The Palestinian Diaspora (Global Diasporas)

THE PALESTINIAN DIASPORA From the refugee camps of the Lebanon to the relative prosperity of life in the USA, the Pale...

Author: Helena Schulz

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THE PALESTINIAN DIASPORA

From the refugee camps of the Lebanon to the relative prosperity of life in the USA, the Palestinian diaspora has been dispersed across the world. In this pioneering study, Helena Lindholm Schulz examines the ways in which Palestinian identity has been formed in the diaspora through constant longing for a homeland lost. In so doing, the author advances the debate on the relationship between diaspora and the creation of national identity as well as on nationalist politics tied to a particular territory. But The Palestinian Diaspora also sheds light on the possibilities opened up by a transnational existence, the possibility of new, less territorialised identities, even in a diaspora as bound to the idea of an idealised homeland as the Palestinian. Members of the diaspora form new lives in new settings and the idea of homeland becomes one important, but not the only, source of identity Ultimately, though, Schulz argues, the strong attachment to Palestine makes the diaspora crucial in any understandings of how to formulate a viable strategy for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Helena Lindholm Schulz is Associate Professor at the Department of Peace and Development Research, Göteborg University. She is the author of The Reconstruction of Palestinian Nationalisms (Manchester University Press, 1999).

GLOBAL DIASPORAS Series Editor: Robin Cohen The assumption that minorities and migrants will demonstrate an exclusive loyalty to the nation-state is now questionable. Scholars of nationalism, international migration and ethnic relations need new conceptual maps and fresh case studies to understand the growth of complex transnational identities. The old idea of “diaspora” may provide this framework. Though often conceived in terms of a catastrophic dispersion, widening the notion of diaspora to include trade, imperial labour and cultural diasporas can provide a more nuanced understanding of the often positive relationships between migrants’ homelands and their places of work and settlement. This book forms part of an ambitious and interlinked series of volumes trying to capture the new relationships between home and abroad. Historians, political scientists, sociologists and anthropologists from a number of countries have collaborated on this forward-looking project. The series includes two books which provide the defining, comparative and synoptic aspects of diasporas. Further titles focus on particular communities, both traditionally recognized diasporas and those newer claimants who define their collective experiences and aspirations in terms of diasporic identity. This series is associated with the Transnational Communities Programme at the University of Oxford funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council. Already Published: Global Diasporas: An Introduction Robin Cohen New Diasporas Nicholas Van Hear The Sikh Diaspora Darshan Singh Tatla Italy’s Many Diasporas Donna R.Gabaccia The Hindu Diaspora: Comparative Patterns Steven Vertovec The Israeli Diaspora Steven J.Gold The Ukrainian Diapora Vic Satzewich New African Diasporas Edited by Khalis Koser

THE PALESTINIAN DIASPORA Formation of identities and politics of homeland

Helena Lindholm Schulz with Juliane Hammer

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2003 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2003 Helena Lindholm Schulz All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congree Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schulz, Helena Lindholm. The Palestinian diaspora: formation of identities and politics of homeland/Helena Lindholm Schulz; in cooperation with Juliane Hammer.—1st ed. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Palestinian Arabs-Politics and government—20th century. 2. National liberation movements—Palestine. 3. National characteristics, Palestinian. 4. Repatriation—Palestine. 5. Refugees, Palestinian Arab. I.Hammer, Juliane. II. Title DS113.6.S38 2003 305.892′74-dc21 2003009734 ISBN 0-203-98903-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-26820-6 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-26821-4 (pbk)

CONTENTS

Preface List of abbreviations 1 Between nationalism and globalism

viii xi 1

Introduction

1

About this book

3

Diasporas: definitions and problems

8

2 Catastrophe and beyond

23

Migration patterns at the turn of the century

23

The catastrophe

24

Becoming a refugee

35

UNRWA and its cause

37

The setback

38

Forced migration continues

40

Patterns of new migration/labour migration

42

Christian migration

43

3 Palestinians in the world

44

Jordan

45

Lebanon

52

Egypt

61

The Gulf

63

Gaza/West Bank

67

vi

Israeli citizens: ‘refugees in the homeland’

73

Latin America

78

Western Europe

80

4 Stateless, rootless, homeless: meanings of homeland in exile

85

On the move

85

Missing home: estrangement, victimisation and suffering

91

Life in liminality

93

Land of longing

96

Exile as deserts and placeless places 5 Resistance and return: the politics of homeland

110 117

Struggle as ideology

118

Struggle as identity

120

De-territorialised state-building

130

Expanding the discourse of struggle

132

Gender and struggle

135

6 Right of return, the refugees and the collapse of the peace process

139

Right of return as politics

140

The peace process

141

Resentment and bitterness

145

Peace process derailed

149

Territorialisation of leadership/the PLO 1994–2000

155

The ‘al-Aqsa intifada’

160

7 New homes and identities in motion

167

The transnational through class and economy

169

Family networks

170

Economy/remittances

173

Recreating Palestine from afar

177

vii

Home away from home, moving homes, new homes and homes in your 181 head Processes of identification: hybridity? 8 Coming home?

191 204

The dream and the fear

208

The peace process

141

Real return

213

Remaining in diaspora

223

9 Nationalism through transnationalism

225

Return

227

Notes

229

Bibliography

243

Index

268

PREFACE

My then 5-year-old daughter once said, going home from kindergarten and discussing her future ‘marriage plans’ with one of her friends: ‘Mom, when I am grown up, maybe it will be nicer for me to live in a life of my own.’ Now, that’s not the way you would put it in correct Swedish; it would, rather, be ‘live in a place of my own’ or ‘house of my own’, or, with a different meaning, ‘have my own life’. But thinking about it, I found the phrasing rather wonderful. Maybe that’s how it ought to be; maybe we don’t live in places after all, maybe we live in lives. That would be a radical transformation of the ways in which we have considered place throughout the modern era. Although I was enchanted with Rebecka’s ideas about life and place, feelings of stability, security, continuity and harmony connected to a place are prominent indeed. ‘Place’ carries profound significance. However, ‘place’ seldom exists on its own terms, but is defined by social relations, by socioeconomic conditions, by politics and power. Writing this book, I’ve been thinking a lot about place. About what place means in life. And what losing a sense of place might mean. What does, for example, the place/ locality that I have found for myself and my family entail? Being forcibly and violently evacuated from the place that you have chosen for yourself does indeed have a traumatising potential. Studying the literature and the material for this book, speaking to Palestinians about their life and exile, as well as following the news of Kosovars, Afghans, Chechnians, Bosnians, Rwandans fleeing for their lives in contemporary times, I have been trying to imagine what it would be like to take my youngest son in my arms, my daughter by her hand, and together with my husband walk away from our house on the edge of the forest, trying to avoid snipers and hearing the eerie sound of tanks and helicopters approaching. I have also been trying to figure out what it would feel like to live in a refugee camp with my

ix

children, to constantly rehearse how wonderful life used to be in our real home, back there in Sweden, and not being allowed to go there. The Palestinian refugee catastrophe is today one of the oldest refugee situations in the modern world. In concluding this book, the intense violence between Israelis and Palestinians made it difficult for several reasons to wrap things up. It was not always easy to acquire an accurate description of events ‘on the ground’, not to speak of the difficulties in correctly understanding their impact. However, events in the early 2000s underline the urgent need to investigate the situation of the Palestinian diaspora. A number of people have been crucial to this undertaking. First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Professor Robin Cohen of the University of Warwick for believing in and encouraging the project. Mari Shullaw at Routledge has been equally encouraging and supportive. The anonymous reviewers were all crucial in helping me avoid some of the shortfalls that may otherwise have resulted. Readers of various parts of the manuscript who have contributed analytically are Marita Eastmond, Erik Andersson, Maria Stern, Maria Eriksson Baaz, Lisa Åkesson, Camilla Orjulea, and Henrik Norberg. Thank you all for theoretical insights, sharp comments and for opening my eyes to potential mistakes and traps. Henrik Norberg should also be especially thanked for conducting interviews with Palestinian refugees in Jordan. Juliane Hammer has been of invaluable benefit through her exacting knowledge and competence, through her skills in Arabic, through her excellence in interviewing and through her assistance in the writing process. I am deeply grateful that Juliane joined me in this endeavour. Without her, I know this book would lack a number of insights. My husband, Michael Schulz has provided unceasing support and encouragement. Lisa Williams has conducted a careful and precise copy-edit. I also have a great debt to my mother, Annika Lindholm, who has on a great number of occasions helped me take care of my children in order to help me find the time to finalise this book. Above all, however, a great thank-you to all Palestinians in Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza, in the USA and in Sweden who have answered our questions, who have shared with us painful memories and (sometimes) difficult descriptions of life at present. I am also extremely grateful to the generous grant that was provided by the Swedish Board of Sciences, which enabled the employment of Henrik Norberg and Juliane Hammer as well as collection of material and data. A previous grant from the Swedish Sida/Sarec related to a project on democratisation has also been a tremendous value.

