian Rites of Return” in The Politics of Food, ed. Marianne Lien and Brigitte Nerlich (Oxford: Berg, forthcoming).
Somewhere in the background, the refugees, who are predominantly Muslim, carry the images of the ultimate Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. In fact, a couple of times descriptions of the hajj came up during joint visits to the obliterated village. For example, while driving back from visiting
Ein Hawd with Haj Musa, he recalled and narrated his own hajj experiences. In a recent paper, the anthropologist Randa Farah quotes Umm Yusef, originally of Saris (near Jerusalem) and a resident of the al-Baq
a camp in Jordan. When he was interviewed in the mid-1990s, Umm Yusef explicitly linked the hajj and the visit to her village of origin by saying, “There are people from our village who are going to Saris, and I would like to go. If I go to al-Hajj I will go first to our village before I go to the Hajj.”
38 Randa Farah, “1948—Back to the Future: Palestinian Passages of Exile,” paper presented at the Fourth Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting, European University Institute, Montecatini Terme, Italy, 17–20 March 2003.
Whereas the hajj is conceived as wholly religious, the return visit to the village combines a personal attachment to one's place, a political claim, and a religious element.
The political facet of the return visit comes into play primarily in its challenge to the Judaization process. For Palestinians, visits to the old homes include uneasy encounters with the Jews who now live on the sites and produce their own version of the place. Qasim's story is exemplary of such an encounter. A refugee of Tiret al-Karmil (also known as al-Tireh), 15 kilometers north of al-Sarafand and on the southern outskirts of Haifa, he was born in 1931 and remained in Israel following 1948, while his nuclear family was expelled across the border to Jordan. Therefore, from age 17, he had no relatives in Israel, a very uncommon condition for a Palestinian. When he married in the 1950s, he settled in a southern neighborhood of Haifa, only a few kilometers from the ruins of his village. He was therefore able to visit the village regularly—and indeed, he noted, he went to Tiret al-Karmil almost every week. One specific incident during one of those visits in the 1960s left a lasting impression on him. He recounted it on two separate occasions:
We used to own some olive trees at the entrance to al-Tireh…. I would go there every year to collect the olives…. There was an Iraqi man [a Jew]. He saw my children picking olives and thought that the children were alone. [He passed them in his car and then] reversed and came back to them. I was on the tree.
I came down, and he said to me: “Oh, it's you.” I said: “Yes, it's me.”
“Are you the owner here that you come every year and pick olives?”
I said: “These are my father's olives. My grandfather planted them, and we pick them every year.” He said: “No, it used to be yours. It's not anymore.” I said to him: “You came from Baghdad yesterday and now it is yours, and my grandfather planted it here and it isn't mine. I want to come every year to pick the olives, and you do as you please.”
Such encounters have a profound impact on the refugees who experience them and are told and retold, transforming the conflict into something concrete and immediate. The following is another example of a clash between the previous Arab owners and current Jewish dwellers of a home. In his oral-history study of Palestinian refugees, Adel Yahya dedicates a chapter to the “returns” and in it records a 53-year-old woman from the village of Lifta (near Jerusalem):
Before he died, my father used to take us [to his village] every year. We used to go in the summer. He would show us our land, the borders of our land, where our house was, where our uncle's house was, where our grandfather's house was, one by one. I remember once we fought with the Jewish tenant of our house. When we were leaving the house she started to fight with us. She asked us, “Why did you take this?” We had gathered apples, figs, and other fruit. We replied, “This is our land.” She answered, “No, I will call the police.” We fought with her. When the police came, they separated us and told us that her son was killed in Lebanon, and she was therefore very angry. They advised us to get away quickly, before the problem grew larger.39
Yahya, Palestinian Refugees, 53–54.
When Palestinians return to their village, they face the destruction and unearth the remains—an obscured flight of stairs, the water cistern, or the traditional stove built outside the house (tābūn). Some overlook the changes or view them as a temporary deviance, despite the transformation of the landscape that they had previously known. By overcoming the obstacles and re-rooting themselves, there is a sense, even if temporary, of relief.40
Films are a vivid medium that bestow the sensual experience of the visit. See Ra
anan Alexandrovitz's The Internal Voyage or Michel Khaleifi's Maloul Celebrates Its Destruction, both of which record the Palestinian return visit.