x

To Rebecka and Johannes, may you always feel that you belong, if not to some place, then to something, be it a relationship, a family, a life that you feel that you have the power and possibility to control. Thank you for providing perspective. Helena Lindholm Schulz September 2002

ABBREVIATIONS

AHC ALF ANM CPRS DAP DFLP DOP GNP GUPS GUPT GUPW GUPWom IDF IZL JNF LHI LNM NDA NGO PA PADICO PBS PCP PDFLP PFLP

Arab Higher Committee Arab Liberation Front Arab Nationalist Movement Centre for Palestine Research and Studies Democratic Arab Party Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine Declaration of Principles gross national product General Union of Palestine Students General Union of Palestinian Teachers General Union of Palestine Workers General Union of Palestinian Women Israeli Defence Forces Irgun Tzevai Leumi; the Irgun movement Jewish National Fund Lochaemi Cherut Yisrael; the Stern movement Lebanese National Movement National Democratic Alliance non-governmental organisation Palestinian Authority Palestinian Development and Investment Corporation Palestinian Bureau of Statistics Palestine Communist Party Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

xii

PFLP—GC PFLP—SC PLA PLF PLO PNA PNC PNF PNSF PPP PPSF PRM UN UNCCP UNGA UNHCR UNLU UNRWA UNSC UNSCO

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—General Command Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—Special Command Palestine Liberation Army Palestine Liberation Front Palestine Liberation Organisation Palestinian National Authority Palestinian National Council Palestine National Front Palestine National Salvation Front Palestine People’s Party Palestine Popular Struggle Front Palestinian Resistance Movement United Nations United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine United Nations General Assembly United Nations High Commission for Refugees Unified National Leadership of the Uprising United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East United Nations Security Council United Nations Special Coordinator

1 BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND GLOBALISM

But I am the exiled one behind wall and door, Shelter me in the warmth of your gaze. Take me, wherever you are, Take me, however you are. To be restored to the warmth of face and body, To the light of heart and eye, To the salt of bread and song, To the taste of earth and homeland. Shelter me in the warmth of your gaze, Take me, a panel of almond wood, in the cottage of sorrows, Take me, a verse from the book of my tragedy, Take me, a plaything or a stone from the house, So that our next generation may recall The path of return to our home.

(Mahmoud Darwish 1966, 1970, ‘A Lover from Palestine’, in Elmessiri 1982) Introduction One of the grim paradoxes of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is that the foundation of the state of Israel, intended to create a safe haven for the ‘archetypical’ Jewish diaspora, spelt the immediate diasporisation of the Arab Palestinians. The territorialisation of the Jewish diaspora spurred a new ‘wandering identity’ and the Palestinians became a ‘refugee nation’ (Siddiq 1995:87). To the Palestinians, the birth of Israel is thus remembered as the catastrophe, al-nakba, to imprint the suffering caused by dispersal, exile, alienation and denial. Cohen (1997) adequately labels


both Jewish and Palestinian diasporas ‘victim diasporas’ to indicate the ways in which they have been formed as a consequence of disasters befalling them. In 2001 the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) estimated the number of Palestinian refugees at almost 3.9 million (UNRWA 2001). The Palestinian diaspora is spread throughout the world, with the bulk residing in the Arab world. Many Palestinians, however, live in Europe, the USA and Latin America. The nakba is the root cause of the Palestinian diaspora. However, migration from Palestine began in the late eighteenth century, at that time primarily constituted by Christians and primarily oriented towards the ‘new world’. As most people aspire for a better life for themselves and their children, Palestinian migration has also been caused by attempts at securing improved living conditions. Their destitution is, however, in itself a cause of the exodus and, later, of the Israeli occupation, as well as of impossible life situations. The majority of the Palestinian population live in the diaspora and most are refugees. Experiences in exile have been building blocks in shaping Palestinian national identity. Fragmentation, loss of homeland and denial have prompted an identity of ‘suffering’, an identification created by the anxieties and injustices happening to the Palestinians because of external forces. In this process, a homeland discourse, a process of remembering what has been lost, is an important component. It was, furthermore, in exile that the ‘resistance’ was formulated, that the ideology of ‘armed struggle’ and ‘revolution’ was asserted as a strategy to overcome processes of victimisation and to transcend the state of dispossession, denial and statelessness (R.Sayigh 1979, 1994a; Peteet 1991, 1993; Y.Sayigh 1997). It was thus in the diaspora that the two central poles of ‘suffer’ and ‘struggle’, composing the (main) narrative of Palestinian identity (cf. Lindholm Schulz 1999), took form. Therefore the dispersal (shatat in Arabic) and fragmentation of the Arab population of Palestine have served as uniting factors behind a modern Palestinian national identity, illuminating the facet of absence of territory as a weighty component in creations and recreations of ethnic and national identities in exile. Deterritorialised communities seek their identity in the territory, the Homeland Lost, which they can only see from a distance, if at all. The focal point of identity and politics is a place lost. It is in the placeless space1 of exile that the political struggle has been mounted. It is in the deterritorialised context of dispersal that nation- and proto-state-building a la Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) have occurred. Consequently, with the ‘territorialisation’ of the PLO as a result

BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND GLOBALISM 3

of the peace process and the self-rule arrangements from 1993 onwards, both the meaning and the function of the diaspora in Palestinian nationalism changed. The peace process further illuminated the predicament of the Palestinian refugees. Although the PLO has officially continued to demand fulfilment of UN resolution 194 and a return to homes lost and compensation, there is not substantial international support for such a solution. Yet it is around the hope of return that millions of Palestinian refugees have formed their lives. This hope has historically been nurtured by PLO politics and its tireless repetition of the ‘right of return’—a mantra in PLO discourse. In addition, for hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of Palestinian refugees, there are no prospects (or desires) for integration into host societies. In Lebanon, the Palestinians have been regarded as ‘human garbage’ (Nasrallah 1997), indeed as ‘matters out of place’ (cf. Douglas 1976), and as unwanted. To other members of the Palestinian diaspora, the homeland in concrete terms long ago lost its ultimate significance, and remains but a symbol to gather around in the land of exile. Many are ‘integrated’ into host societies to the extent that a return is not important. For others, a return process would require difficult decisions. Nevertheless, the neglect of the refugees that characterised the Oslo process galvanised a new movement for the right of return and set the PLO leadership further apart from the refugee population. The failure of the negotiations in Camp David in the summer of 2000 was to no little extent the result of the diverging views on how to proceed on the refugees. Much more attention was given to the refugee issue during the Taba talks in December that year. The refugee question was then acknowledged as perhaps the central issue. Therefore, there is a vital necessity to engage in studies and research on what constitutes the reality for Palestinian refugees and migrants. About this book Although there exists a large number of important works on specific Palestinian refugee situations, there is, perhaps somewhat oddly, a lack of comprehensive studies on the Palestinian diaspora so far. Most studies on Palestinian society have focused on PLO politics, the conflict with Israel and the Israeli occupation. With some noteworthy exceptions,2 the people living the ordeal of Palestinian exile have been conspicuously absent from academic undertakings.3 What is more, only seldom is the Palestinian predicament treated from a diaspora perspective. This absence is becoming more of an anomaly as the need to analyse the plight of the refugees are


becoming ever more acute. To the Palestinians, the nakba and the prolonged refugee situation are the core of the conflict with Israel and there is an urgent call for a link between studies on the ideas, perceptions and life-situations of refugees with policy-oriented works. The purpose of this book is to look further into the relationship between diaspora and the creation of national identity,4 as well as nationalist politics related to a particular territory, but also to explore the possibilities incumbent in a transnational existence and new, less territorialised identities even among a diaspora community as tightly knitted around the idealised homeland as the Palestinian. It will do this by the following means: • describing the dispersal in itself, i.e. its history as well as the very different settings of Palestinian diaspora(s); • analysing the meanings of place/homeland in relation to identity; • investigating the role that the exile has played in the mounting politics of struggle, as well as the changing impact of the exile on PLO politics from the early 1980s; • providing an analysis of the peace process in the 1990s as well as its collapse from the perspective of the refugee question, • analysing the impact of the fact of transnationalisation on Palestinian lives and experiences—to what extent do Palestinians in exile create identities not solely shaped by the context of remembering, longing and struggling, but also crafted by new contexts and the potentials of forming new homes in host societies?; • investigating the meanings inherent in the notion of ‘return’, as well as different strategies to cope with actual homecoming. Chapter summary In Chapter 2, ‘Catastrophe and beyond’, we will account for the history of the Palestinian diaspora, the factors leading to the Palestinian exodus, and the multiple forms of migration and mobility that do exist. The following chapter, ‘Palestinians in the world’, provides an overview of the whereabouts and the different political, social and economic circumstances of the Palestinian diaspora.5 Chapter 4, ‘Stateless, rootless, homeless: meanings of homeland in exile’, brings us to the meaning of homeland to identity-formation in the diaspora. What are the prevalent discourses on the territory/homeland of Palestine?


Chapter 5, ‘Resistance and return: the politics of the homeland’, discusses the role of the diaspora in Palestinian nationalist politics as well as how an identity as victims was transformed into an identity of strugglers and resistance fighters. This chapter thus also considers the relationship between diaspora and nationalism and marginality as a site of resistance.6 Chapter 6, ‘Right of return, the refugees and the collapse of the peace process’, focuses on trends in relation to the peace process initiated in the early 1990s.7 What did the self-rule arrangements and the territorialisation of the PLO imply in terms of the meaning and function of refugees in PLO politics and in terms of the right of return? Also, the break-out of the alAqsa intifada in late September 2000 will be accounted for.8 Chapter 7, ‘New homes and identities in motion’, brings us to the issue of transnational activities as influential factors in shaping people’s conceptualisations of home and identity, moving away from mythical imaginings of the homeland. Chapter 8, ‘Coming home?’, turns our focus to ‘return’ as a vision for the future. The peace process has also implied an unprecedented opportunity for return for a number of ‘displaced persons’ from 1967, and in particular for PLO cadres and officials. How has the return taken place and how have ideas of ‘outside-inside’9 been dealt with in this process? Chapter 9, ‘Nationalism through transnationalism’, provides some conclusions on the role that diasporas might play in a nationalist, territorialist movement. It intends to shed some light on how diasporas may form identities both in relation to perceived ‘roots’ and in relation to experienced travels. In this last, concluding, chapter the profound meaning of return as a life-coping strategy is also underlined, along with the political consequences of this. A note on sources and methodology The study is based on a variety of sources. Documentary material provided by the PLO caters for one important category of sources. Extensive use has been made of exile literature in terms of novels, short stories, poetry and autobiographies. The national poets and writers Mahmoud Darwish, Fadwa Tuqan, Ibrahim Jabra and Ghassan Kanafani and authors who have written extensively in the English language, like Fawaz Turki and Edward Said, are examples of the rich body of texts conceptualising Palestine and exile. It should be noted, however, that, although this constitutes a treasure trove in terms of accessibility and information, the sophistication of this literature is not a style of expression that is altogether typical of the Palestinian experience. To be sure, many Palestinians know of famous


poets (such as Mahmoud Darwish) but much fewer are acquainted with novels and short stories. In addition, the experience of Edward Said and Fawaz Turki, in their globalised (although differently defined) lifestyles, may to some extent be rather ‘untypical’. On the other hand, the rich variety of this literature together portrays important aspects of Palestinian lives in the diaspora. Oral stories will serve as a third form of narrative, where discourses about homeland, identity and politics are articulated. Series of interviews have been conducted with Palestinians in Lebanon, Jordan, the USA and Sweden.10 The intention is not to accommodate a detailed account of any of those settings, but, rather, through these varied stories to provide something that might amount to a narrative of the Palestinian diaspora as such. The stories collected are as diverse as the Palestinians we talked to. Most of the interviews were conducted in 2001–2, although material collected in the West Bank and Gaza during earlier periods (1994–511, 199712 and 199813) has also been brought into play in order to shed further light on the issues reflected upon. Many of these earlier interviews were centred on similar issues and questions. All in all, we have spoken to well over 150 people.14 In Jordan, 15 people residing in Rusaifah, Ramtha and the camp of Hitteen were interviewed in May 2001.15 In Lebanon, 25 interviews were conducted in Shatila, Ein el-Hilweh, Burj Shemali and Mar Elias, as well as among Palestinians living in Beirut, outside of the camps, in July—August 2001. In the case of the Arab countries it has to be emphasised that highly insightful sociological and anthropological studies are available. Our own interviews served the purpose of complementing and updating existing works and allowing us to gain our own impressions of the situations in Jordan and Lebanon. The interviews in the USA were concentrated on Washington, DC,16 where 26 interviews were conducted in April—May 2001.17 This material was vital, since the situation of Palestinian Americans has rarely been described in more detail.18 In Sweden, 12 interviews were conducted, for the most part in Göteborg, between January and April 2001 and in February—March 2002.19 People have shared with us their often painful experience of being refugees as well as the everyday experience of transnational facets of life. Sometimes the accounts are highly personal. Often, the building of trust was, however, only possible with the help of friends and acquaintances, who introduced us and our project. Sometimes the knowledge of Arabic and previous travel experiences in the West Bank and Gaza helped in opening doors. At other times it was difficult, if not impossible, to establish trust. People remained suspicious and the narratives, as a consequence, were more distant and impersonal. Many of the interviews


were conducted in a highly charged political atmosphere as the violence in the West Bank and Gaza became a backdrop to the research. Almost daily news on violence occurring in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip made the violence an ever-present topic for discussion, and probably informed many of the answers. This was particularly true for the material collected in camps in Lebanon and Jordan.20 The intention is to capture both the grand narrative of Palestinian identity and life in exile as that story is constantly reconstructed and repeated, as well as the potential discrepancies and dissonances existing between an official, highly pitched politicised discourse, on the one hand, and individual and collective ‘small stories’ of everyday coping and management, on the other. Telling other people’s stories Any project claiming the validity of ‘representing’ ‘others’, of presenting stories told by ‘others’, requires reflection on the ways in which this is conducted. Clearly, and as is so often underlined in recent post-colonially influenced texts on culture, identity and people’s lives, it is problematic that the narratives of the ‘other’ come about through the works of, in the words of the Palestinian writer Suheir Hammad, ‘sympathetic anthropologist[s] talking for’ them (Hammad 1996a:88). One example of the problems inherent in a research project such as this one is revealed by how an informant in Shatila told of frustrations over foreigners who visit the camps. In a sort of ‘misery tourism’, they walk around for a while, take some pictures and, yes, some even cry about the desolation, but then they leave again and everything is as before. In his view, the camps have become like ‘zoos’ and the refugees like ‘animals to stare at’. Some come for research and to write articles, but, he asked, have all these writings ever changed anything about the situation, have they brought help or at least some money into the camps? As researchers come to visit over and over again, the inner wounds of people are constantly reopened. As for this project, not only might we have contributed to the unravelling of wounds without offering much in return, we might also have forced our own images and frames upon those we met. One Palestinian filmmaker, speaking at a seminar in Göteborg in early 2002, explained how Western representations and expectations of a ‘particularly political Palestinian’ have become like a cage, a frame to escape from.21 Must Palestinians constantly dwell on their identity and the politics of that identification with Westerners, be they researchers or journalists?


Surely, this is something to take seriously. Do academic texts change anything for the people we claim to tell something about? Many refugees have called for us to write their story, to serve as intermediaries to the Western world, so that the West ‘will know’, and then surely things must change. If it not always explicitly uttered, this may have served as a motive for many for taking part in this study. We do not believe this book will change the situation for Palestinian camp refugees. Neither has that been our purpose. However, it is our firm conviction that the stories told in this book are crucial to any understanding of how to come to terms with the bitter conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Events in recent years, such as the mobilisation around the refugee issue, the negotiations in Camp David and Taba and the al-Aqsa intifada, further underline the necessity of bringing the experiences of the Palestinian diaspora to life. Also, along with Farah below, we ultimately believe it is of overarching importance to bring the stories and their implications to life rather than to take part in not hearing these voices at all: Needless to say, there are theoretical and methodological problems inherent in all forms of ‘representations’, in the utilization of lifehistories and in ‘giving voice’ to the ‘other’; yet, the alternative is to unwittingly collaborate in the process of silencing. (Farah 1999:8) However, we have no inclination to echo official postures and political rhetorics. The politics of Palestine, the homeland, has served to obscure many aspects of the Palestinian experience of diaspora, for example the possibility of finding new homes away from the homeland. Diasporas: definitions and problems As has been underlined by most recent studies, ‘diaspora’ is a problematic term, related as it has become to one very unique experience, i.e. the Jewish, yet applicable and relevant to a number of very different cases and forms (cf. Cohen 1997). The term is further complicated by the fact that ‘diaspora’ has increasingly come to be employed as a metaphor to signify a global condition of mobility, in which migrants are frequently seen as at the core. The term ‘diaspora’ relates to a group of people that has been dispersed or has expanded to at least two countries of the world. Whether force and coercion of some form are necessary conditions is a debated issue. Faist