Such a return visit was described by Kamal of the village of Tiret al-Karmil, who was born in 1937 and whose family found refuge in the Jordanian city of Irbid. Kamal, a wealthy businessman, traveled to Palestine/Israel twice, once in the 1970s for medical treatment and the second time with his cousin in 1997. His description of his second visit dwelled on the (re)discovery of the village landscape:
Kamal: We went to Beit Oren [the Jewish settlement near the family's land], to the land pertaining to our childhood (ilā al-arḍ ṭufūlitnā). We came down to al-Tireh from Beit Oren, from the mountains. Then we went to Wadi Fallah. We walked, and it was nice and healthy. We walked 10 to 15 kilometers in a single day.
Ben-Ze'ev: And what did you feel?
Kamal: My feelings…. I wished to die there…. I am one of the richest men of the village. And on this one visit, when I saw it, it made me forget everything. I have seen the world. I've been to Germany; I've been to Vienna and always longed to return to Irbid. But on this one time in Palestine, my soul did not wish to leave (malūsh nafs yiṭla').
Palestinians such as Kamal return to their villages to recognize themselves as part of a lost community. Beyond simply being there, Palestinians embody the place: they devour its plants, climb its trees, and walk its paths. The rooting in the landscape is necessary in any context, argued Henri Lefebvre, because groups
cannot constitute themselves, or recognize one another, as “subjects” unless they generate (or produce) a space…. Whatever is not invested in an appropriated space is stranded, and all that remain are useless signs and significations. Space's investment—the production of space—has nothing incidental about it: it is a matter of life and death.41
Lefebvre, Production of Space, 416–17.
In the Palestinian context, investment in the pre-1948 spaces has been conducted in the past half-century through personal pilgrimage. Individuals recognized their scattered communities by visiting the ruins, identifying who owned which house (or identifying the houses), picking fruit from trees planted by one's ancestors, facing the new Jewish inhabitants. Yet this was a limited type of investment. In recent years, the production of space has changed in two significant and interrelated ways. The first is that the transformation of space is becoming more apparent and concrete, expressed through the erection of fences, signs, water containers, and shelters. The second change is that commemoration at these sites is becoming a collective act, public and organized.
ORGANIZED COMMEMORATION
The establishment of the National Committee for the Defense of the Rights of the Internally Displaced (NCDRID) in Israel in March 1995, headed by the advocate Wakim Wakim, signaled a shift toward collective action.42
The catalyst was the Oslo Agreements, which, in the eyes of the internally displaced, failed to address their problems.
43 Talking about his aspirations in a newspaper article, Wakim Wakim, chairman of the Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Uprooted, noted, “Univocally: to return to our villages…. We will not accept any other solution. We will not take any compensation. We are not committed to any agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, which will deny our right of return. We do not forget and will not forget our homes.” See Uriah Shavit and Jalal Bana, “The Palestinian Dream, the Israeli Nightmare,” Ha'aretz, special supp., 6 July 2001, 26.
Whereas until then the local Palestinian political parties were concerned primarily with two main issues—equality within the Israeli state and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories—the “internally displaced” now occupied a place on the public agenda. The NCDRID became the umbrella organization, coordinating numerous small refugee committees that had appeared on the scene earlier and were based on attachment to specific villages, such as the committees of Saffuriyyeh, Suhmata, and al-Ghabsiyyeh. It is not by mere chance that all three are in the Galilee. The Galilee was and remains the hub of these activities. In addition, the NCDRID acted as a mediating body between these committees and the Higher Follow-up Committee for the Arabs in Israel. The NCDRID became involved in organizing school trips to the obliterated villages and arranging symposiums. The pattern and scope of its activities grants the NCDRID the unique position of being a mediator between national and local bodies.
44 See Cohen, The Present Absentees, 11–17. Information was updated in a talk with Wakim Wakim, head of the NCDRID, 14 April 2003.
Parallel to the existence of the NCDRID, other organizations dealing with the refugee issue maintain their autonomy. For example, the Arab Culture Association, based in Nazareth and affiliated with the National Democratic Alliance Party (al-tajammu
al-waṭanī, al dīmūqrāti), has to date organized dozens of “roots and belonging tours” (ziārāt al-intimā
wa al-judhūr). Rawda
Ata alla, the chairwoman of the association, notes that one of the aims of the tours is “to complement what is absent in the official school curricula.”
45 Shavit and Bana, “The Palestinian Dream.”
However, conducting such tours goes beyond merely enriching the school curricula; it is part of a much wider attempt to voice the Palestinian historical narrative that has been silenced in Israel for many decades. Moreover, the innovation lies in the method: the narrative changes not merely in words but also in the attempt to configure places.