(2000) maintains that a traumatic event is the cause of a diaspora existence, whereas Cohen (1997) has made a useful distinction between various forms of diasporas—not all of them the result of force or trauma. For the concept to be applicable, strong collective images of the homeland should exist. In terms of identity, there is often a strong sense of community with other members of that diaspora and an uneasy relationship with the host society (cf. Safran 1991:83f.; Clifford 1994: 304f.; Cohen 1997:26). That is, diaspora is something ‘more’ than an ‘ethnic minority’ resulting from migration.22 Diaspora requires a transnational existence—a dispersal and a diffusion throughout the world. Also, a time-aspect is required; dispersal alone does not necessarily imply the constitution of a diaspora population. It needs to have existed for some time and it needs to be an enduring condition. However, we do not necessarily see the diaspora concept as implying everlasting dispersal or a firm establishment in new societies. Diasporas may be enduring yet define themselves as temporary residents where they are. ‘Diaspora’ could be seen as an overarching term, with the potential to embrace different and more specific notions of residing outside of territorial home, such as exiles, migrants and refugees. There has recently been a shift in emphasis in the definition of diaspora, from concentrating mainly on geographical displacement to viewing diaspora as a form of social organisation, as a form of transnational community (cf. Wahlbeck 2002). However, it remains a fact that there are no clear-cut delineations between, for example, diaspora and exile and it is not once and for all clear how to view refugees within the contemporary frame of diaspora studies. The central role of the ‘homeland’ is often accentuated in definitions of diaspora. However, this has recently become an issue of contention in the debate. For example, Clifford has argued that a homeland lost must not necessarily serve a crucial role in identity-formation in the diaspora. Rather: Decentered, lateral connections may be as important as those formed around a teleology of origin/return. And a shared, ongoing history of displacement, suffering, adaptation, or resistance may be as important as the projection of a specific origin. (Clifford 1994:306) It is thus not necessarily territory, but the lack of it, which defines diasporic communities. The relationships between territory, displacement and resistance are complicated. It is in the process of displacement that identity is shaped, or reshaped, but that process requires a sense of a place


left behind. In order for displacement to serve a function in meaningcreation, place, or the imagination of a shared place, must have existed beforehand. In addition, it is not necessarily ‘our’ homeland which is of importance, but the fact of ‘others’ relating to a homeland. ‘Having a homeland’ to relate to is supposedly a way of positioning oneself in time as well as space. Furthermore, ‘homeland’ must not necessarily represent a national entity, but in concrete commemoration and longing the ‘homeland’ might be represented through local places or experiences. And yet again, for diasporas, ‘territory’ and ‘land’ may be more metaphorical and symbolic than ‘real’. As Malkki has put it: The homeland here is not so much a territorial or topographic entity as a moral destination’ (Malkki 1992:35f.). The globalisation debate further fuels this argument, since the core aspects of globalisation refer to the increasing sense of loss of space and time as defining concepts for societies and societal processes. For Paul Gilroy (1999), diaspora is an ‘outer-national term’. The transnational condition Exile is contrary to what is stable, secure and static. It is not the equivalent of life after movement, but represents movement itself. Diaspora, life away from one’s homeland, is life in flux; it implies an unstable and ephemeral, fugitive condition: Exile…is ‘a mind of winter’ in which the pathos of summer and autumn as much as the potential of spring are nearby but unobtainable. Perhaps this is another way of saying that a life of exile moves according to a different calendar, and is less seasonal and settled than life at home. Exile is life led outside habitual order. It is nomadic, decentered, contrapuntal; but no sooner does one get accustomed to it than its unsettling force erupts anew. (Said 1984:55) The diaspora condition encompasses transnational lives. The very term implies, as we have seen, a cross-border, unbounded condition. ‘Diasporas’ have come to serve as one of the most crucial metaphors for a globalised condition of identities in constant motion. Terms like ‘diaspora’, ‘nomads’, ‘tourists’ and ‘vagabonds’ represent mobility and spaceless conditions. Chambers (1994), for example, argues that all identities are formed ‘on the move’ (cf. Said 1979; Gupta and Ferguson 1992; Hall 1995) and that deterritorialisation is a state of affairs also for those not


formally displaced. The sense of being lost/dispersed is (supposedly) universal in a globalising world. Ostensibly natural connections between land and people are being disrupted at an ever-faster speed. Diaspora entails that ‘local’, ‘rooted’ life has been replaced by a ‘transient’ life (Tomlinson 1999:9). Diasporas may be homesick, yet they form lives and experiences in a homeless condition, or create new homes in new settings. To some extent, this implies possibilities of creating unbounded identities. Despite an often nostalgic look towards a bounded ‘home’, diasporas lead lives not confined to a ‘home’. There is thus an intense and acute difference between the lived, transnational, unbounded and out-of-space experience of diaspora and the memory of a nationalised, rooted, placed and essentialist past and identity. Being placeless is the fundamental symbol of the decreased role and meaning of the nation-state. Yet rootlessness is (for the most part) not an enviable condition. Diaspora/ migration as a metaphor for a globalised world needs also a critical approach. We have no intention of romanticising the Palestinian diaspora. Neither do we wish to pursue the line of passivisation and victimisation through too much emphasis on the traumas (cf. Shami 1996: Eastmond 1998). The term ‘placeless’ can surely be discussed. To some, it might seem like a word devoid of meaning, since ‘place’ always exists and as long as people live in different places meanings will be attached to those places. Nevertheless, to the Palestinian diaspora (and potentially also to others), there is certainly (as we shall see) a strong sense of actually living outside or without a place. Salma Khadra Jayyusi (1992:48) also employs the notion ‘placeless’ to articulate Palestinian sentiments of exile. Said speaks of places as provisional: The exile knows that in a secular and contingent world, homes are always provisional. Borders and barriers which enclose us within the safety of familiar territory can also become prisons, and are often defended beyond reason or necessity Exiles cross borders, break barriers of thought and experience. (Said 1990:365) Diasporas create new and other forms of social connections and interactions that are not bound by territory. Social interactions in the diaspora are often trans-territorial. Sense of community is created and maintained through other means than official national identity connected to a sovereign space (cf. also Cohen 1997). Through trans-border activities, through flows of peoples, information, money and meaning,


members of a diaspora connect with each other. What is more, they contribute to an intensification of linkages between the nation-states in which they reside. Diasporas make use of globalising techniques and mechanisms as spelled out in communication technology (Basch et al. 1994:23). By transnational is meant exchange and interactions of various forms such as visiting, travelling, spending vacations, going to weddings, looking for jobs, i.e. activities that for dispersed populations are transnational/crossborder by their very nature. Vertovec defines transnationalism as ‘long distance networks’ (1999:447). Portes sees transnational activities ‘as those that take place on a recurrent basis across national borders and that require a regular and significant commitment of time by participants’ (Portes 1999:464). Previously, studies on migrants have taken for granted a movement from somewhere to somewhere else, implying that the move supposedly causes a complete change in context, in spatial frameworks and in social relations. With the proliferated emphasis on globalisation, porousness of borders and boundaries, ‘home’ and ‘host’ societies are increasingly seen as overlapping. In fact, it is progressively possible to act within two (or more) spatial systems on almost equal terms. There is a blurring of ‘here’ and ‘there’ (Fuglerud 1999:178). Basch et al. have stated in relation to the nation-state and its altered function in the era of globalisation: In contrast to the past, when nation-states were defined in terms of a people sharing a common culture within a bounded territory, this new conception of nation-state includes as citizens those who live physically dispersed within the boundaries of many other states, but who remain socially, politically culturally, and often economically part of the nation-state of their ancestors. (Basch et al. 1994:8) Diaspora populations reside in one state, but remain to some extent part of their homeland. Frequently they also act within other societies, as keeping contact with kin in other states leads to connections in the plural rather than the dual. Van Hear has defined diaspora as ‘people with multiple allegiance to place’ (Van Hear 1998:4). In a globalising world, diasporas play a number of significant and practical roles, in the sense that they maintain relationships with several places. Tölölyan has claimed that diasporas are ‘the exemplary communities of the transnational movement’ (1991:5). Hammar has argued that new diasporas call for a new social label, ‘denizens’, in order to account for people who are not simply foreign


citizens or naturalised citizens in receiving countries (Hammar 1990:13). Margolis has stated that transnationalism implies that ‘home and host society [form] a single arena of social action’ (Margolis 1995:29). Although these approaches have slightly diverse emphases, what they do have in common is the way in which they bring to the forefront how diaspora relations and processes of identification escape easy categorisations and challenge the common knowledge posited by the nation-state. Now, to act within ‘home’ and ‘host society’ in the form suggested by Margolis above, is clearly not possible for the vast majority of Palestinian refugees, since most of those are barred from travelling at all and most are restricted from coming ‘home’. Indeed, refugee situations constitute the prime argument against transnationalism as the defining reality of people living outside their places of origin. Yet Palestinian refugees still relate to their homeland through acts of memory and by preserving links with family members. Transnational aspects of life also have considerable implications for politics, since diaspora populations are frequently deeply entrenched in the political situation of their homeland (cf. Shain 1999; Davies 2000). Hybridity Exile does not mean the total separation from your place of origin but is rather a condition where one never abandons the old nor completely accepts the new. It is not a state in which one can become complacent, comfortable and secure. Rather, it is a state that hones your skill for survival. (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 1999:139) Maintaining social interaction means concrete journeys to visit family, friends and co-members of ethnicity/nationality in other parts of the world, but it also implies the recreation of a collective self in several different places. Hybridity has come to refer to the ways in which identities are formed anew in the process of meetings occurring through travels and movement. What is distinctive about the cultures of contact zones or diasporas is that they never remain ‘pure’ to their origin. The new circumstances in which these cultures must survive begin to have consequences for how the ‘original’ culture is changed and adapted over time. The original cultures of the displaced groups come into