In the tours organized by the Arab Cultural Association, the Palestinians visiting obliterated sites are accompanied by two types of guides: the field guide and old people who witnessed the Nakba. The two represent complementary types of authority. The old people embody the “authentic,” whereas the educated field guides (al-murshidūn) deliver the “scientific.”46
Such “guiding” is reminiscent of the Israeli organized tours to Poland's Nazi extermination camps. In addition to the group leader, each group is assigned a Holocaust survivor who tells his story at the death camps: See Feldman, “Israeli Holocaust Survivor,” 181–82.
At the site, the scientific guide walks the group around, providing what is perceived as “established data”—highlighting certain historical episodes, giving statistics on the village's inhabitants, discussing the number of schools and classes, and so on. In contrast, the witness describes everyday life before 1948 and the painful consequences of the Nakba. The largest number of these tours are organized on the Day of the Nakba, commemorated either on the Israeli Independence Day or on 15 May, and comprises mass marches to chosen villages, public speeches, and the raising of Palestinian flags and signs with the names of demolished villages, aimed both internally toward the Palestinian Israeli population and toward raising Israeli and international public awareness.
In a study on the refugees of the village of Suhmata, May Seikaly shows how the community ties revolve around the demolished site. In Suhmata's case, it is not an overarching organization but, rather, the former villagers and their descendents who organize the communal activities. Seikaly writes:
[T]he site of the village and the community legacy are made alive by communal pilgrimages and holding of memorials to commemorate their links and affiliation as a group. They have been involved in a legal battle with the Israeli authorities to permit them to clean and maintain their cemeteries, which they do again as a group. Their youth is encouraged to identify with their roots through the holding of summer camps and story telling about the village, its life, its community's love and bonding.47
See May Seikaly, “Displaced and Exiled: The Case of Suhmata,” paper presented at the Fourth Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting, European University Institute, Montecatini Terme, Italy, 17–20 March 2003, 17.
Indeed, “Roots and belonging summer camps” (
mukhayamāt al-Intimā wa al-judhūr) are becoming increasingly popular not only among Suhmatans. The communities of Iqrith and Bir
im were the precursors of this trend but were soon followed by others.
48 Iqrith and Bir
im were two villages on what became the northern Israeli border. In 1948, the residents of these villages were asked to leave and were promised to be allowed to return. In the early 1950s, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in favor of their return. However, consequent to this ruling, their villages were bombed, and they were never permitted to return. They have conducted an autonomous struggle ever since.
At the sites of obliterated villages, children and youth pitch tents, naming each one after either a demolished village (such as
khayma Ṣafūriyyeh or
khayma maalūl) or a national figure or writer (such as Mahmud Darwish or Mu
in Bsisu). Ilan Magat, writing on the summer camps of the villagers of Bir
im, notes that the organizers' aim is “to revive the village” and resurrect it so that the participants will become acquainted with “real life” as it once was. The children cook their meals with the elderly women; the elderly sing traditional songs, and dummy wedding ceremonies are performed.
49 Ilan Magat, Bir
am—A Conscripted Community of Memory and the Maintenance of Voice (Kibbutz Dalia: Givat Haviva, 2000), 49. See also Maya Barr and Avner Fainguelerent's film on Bir
im, The First Will Be the Last (Tel-Aviv, 1997).
The general attempt is to enhance a Palestinian national identity through joint experiences in the “real” setting.
In the past few years, the al-Aqsa Foundation has been playing a central role in this field. Samir Darwish, who is currently responsible for the holy places on behalf of al-Aqsa, outlined the “inclusive policy” of the movement in terms of recruiting a variety of volunteers, in contrast to its more exclusive character in the past:
Today we explain to the people: Everyone is Muslim. No one is different from the other. If one doesn't want to pray yet wishes to assist me in building a mosque [I accept that]. Even if he does not pray…. I know someone…who is a drug addict. He doesn't pray. People at the village told me, “Why do you take him to al-Aqsa?” I said, “It's none of my business! If he wants to work, he may…. If he doesn't pray, at least he does something [positive].”
There is a range of motivations among al-Aqsa's supporters. At al-Sarafand, we found activists of three main groups. It seemed that the most committed individuals were elderly men who were uprooted in 1948 from the surrounding villages such as al-Tantura and Ijzim. Samir Darwish, himself “second generation” to the internally displaced of Ijzim, also described the central role of these veterans:
When we establish a project…the first thing we do is to turn to the people of al-Sarafand and its vicinity who are there and tell them: you have to lead. You have to provide the strength to stay here. I do not force anyone, but I give them the feeling that you are committed to come to this place, and I am with you.
Between autumn 2001 and spring 2002, when al-Aqsa rebuilt al-Sarafand's mosque as a permanent shelter made of plastic sheeting and wooden supports, Haj Fathi and other elderly men from nearby villages turned the makeshift building into their permanent place of residence: They ate, prayed, and slept there. The second group comprises men mainly from the nearby village of al-Furidis who visit the site daily. Al-Furidis is one of the few Arab villages in the region that remained intact following 1948. The last group that attends al-Sarafand's prayers and other special occasions comprises the Islamic Movement activists who come from farther away. These men come for Friday prayers as well as for volunteer days (
Āyām taṭawa‘iyya) when sites are cleaned, ruins are rebuilt and painted, and the cemetery boundaries are demarcated. Women rarely visit al-Sarafand in the context of al-Aqsa's activities. We did encounter them there during
Id al-Adha, when men associated with the Islamic Movement came from a distance for the feast and brought their families along.
The fact that al-Sarafand attracts such a wide variety of activists suggests that the transformation of the pilgrimage practice from an individual to a more public and organized enterprise is not merely an adaptation to the needs of refugees for a temporary return. The ruined sites, in a dynamic process, become the locus for a variety of parties attuned to different agendas. The public enterprises were perhaps initially a response to refugees' biographical narratives emerging from “below.” However, as time went by, the public enterprises created a new niche that did not exist beforehand. For Palestinian organizations, the ruined sites provide a place to transform their ideas into something more concrete. The past and the Nakba become visible, and a ruined village can represent the story of Palestine. For a religious organization such as al-Aqsa, the immediate motivation was to protect holy places. However, in the long run, the entire site is sanctified, and a synthesis of religious and national elements is created.
The re-appropriation of the space is carried out in a variety of ways. Al-Aqsa has specialists who search Israeli archives for documents, mainly land-ownership records, and it sends surveyors and engineers into “the field.” It further employs lawyers who appeal to the courts in these matters.50
Abd al-Majid Muḥammad Aghbariyya, secretary of the al-Aqsa Foundation, noted in an interview (12 November 2002) that in the case of al-Sarafand, al-Aqsa appealed to the Shalom Court in Haifa to rebuild the mosque. The court ruled that only the Ministry of Religion could grant such permission. There were also appeals to the Shalom courts in Tiberias and Acre.
It systematically maps and photographs the holy places in Israel. Its aim is to publish an encyclopedia in the future and produce maps of the holy places. Maps, of course, are not produced merely for technical and scientific reasons; they include a political statement constituting, as the Israeli scholar Meron Benvenisti writes, an “instrument on which to base the demands of the draftsman, his symbolic and social values, while protected by ‘scientific objectivity.’” Maps can project the future rather than reflect the present.
51 Benvenisti, “Hebrew Map,” 7–8. On the construction of maps, see April Carlucci and Peter Barber, ed., Lie of the Land: The Secret Life of Maps (London: British Library, 2001).
Al-Aqsa is also accessible via the Internet (see www.islamic-aqsa.com). The way it makes use of newly available electronic media shows that its methods resemble those of many social movements that have emerged in the past decade. Local groups are empowered by the Internet in their ability both to circulate their demands and to solicit support from places way beyond their locality. In the Internet age, local groups can readily transform into globalized movements.52
Castells, Power of Identity, 68–109.
On its Web page, Al-Aqsa conducts a yearly competition, entitled “Bayt al-Maqdas fi khaṭir” (The Holy Mount Is in Danger), encouraging Muslims worldwide to send articles on the subject. Roughly 20,000 papers from twenty different states were submitted for the 2001
competition.
53 Taqrir sanawi li‘am 2001 (2001 Yearly Report) (Umm al-Fahim: al-Aqsa Foundation), 52.
Thus, the Internet assists in strengthening ties across borders.