contact and are obliged to negotiate with the cultures of the other groups with whom—on whatever terms— they establish a ‘copresence’. The culture which evolves in diasporas is therefore usually the result of some never-contemplated, complex process of combining elements from different cultural repertoires to form ‘new’ cultures which are related to but which are not exactly like any of the originals. (Hall 1995:193) Diaspora thus entails possibilities of inventiveness and potentiality in new and pluralistic settings (Cohen 1996). Forms of constructing identity in diaspora have become an emblem for the ‘hybridisation’ of identity (cf. Bhabha 1990; Hall 1992). Perhaps it needs to be stressed that all identities not only are historical constructs, but are in a constant process of hybridisation. The contemporary celebration of the ‘mélange’, ‘the hotchpotch’, ‘a bit of this and a bit of that’ (Rushdie 1991) is also problematic, since the very usage of terms such as ‘mixing’, ‘mingling’, ‘hybrids’ and ‘creoles’ leads the thoughts to an existence of two or more ‘pure’/static entities being mixed in the intersection. Thus, the term seems to presuppose a pre-hybrid essentialism (cf. Tomlinson 1999: 143f.). This slip of the tongue should be avoided, however, and, as Hall (1995) asserts, all identities are always hybrid. Identities are, further, the result not only of mingling, or of difference, but also of people’s creative activities and constructions. Nevertheless, the diaspora condition concretely manifests the ‘hotch-potch’. Diasporic searches for identity provoke both new boundaries and attempts at fixing identities by localising them in the absent but longed for territory, and the unbounding and delocalisation of identity. Paradoxically, diasporas show that the homeland is not really necessary in order to maintain a sense of community, identity and belonging. Nationalism’s main idea of an ultimate and unbreakable bond between people, state and territory is thus made increasingly redundant. Diasporas (taken generally) are involved in a double process of desperately missing what has been lost and concretely doing without it. At the same time, globalisation and the reduction in the meaning of space have spurred a new need of ‘home’ and ‘place’ in a disoriented global condition (Morley and Robins 1993:5). Globalisation also trig- gers reactions in the form of renewed needs for identities firmly rooted in time and space (cf. Castells 1997).


Diasporas and nationalism Despite the current emphasis on mobility, travelling and routes and despite actual placelessness, diaspora populations often embrace nationalist programmes and ambitions in their specific memories of a place lost. Although the variety of diaspora experiences makes it difficult to generalise, many diasporas have a specific relationship to the nation-state as well as nationalism. The precise ways in which diasporas are related to nationalism are contextually as well as historically contingent. Nationalism is an ideology of boundedness and a believed or claimed congruity between people, territory and state, or population, geography and politics. We concur with Portugali, who states that the main elements of nationalism are ‘territory, place and environment (i.e. spatial entities) in relation to people and their collective memories (i.e. temporal entities)’ (Portugali 1993:37). Space is thus a crucial component in the creation of nationalism and nationalist identities, given its potential narrative power in concretising relations between ‘us’ and ‘them’. An illuminating perspective on the relationship between nationalism and place is (unintentionally) provided by Relph, who tells us that the meaning of place is situated in its capacity to separate an ‘inside’ from an ‘outside’. Being inside ‘is the difference between safety and danger, cosmos and chaos, enclosure and exposure, or simply here and there’ (Relph 1976:49; George 1995:2). Collective memory in national(ist) discourses is intimately connected to place and geography, manifest in Palestinian memories of orange groves and olive trees. Since nationalism is ultimately an ideology relating to the distribution of territory, nationalism as an ideology also thrives on the meaning of ‘our’ nature, landscape and geography. One particular feature of the symbolic use of nature is the tree, often used as a symbol of rootedness, as in the Swedish fir and birch, the Lebanese cedar or the Palestinian olive tree. Metaphors of people being rooted in the land (cf. Appadurai 1988; Malkki 1992:24) are a powerful means through which to claim historical rights. A representation of a peasant past and an ideology of cultivating the land portray rootedness and belonging to the land. Nationalism’s preoccupation with territory is also evident in the notions of ‘motherland’ and ‘fatherland’, indicating genealogical linkages and the idea of common ancestry and kinship. Representations of a nation’s birth in a specific territory provide nationalisms and national identity with a sense of both historical continuity and territorial rootedness (Malkki 1992:28).


These connections with ‘land’ become particularly acute in diaspora politics of nationalism and identity. Remembering home and place serves as a means of maintaining community in exile. ‘“Homeland” in this way remains one of the most powerful unifying symbols for mobile and displaced peoples’ (Gupta and Ferguson 1992:11). As we have seen, diasporas challenge the notion and the idea that state and nation should coincide. Therefore, diasporas defy the very fundament of the modern international system as it has evolved (cf. Massey 1995:51). Diasporas live and reside in host states and societies, yet their priority is not to become part of those states. They do not involve themselves in integration programmes, yet at the same time— despite the urge to return —they often stay on, as part of the host society but not quite. Diasporas behave neither as permanent residents nor as temporary visitors.23 Diasporas thus cause disorder in the modern vision of neat correlations between state borders, national boundaries and citizen’s loyalties. Discursive practices used to describe especially refugee situations often refer to such images of linkages between territory and identity. Refugees are frequently described as ‘uprooted’, meaning that the natural state of affairs is to stay put, to continue belonging to a certain place. To be ‘rooted’ connotes being secure, stable, healthy (Sarup 1994:96). Refugees are seen as representing an unnatural condition and as a problem to be solved. Refugees are perceived as traumatised because of a forced separation between people and land, and are therefore in need of treatment (cf. Eastmond 1998). From the perspective of the nation-state, diasporas are ‘anomalies’ (Malkki 1992:33f.), ‘matters out of place’ (Douglas 1976) or categories of liminality, in Victor Turner’s (1969) words. Given our conceptions of culture (especially ‘national culture’) as rooted in territory (cf. Hall 1995), diaspora populations are often seen as not only placeless but also devoid of culture (Malkki 1992: 34). Yet: diaspora formations and secessionist claims are in fact endemic to a world order of nation-states, rather than anomalous anachronisms doomed to extinction. (Shain and Sherman 1998:339) Diaspora discourses and politics frequently embrace precisely this notion of an unnatural disconnection from the essential, ancestral land. The political ambition is then to reunite the people with the land and undo the traumatic separation. Thus, host societies often find themselves uneasy containers of nationalist sentiments directed elsewhere (cf. also Lavie and Swedenburg 1996:14).


Indeed, some of the most violent articulations of purity and racial exclusivism come from diaspora populations. But such discourses are usually weapons of the (relatively) weak. It is important to distinguish nationalist critical longing and nostalgic or eschatological visions, from actual nation-building. (Clifford 1994:311) Clifford’s argument is that diasporas may promote nationalist programmes but hardly actual nation-building projects. According to Clifford, the relationship between diaspora and nationalism does not include (typically) the vision/project of a nation-state with its attributes and institutions. Nationalism in diaspora settings is, rather, to be seen as a strategy of resistance by the marginalised. Yet, nation-building in exile certainly exists (cf. Seton-Watson 1977), and one of the most obvious examples of this is the Palestinian case, having achieved both nation-and proto-state-building in exile. And as Basch et al. have asserted: Deterritorialized nation-state building is something new and significant, a form of post-colonial nationalism that reflects and reinforces the division of the entire globe into nation-states. (Basch et al. 1994:269) Thus diaspora nation-state-building occurs without the one condition that has been the crucial fundament in nationalist ideologies, i.e. territory Yet territory is not completely absent, since nation-building programmes in the diaspora continually centre on the idea of territory and the vision of return. Edward Said has underlined the crucial linkages between exile and nationalism: Nationalism is an assertion of belonging in and to a place, a people, a heritage. It affirms the home created by a community of language, culture and customs; and, by so doing, it fends off exile, fights to prevent its ravages. Indeed, the inter-play between nationalism and exile is like Hegel’s dialectic of servant and master, opposites informing and constituting each other. All nationalisms in their early stages develop from a condition of estrangement. (Said 1990:359) Said’s forceful argument could be seen in analogy with, for example, Anderson, who argues that the nation as an imagined community is constituted through ‘pilgrimages’, journeys in social space, through which