These methods, and especially the challenge to the legitimacy of Jewish land ownership, are conceived in the eyes of many Jews as a threat to the foundations of the State of Israel. Al-Aqsa, aware of such implications, tries to avoid direct confrontation with the authorities. Its targets of preservation are mostly outside Jewish settlements. For example, when al-Aqsa took the first steps toward renovating the impressive 19th-century mosque at Ijzim (3 kilometers east of al-Sarafand), the local Jewish municipality objected. At one point, the municipality threatened to call the police. In response, al-Aqsa shelved its plans. Another example comes from the mosque at Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee. The foundation's Samir Darwish explains:
For instance, in Tiberias…. I do not know whether you recall the period when we held Friday prayers at the mosque there. There was once a real brawl. The police came between us and the Jews who were there. They wanted [the Jews] to beat us, and in fact some people were beaten there. At some stage, the mayor said to us: “Guys, let's do something else. What would you say if you let go of the matter for a certain period, till things calm down, and then we will discuss how to renovate [the mosque].”…At yesterday's meeting we spoke of unsettled matters, unsettled places that we did not rehabilitate, and the Tiberias matter came up. We have a letter from the mayor promising to rehabilitate the place, at some time. To take care of it—[The mosque] and the cemetery. We, at the mû'assasa [al-Aqsa Foundation] said to ourselves, “As long as there is someone from Tiberias held captive by the Hezbollah, it is a delicate situation there.”54
The Lebanese Hezbollah captured three Israeli soldiers on 7 October 2000. One of the soldiers was from Tiberias. Later, Israel declared the prisoners dead.
So we agreed to write a letter to the mayor saying that we want to take care of the place—at least, the cemetery—through a contractor. Someone even came up with a name of a Jewish contractor who does this kind of work. We will pay him, and he will do the work, and a Muslim will have no direct involvement at the site. The Jew will take care of it. We will feel better, and that's what we agreed. We don't try to make provocations…. There are places like al-Sarafand that are outside Jewish settlements, so we go there quietly and slowly. We go and preserve.
Despite al-Aqsa's apparent flexibility and pragmatism, in some cases it does not recoil from confrontation with the authorities. Extensive work at al-musalla al-Marwani beneath the holy mount in Jerusalem was carried out despite the state's decisive objection. In Tiberias and Nabi Rubin a holy shrine south of Holon, al-Aqsa's activists have engaged in face-to-face confrontation with the police. At al-Sarafand, there has been no violent confrontation to date. The most recent wood-and-plastic construction was destroyed in 2002, but al-Aqsa has not abandoned the site. It seems that al-Aqsa's leadership, as well as its activists, have perseverance.
55 On 13 May 2003, fifteen members of the Islamic Movement were arrested by the police. Ten were released five days later, whereas five, including the head of the movement, Sheik Ra
ed Salah, remained in detention. In July 2003 their trial opened and they were indicted for allegedly being members in a terror organization, conveying information to the enemy, and transferring money to charity organizations associated with the Hamas. The trial is still pending. Despite the circumstances, the Islamic Movement and the al-Aqsa Foundation are still active. Friday prayers are conducted as al-Sarafand and activists visit it during the week (24 July 2004).
CONCLUSION
In this article, we have drawn attention to what we see as an important development among the Palestinians in Israel: a process that bonds abstract “Palestine” with the Palestinians' actual attachment to localities. This development is reflected in the attempt to transform, or “re-Palestinize,” villages and sites destroyed in 1948 through actual measures on the ground. This re-Palestinization has become increasingly organized and institutionalized over time, especially since the early 1990s. Almost all of the national and Islamic forces within the Palestinian community in Israel participate in this process. However, the Islamic Movement, due to its double character as a religious and national force, its ability to balance between religious devotion and pragmatic behavior, and, finally, its unique organizational infrastructure, continues to play a leading role in this re-Palestinization process. These developments are part of what we term “middle-ground” politics.
Middle-ground politics is where ideology and praxis come together. In the creation of middle grounds, a close bond is formed between the social and the geographical. According to Patricia Yaeger, writing on current trends in the geography of identity, this bond is neither fixed nor clear. Boundaries are ever changing, as are perceptions of time; the local is permeated by the global; space cannot be described in simple binary oppositions.56
Yaeger, Geography of Identity, 15.
Binaries of landscapes, she continues, are an outcome of “narratives of anxiety that emerge from the colonial system.”
57 Yeager is specifically drawing on Sara Suleri, The Rhetoric of English India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
Yaeger is following a line of thought introduced by Lefebvre in
The Production of Space. According to Lefebvre, landscapes are never either one thing or another but, rather, an infinite potential: “[h]ow many maps, in the descriptive or geographical sense, might be needed to deal exhaustively with a given space, to code and decode all its meanings and contents? It is doubtful whether a finite number can ever be given in answer to this sort of question.”
58 Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 85.
The post-modernist discourse persistently reminds us of the multiplicity of spaces.
However, in the context of conflictual national discourses, post-modernity is more of an intellectual exercise. The nationalist discourse rejects post-modernist reading, reinstating binary “narratives of anxiety.” The Palestine–Israel conflict is often portrayed as a zero-sum game, allowing only two options for the definition and identity of the land—Arab or Jewish, Palestinian or Israeli. The national narrative is based on an attempt to maintain an exclusive monopoly over truth, pain, victimhood, justice. Within this abstract context, multiple rendering of the same space is rarely tolerated.
Middle-ground politics implemented in actual spaces, however, stumbles on a complicated, post-modern terrain. Half a century after the establishment of the Jewish state, road junctions are still named for Palestinian villages that ceased to exist long ago; neighborhoods inhabited by Jews still bear their Palestinian names, trees, fences, remains of houses, cemeteries, and mosques are testimony to a previous, not so distant Palestinian Arab era. With some effort and intention, these testimonies become monuments, places of pilgrimage, sites of gathering. Currently, these practices mainly serve a national imagination. However, even within this nationalistic framework, the practices of singular pilgrims, secular organizations, and the Islamic Movement differ from one another. The construction of space on the Jewish Israeli side is also not solely dominated by state institutions. Therefore, as time goes by, other maps—multiple maps for each space—continuously emerge. The imaginary maps that would not necessarily run along ethnic lines might hold the secret for a more tranquil future in Israel/Palestine.
Author's note: Some of the names of interviewees, especially in the section on Personal Pilgrimage, are pseudonyms. We thank Fouad Moughrabi, Oren Yiftachel, three anonymous reviewers, and Juan Cole for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. We thank Lisa Perlman and Connie Hackbarth for editing this paper and the Truman Institute for its financial support. We dedicate this paper to the memory of Sara Kaminker, a Jerusalem city planner and City Council member, who strived to create spaces and places for Palestinians struggling against the pro-Jewish policy in Jerusalem.
%20-%20https://sketch.com%20--%3e%3ctitle%3e3ECBBF50-FD08-412A-943D-2CFC5E025A16%3c/title%3e%3cdesc%3eCreated%20with%20sketchtool.%3c/desc%3e%3cg%20id='Stylesheet'%20stroke='none'%20stroke-width='1'%20fill='none'%20fill-rule='evenodd'%3e%3cg%20transform='translate(-926.000000,%20-668.000000)'%20id='BUTTONS'%3e%3cg%20transform='translate(100.000000,%20597.000000)'%3e%3cg%20id='BTN-/-RIGHTS'%20transform='translate(816.000000,%2065.000000)'%3e%3cg%20id='ICON-/-Rights'%20transform='translate(10.000000,%206.000000)'%3e%3cpath%20d='M13.5752841,0%20L1.34943182,0%20C0.59375,0%200,0.586666667%200,1.33333333%20L0,22.6666667%20C0,23.4133333%200.620738636,24%201.34943182,24%20L17.6505682,24%20C18.40625,24%2019,23.3866667%2019,22.6666667%20L19,5.36%20L13.5752841,0%20Z%20M13.5752841,1.89333333%20L17.0838068,5.36%20L13.5752841,5.36%20L13.5752841,1.89333333%20Z%20M1.34943182,22.6666667%20L1.34943182,1.33333333%20L12.1988636,1.33333333%20L12.1988636,5.36%20C12.1988636,6.10666667%2012.7926136,6.69333333%2013.5482955,6.69333333%20L17.6235795,6.69333333%20L17.6505682,22.6666667%20L1.34943182,22.6666667%20Z'%20id='Shape'%20fill='%23595959'%20fill-rule='nonzero'%3e%3c/path%3e%3ccircle%20id='Oval'%20stroke='%23595959'%20stroke-width='1.5'%20fill='%23595959'%20cx='9.5'%20cy='13.5355339'%20r='5.5'%3e%3c/circle%3e%3cpolyline%20id='Path-2'%20stroke='%23FFFFFF'%20stroke-width='1.5'%20transform='translate(9.500000,%2013.035534)%20rotate(45.000000)%20translate(-9.500000,%20-13.035534)%20'%20points='8%2016.0355339%2011%2016.0355339%2011%2010.0355339'%3e%3c/polyline%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/svg%3e)