individuals become aware of the fact that their present state of affairs depends on something particular, namely that they belong to this or that nation (Anderson 1991). Like Said, Anderson treats nationalism as a reaction to conditions of estrangement, threat and alienation. From that perspective, diaspora relations to the nation-state, nationalism and national identity become especially intricate. Forcible evacuation, but also marginalisation and exclusion in host societies, may provoke reactive tendencies of nationalism. Yet, as has been argued elsewhere (Lindholm Schulz 1999), nationalism and national identities are not solely reactive processes. Nationalism requires creative internal dynamics as well as a symbolic capital of rootedness and culture to draw upon in order to be meaningful. Nevertheless, placelessness is a constant reminder of the fact that national or ethnic social boundaries are both externally ascribed and internally produced. In order to create the potential for resistance from a diaspora position, a process of ‘othering’ is required. Diaspora populations are involved in social boundary-production in dialectic ways. Often, marginalisation and stigmatisation occur by ‘othering’ from outside. At the same time, in order to maintain ideas of territory lost as well as a sense of internal solidarity diaspora populations draw boundaries around themselves. Exile is a jealous state. What you achieve is precisely what you have no wish to share, and it is in the drawing of lines around you and your compatriots that the least attractive aspects of being in exile emerge: an exaggerated sense of group solidarity, and a passionate hostility to outsiders, even those who may in fact be in the same predicament as you. What could be more intransigent than the conflict between Zionist Jews and Arab Palestinians? Palestinians feel that they have been turned into exiles by the proverbial people of exile, the Jews. But the Palestinians also know that their own sense of national identity has been nourished in the exile milieu, where everyone not a blood-brother or sister is an enemy, where every sympathizer is an agent of some unfriendly power, and where the slightest deviation from the accepted group is an act of the rankest treachery and disloyalty. (Said 1990:360f.) Outside labelling, discrimination, exclusivism and oppression imply that diasporas are left without the kind of security that is connected to a ‘home’. The importance of ‘home’ lies in it providing a centre of meaning


and significance (Relph 1976). Home provides security, identity, a place where one is comfortable, needs no roles, where stability, warmth, comfort, relaxation and meaning prevail (cf. Sarup 1994:94; Sagar 1997; Rapport and Dawson 1998).24 ‘Home’ belongs to the taken-for-granted categories (Minh-ha 1994:14). Loss of home therefore has a traumatising potential. One way of dealing with the loss of a securing home is through exclusivism and/or through the creation of institutions that could serve the interests of a population without territory. In a globalised world, however, ‘home’ becomes ever more relative and to some extent stripped of its cosy associations. Instead, ‘home’ can be brought with you and ‘home’ can be recreated. ‘Home’ can be placed in interpersonal relations rather than in a certain house/place/geography, or it may be placed in habits, styles, memories. ‘Home’ can be constructed through the journey/the route. As Madan Sarup has phrased it: It is usually assumed that a sense of place or belonging gives a person stability. But what makes a place home? Is it wherever your family is, where you have been brought up? … Where is home? Is it where your parents are buried? Is home the place from where you have been displaced, or where you are now? (Sarup 1994:95) However, and again contradictorily, ‘homes on the move’ give rise to uncertainty and a longing for a secure place, a home which is not moving. Zygmunt Bauman states: Near, close to hand, is primarily what is usual, familiar and known to the point of obviousness; someone or something seen, met, dealt or interacted with daily, intertwined with habitual routine and dayto-day activities. ‘Near’ is a space inside which one can feel chez soi, at home; a space in which one seldom, if at all, finds oneself at a loss, feels lost for words or uncertain how to act. ‘Far away’, on the other hand, is a space which one enters only occasionally or not at all, in which things happen which one cannot anticipate or comprehend. (Bauman 1998:13) Those spatial divisions correspond with ‘us’/‘them’ categorisations. Exile implies being removed to ‘far away’, to the land inhabited by ‘them’, and that home/‘near’ is out of reach. In exile, home is ‘far away’ whereas self is situated where insecurity and chaos prevail. Feelings of threat, insecurity


and fear may be the result (cf. Nederveen Pieterse 1997). Often such feelings of collective fear are enough to trigger exclusivist politics. As Morley and Robins assert, the search for a ‘pure’ and ‘unpolluted’ homeland is potentially an absolutist and fundamentalist discourse, potentially including exclusivism, stereotyping and boundary-production (Morley and Robins 1993:8). Diasporas thus live the tension between nationalism/the nation-state and transnationalism/globalisation in very concrete terms. The equivocacy of diaspora is therefore found in its location at the disjuncture between two opposite principles: nationalism and globalism. Defining the Palestinian diaspora The application of the term ‘diaspora’ might conceal the variegated realities of how Palestinians actually live in the diaspora. The experience of diaspora/exile is differently lived and sensed in different contexts and we will attempt to take care to give voice to these variations. Linguistically, a number of different terms are applied in Arabic. One such term is ‘alshatat’, which means to be dispersed, scattered or separated. It might well be an adaptation of the English term ‘diaspora’, literally meaning ‘to be scattered, dispersed, separated’. Clearly the Greek notion of being scattered and separated from the homeland or parent is semantically present here. The Arabic term much longer in use and more emotionally charged is ‘alghurba’. Hans Wehr, in his Arabic-English dictionary translates ‘al-ghurba’ as absence from the homeland; separation from one’s ‘native country, banishment, exile; life, or place, away from home’ (Wehr 1994:783). ‘Manfa’ is exile in a more literal sense, as the verb ‘nafa’ means ‘to banish’ or ‘expel’. In Palestinian literature and poetry it is ‘al-ghurba’, where the Palestinian is a stranger, that carries all the notions of suffering, cold, winter, estrangement and dislocation. Not only is ‘diaspora’ an elusive term, but defining the ‘Palestinian diaspora’ is equally problematic. One problem is political and moral. Employing the term ‘diaspora’ might to many Palestinians indicate a potential acceptance of the Palestinian dispersal, making the term dubious (cf. Kodmani 1997). One disagreement with using the term is provided by Said (1986), who argues that Palestinian ties to the homeland render associations of the term ‘diaspora’ enigmatic. However, strong connection to the homeland is to many a defining component of diaspora communities rather than not (cf. Wahlbeck 2002). The Palestinian diaspora, in general terms, certainly relates to the dispersal in the late 1940s as well as the second exodus in 1967, but not all ‘members of the


Palestinian diaspora community’ are refugees or descendants of refugees. In particular, Christian migration to avoid conscription in the Ottoman army or to attempt to make a better life in the ‘new world’ began in the late 18th century (Tsimhoni 1993). Continued patterns of migration are formed as refugees residing in Jordan or Lebanon search for better lives and employment opportunities in the Gulf, as families send their children for studies in the USA, as refugees are displaced again and again and as people are prevented from entering various countries at all. Who is to be defined as belonging to a ‘Palestinian diaspora community’? Is it only those who were dispersed from their homeland in 1948 and 1967; or all those who reside outside of the borders of ‘historical Palestine’? Is it a requirement to have been ‘dispersed’ and exiled from territory/country? Where does one place the refugees of the West Bank and Gaza, who reside within the territory of Palestine but were expelled from their homes in 1948? And how does one regard the Palestinians who currently reside within the borders of Israel—those who remained within the boundaries of the homeland but became a minority in a new state and citizens of Israel? Many Palestinians in Israel were subject to ‘internal displacement’ after the war in 1948. To residents of the West Bank and Gaza a form of ‘diasporisation’ has also occurred since the inception of the occupation in 1967. The loss of land, concretely felt by peasants and landowners as land was confiscated, implied an alienation from previous forms of existence. Whether one has stayed put or moved, the meaning of ‘diaspora’ to Palestinians is larger than referring to specific processes of migration and displacement. The diaspora is, rather, a ‘condition’ of alienation and estrangement, of ‘shattered lives and homes’ (cf. Peteet 1995:177). Therefore, in this book ‘diaspora’ will be used in this overarching way, and Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel will be seen as (to some extent and in many regards) leading ‘diasporic lives’. This may seem odd if one presumes that there exists a ‘real’ Palestinian diaspora and other segments of the Palestinian population who are still rooted in their homeland. The claim I make is that displacement, dispersal, forced movement and constraints on movement have a much wider significance in this case. The predicament of alienation from land, territory, place defines the lives of most Palestinians—although in different regards. This is not, however, to say that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza (or in Israel) live in the diaspora. Rather, their lives are defined by a diasporic condition. Certain features important to the term are indeed applicable also to West Bank, Gazan and Israeli Palestinians. To illustrate this point, the Israeli Palestinian writer Emile Habibi25 writes about an encounter in


prison between a West Bank activist and a Palestinian woman from Haifa. The West Bank woman asked: ‘What moves you in this song about return when you had never left your homeland?’ She answered: ‘My homeland? I feel like a refugee in a foreign country You at least dream of return and the dream sustains you. Whither shall I return?’26 Palestinians live and experience the diaspora in a myriad of ways, some of which will be explored in this book. Although these variations are coloured by the contexts in which different parts of the Palestinian diaspora find themselves, it is also the case that despite separation and dispersal there exists a wholeness to the Palestinian issue as such. This wholeness is attributed to land and the loss of it.

2 CATASTROPHE AND BEYOND

Migration patterns at the turn of the century The nakba and the circumstances of intense violence and warfare in the period of 1947–9 are the paramount factors behind the Palestinian experience of exile. Patterns of Palestinian migration are also, however, more complex. Palestinian migration started late in the 18th century, motivated to a large extent by socioeconomic preconditions, by personal interests and by family relations. This early migration was mainly made up of Christians from Bethlehem, Ramallah and Jerusalem on a trek to various parts of the Americas. Most of the early migrants eventually returned to Palestine. Many engaged in business and trade. For the next generation to conduct the journey across the Atlantic, economic motivations continued to be important. Now many also attempted to escape harsh Ottoman treatment and army conscription at the outbreak of World War I (Smith 1984; González 1992; Tsimhoni 1993). Frequently, migrants made their way to kin and relatives already settled in the Americas (Tsimhoni 1993:18). Also, politically motivated flight and migration patterns commenced prior to the nakba. One such peak was the Great Revolt of 1936–9.1 The Great Revolt was a popular uprising which started spontaneously and without direction from the urban-based political elite, the ay’an. It consisted of a general strike as well as violent attacks against the Jewish population and Jewish institutions. It was also an uprising against the British mandate and the politics of the local elite. The uprising was finally crushed in 1939 by harsh British repression, resulting in the flight of many of its leaders and activists.


The catastrophe The lion’s share of Palestinian refugees and the exile community originate, however, in the fighting of 1947–8, when approximately 700,000 people fled or were expelled because of the war and atrocities that occurred in relation to the creation of the state of Israel.2 As noted previously, the flight and the fighting are remembered as al-nakba, the catastrophe, a ‘root structure’ in the narrative of Palestinian identity. It is to this forceful process that the Palestinians trace their suffering, and the nakba is constitutive of a specific Palestinian identity. In narratives of identity the exodus is frequently given a ‘primordial’ quality. It is the birth of the Palestinian nation, it is the beginning of a story (R.Sayigh 1998). This is how the catastrophe was recollected by the Palestinian National Authority in commemorating the 52nd anniversary of the catastrophe in 2000: Three-quarters of a peaceful and mostly peasant people were transformed into homeless refugees scattered around their lost country, while the small number who succeeded in clinging to their land were stripped of their property and of their most elementary human, civic and political rights within the apartheid system of the newly erected settler-state. This took place amidst the sound and fury, the blood, fire and tears of a total war waged by the armed branches of the Zionist political parties and organizations, before and after they were integrated into the ‘official’ army of the new state, against the Palestinian people as a whole, and as a people. A war of mass expulsion. That which today, after the bloody dismantlement of the former Yugoslav federation, the world has learnt to identify as ethnic cleansing. Not because they threatened anybody, but because they were there. Because they were the people of the very land the newcomers wanted to take by force for their exclusive use. So much so that they were not content to conquer Palestine, and expel the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants. In the 77% of the country they controlled on the morrow of the Naqba, they undertook to destroy the very signs of our roots in the land, and razed to the ground more than four hundred villages and towns. And we owe it to those who fell then, and later, and to those who mourn them and to all those whose individual lives were crushed in that tragedy— to all Palestinians—to remember those

CATASTROPHE AND BEYOND 25

days, to understand their reality and their sense, and also to learn the harsh lessons of that dearly paid historical experience. (PNA 2000a) The exodus Inter-communal violence escalated throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The first wave of Palestinian refugees occurred between February and March 1948. Most of those who fled belonged to the urban middle classes of Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem. Some had houses in Lebanon, Nablus or Amman, where they sought refuge. This part of the flight mainly took place from the parts of Palestine that were to fall under Jewish statehood according to the UN partition plan of 1947, such as Haifa and Jaffa as well as the rural lands along the Coastal Plain, the Jezreel and Jordan valleys (Morris 1987: 59). Jamil Toubbeh describes how his family escaped from the Qatamon Quarter of Jerusalem, southwest of the Old City, as violence increased in November 1947 following the presentation of the UN partition plan. The family did not move far, but went to stay in the apartment of one of Jamil’s sisters a few blocks away In those days, many who had left their houses seeking shelter away from the immediate violence went back and forth between their houses and their places of refuge in a pattern of daily movement. Our own house now became an annex, a temporary storage area, or an extra bathroom for those who enjoyed solitude and an occasional therapeutic muwwal, a chant of the soul and the night. This daily ritual of undocumented and unchronicled emigration and migration, rampant in Palestine from 1946 through 1948, was soon interrupted by rumors of increased violence and massacres. Poor communication and transportation reinforced feelings of isolation and the insecurity accompanying it. (Toubbeh 1998:20) Violence escalated and Toubbeh describes how snipers intended to scare residents away (ibid.: 26). In the late spring of 1948 the family left Qatamon altogether and moved further away from the battleground, to the Christian Quarters of the Old City, where they lived throughout the war. Thus, in the first months of unrest people left their homes but mostly to seek shelter among kin or friends in a nearby quarter, village or town. As for the Christian population in Jerusalem, nearly half of them lived in


neighbourhoods in West Jerusalem (Tsimhoni 1983:56). The Palestinian exodus from the western parts of Jerusalem was nearly complete as around 60,000 fled from the city (W.Khalidi 1992). Most took up residency in East Jerusalem and its suburbs Ramallah and Bethlehem, but Amman also became a destination of importance (Tamari 1999:7). People began to leave Jerusalem in early 1948 on a rather sporadic basis, and, as in other areas, flight was based on fear and occurred in relation to attacks of various sorts. Two military operations/events were determining factors in the fate of Palestinians in Jerusalem. One was the battle for Qastal, a village overlooking the Jerusalem-Jaffa highway. On the Palestinian side, al-Jihad al-Muqaddas led the irregular forces. The death of commander ’Abd al-Qadir al-Huseini on 8 April 1948 led to a demoralisation of the Palestinian forces. The other event was Deir Yasin, and the psychological impact these atrocities had upon the Palestinian population (Tamari 1999:82). The second and major period of the flight occurred between March and July 1948. Now the violence had reached much greater proportions and the people fleeing the scene widely outnumbered the first wave. The PLO official Abu Iyad3 tells his story of leaving the homeland: May 13 1948, is a day that will remain forever engraved in my memory. That day, less than twenty-four hours before the proclamation of the Israeli state, my family fled Jaffa for refuge in Gaza. We had been under siege; the Zionist forces controlled all the roads leading south, and the only escape left open to us was the sea. It was under a hail of shells fired from Jewish artillery set up in neighboring settlements, especially Tel Aviv, that I clambered onto a makeshift boat with my parents, my four brothers and sisters, and other relatives. (Iyad 1978:3) Maissoun, now 81 years old and residing in Ein al-Hilweh camp in Lebanon, tells the following story of how the flight of her family occurred: When we heard about Deir Yasin and how they killed, slaughtered the people there, we were scared that this would happen to our children, too. So we left…. We were afraid that we would die. We left with tears in our eyes, we didn’t have anything with us. I had a son, I was nursing him at the time, so I put his things in a small bag, a few clothes and diapers for him, his bottles, his umbrella, I put it all in a bag and carried it on my head, and the baby in my arms. We


left with nothing more than that. We left the clothes, the dishes, the furniture, you know, all the things a house has. And we left. (Maissoun, Ein el-Hilweh, 13 August 2001) As fighting became disseminated, fears also spread. In most cases flight was connected to attacks by Jewish forces or to fear of attack. As word of events in nearby villages and towns spread throughout Palestine, people decided to take temporary refuge in order to avoid being caught in the midst of violence. For the most part, the flight was disorganised. The commander of the northern front, Moshe Carmel, described the exodus: They abandon the villages of their birth and that of their ancestors and go into exile…. Women, children, babies, donkeys—everything moves, in silence and grief, northwards, without looking to right or left. Wife does not find her husband and child does not find his father…no one knows the goal of his trek. Many possessions are scattered by the paths; the more the refugees walk, the more tired they grow—and they throw away what they had tried to save on their way into exile. (Quoted by Morris 1987:231) One of the major events of the war was the nearly complete exodus from Haifa after its fall on 23 April 1948. In early May only 3,000–4,000 of the Arab inhabitants out of an original 70,000 remained in Haifa (Morris 1987). The fall of the city was significant in determining flight from other areas, since Haifa had maintained a prominent political and economic role in the region. In July the towns of Lydda and Ramle were emptied, and 50,000 people left. Here, a direct order of expulsion was given by Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion (ibid.: 207; Masalha 1992:191). On 12 July Lydda was attacked and a slaughter occurred. News of what had happened here reached Ramle and people left in panic. Violence and fear The fighting, the violence and the atrocities were main driving forces behind the exodus, whether the violence was part of an explicit transfer policy or not. Flight occurred for the most part as a result of violence and warfare subsequently entering different areas of the land. This happened in different forms; there were direct attacks, fear of attacks or word of attacks in neighbouring areas. The flight occurred through a domino effect, where


attack against one place precipitated escape also from neighbouring areas. ‘No town was abandoned by the bulk of its population before Jewish attack’ (Morris 1987:131). Serious atrocities were committed in several instances, for example in Lydda, accelerating flight. The most stark example is Deir Yasin, carved into the memory of Palestinian suffering. The Deir Yasin massacre, conducted by a joint IZL—LHI4 operation with the reluctant, but nevertheless given, consent of the Haganah, was the one event that had the most immediate effect upon flight. The attack was connected to an operation intended to secure the western entrance to Jerusalem (ibid.: 113). The atrocities that were committed in the event, in which 250 villagers were massacred and scores of others subject to rape, torture and mutilation, contributed to the spread of panic among Palestine’s Arabs (ibid.: 113f.). Deir Yasin came to serve as a representation of what Jewish forces (irregular or not) might be capable of. Deir Yasin continues to stand out as a symbol of the nakba and the main focal point in remembering the catastrophe. Atrocities committed by the regular forces were for the most part initiated by local commanders and troops, and, according to Morris, not part of top military decisions (ibid.: 230). Later, Morris found new sources telling about acts of savagery not previously known (Morris 2001). The Arab side also carried out brutal crimes in the course of the war. One example of such an atrocity was on 13 April 1948, when Arab forces attacked a convoy of supplies and civilian workers on their way to Hadassah Hospital and the Hebrew University; 78 people were killed. Another incident was the killing of 129 civilians in the Jewish settlement of Kfar Etzion, in the Hebron region, in May 1948 (Benvenisti 2000: 116f.). In the south, the exodus was nearly complete, as people fled en masse to the Gaza Strip or the Hebron area. In the north, the majority of Druze and Christians stayed despite the military operations between 8 and 14 July, while the majority of the Muslims fled (Morris 1987: 198). Nazareth was given special treatment (ibid.: 201), although there was a substantial flight also from the Nazareth area. Although local commanders, for the most part, by October 1948 thought it best that as many Arabs as possible left the country (ibid.: 235), Morris maintains that there was no general, overall plan or strategy to expel the Palestinians. Since the early 1990s this has been the main issue of contention in the debate on what caused the Palestinians to flee.


Expulsion or ‘accident’? Over the decades, the catastrophe in 1948 has been the subject of an intense and highly politicised debate. Only in the late 1980s did Palestinian and Israeli scholars and historians come to merge their perspectives. This was primarily the result of the work done by the Israeli ‘new historians’, such as Benny Morris, Simha Flapan, Avi Shlaim and others, who distanced themselves from official Israeli historicism. Although the ‘new’ Israeli historians concur with the Palestinians that there was never an Arab encouragement of the exodus —as was so often previously argued by Israeli leaders—but that the flight was a result of the war, there is still a difference on whether there was a plan and an order to expel the Palestinian population or not. The point of departure for this debate has been the main strategic plan for the war, Plan Dalet, or D, which was designed by defence leaders in Haganah, the Jewish defence forces. The main objective of Plan D was to face ‘enemy populations’ and to prevent population centres being used in attacks against Israel. In order to safeguard these goals, Plan D gave instructions to destroy villages. In cases of resistance the population could be expelled (cf. Pappé 1999:41). The prime purpose of Plan D was to secure the Jewish state against the expected Arab onslaught and to create ‘territorial continuity between the major concentrations of Jewish population’ (Morris 1987:62). Morris’s conclusion is that there was never a master plan to evict the Palestinian population. Rather than a political blueprint, Plan D was a military plan for how to deal with the local population in order to prevent attacks and resistance. According to Morris, the expulsion was, rather, something that ‘happened’, caused by the war and the fighting. The strategic aim of securing the Jewish state meant that villages where resistance forces had their bases were dragged into the conflict and that destruction and depopulation were somehow unintended by-products of the events and fighting (ibid.: 62f.). As Jewish society felt itself under severe threat, ‘The gloves had to be, and were, taken off’ (ibid.: 113). One aspect to emphasise is the perception of threat which exists in Israeli Jewish society, created by the horrors of the Holocaust but also by the enmity in the region (ibid.). In the event of resistance, the armed forces in the village should be destroyed and the inhabitants should be expelled from the State. (Morris 1987:63)


Eviction was thus contingent on the behaviour of residents of different areas. In case of resistance the inhabitants were forced to leave, and in this regard plan D was a sort of a blueprint. Morris does not dispute the fact that there were expulsion orders in such cases. These were, however, never taken by top leaders, but by local commanders. In addition, those were not political decisions, but were, rather, determined by military leaders as the fighting moved on. Expulsion usually occurred in areas that were strategically important. During April—May 1948 local Haganah commanders carried out parts of Plan D, given free rein to interpret the plan in accordance with circumstances in that particular area. The tendency to expel was encouraged by the fact that people fled. Increasingly, Jewish leaders saw a ‘pure’ Jewish state as a possibility (ibid.: 292). Morris’s main (albeit later modified) conclusion was thus that the Palestinian flight was ‘born of war, not by design’ (ibid.: 286). Palestinian (and other) authors have challenged the main line of Morris’s argument, arguing that Zionist policy was before, during and after the war bent on ‘transfer’ or ‘expulsion’ of the Palestinian population from Palestine (Finkelstein et al. 1991; W.Khalidi 1992; Masalha 1992, 1997a, 2001). Nur Masalha, for example, argues that the ‘transfer idea’ is an inherent strategic goal of Zionism and that this idea was reflected in Plan Dalet. Zionism portrayed Palestine as a ‘blank place’ (Swedenburg 1990:19), as an uninhabited place, simply open to Jewish settlement and claims. In the early phase, the plan of Zionism was simply to make it difficult for the Palestinian population and to ‘encourage’ them to leave. In later phases, transfer was forced. Khalidi explains: But along with the others he [Benny Morris] views the Palestinian exodus in an historical vacuum. To be sure, he mentions discussions before 1948 in the highest Zionist circles of the ‘transfer’ (euphemism for expulsion) of the Arab population, but he sees no link between this and Plan Dalet. He regards the obvious linear dynamic binding together the successive military operations of Plan D as fragments in an, as it were, cubic configuration accidentally related to one another only through their joint occurrence in the dimension of time. From his perspective, no connection exists between the imperative to ‘transfer’ the Arab population and seize its lands and the imperative to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of Jews it was planned to bring to the new Jewish state. (W.Khalidi 1988:5)


Palestinian researchers have thus focused on the history and ideology of Zionism, epitomised in statements such as the following, made by Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann: there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without a people, and on the other hand there exists the Jewish people, and it has no country. What else is necessary, then, than to fit the gem into the ring, to unite the people with this country? (quoted by Masalha 1999:66) In context of this ideological commitment of ‘fitting the Jewish people into the land of Palestine’ and the continuous refusal to recognise the Palestinians as another people of that land, it is, according to Masalha, difficult to see Plan D as anything other than a strategic plan to rid the land of as many Palestinians as possible. Khalidi states: ‘The ideological premises of Plan D are to be found in the very concept of Zionism’ (W.Khalidi 1988:9). Masalha covers different transfer policies put forward by different Zionist leaders from the period of early Zionism onwards. Although revisionist leaders such as Jabotinsky were more explicit in their ideas of transfer, David Ben-Gurion (in the 1930s) also expressed the view that the Arab population had to be removed in order to make room for the Jews, although this was to be done voluntarily and not by coercion (Masalha 1992:69). In May 1944, David Ben-Gurion5 stated: Zionism is a transfer of the Jews. Regarding the transfer of the Arabs this is much easier than any other transfer. There are Arab states in the vicinity…and it is clear that if the Arabs are removed [to these states] this will improve their condition and not the contrary (Protocol of the Jewish Agency Executive meeting, 7 May 1944; quoted by Masalha 1992:159) Transfer was therefore a vision present in the thoughts of Zionist leaders at the time. Masalha claims that the exodus was caused by Zionist plans and military force (2001). Pappé takes a middle position, agreeing with Masalha and others that Plan D was a plan to expel. Pappé differs from Musalha and Khalidi in that he sees this, not as a sign of Zionism per se or a plan for Zionism, but a ‘specific plan for the 1948 war’ (Pappé 1999:52). The two sides agree that expulsion did occur and that forced expulsion towards the later phase was systematic, although Morris maintains that there was no grand plan. Atrocities, in the form of massacres and threats,


which increased during the later stages of the war, exacerbated the situation and acted as a catalyst for flight. Both arguments are based on the same sources. Whereas Morris claims that he is not reading anything into the documents which is not there and that, hence, there was not an explicit expulsion policy of grand design, Masalha and others claim that the documents cannot be interpreted in any other way than as a clear policy of expulsion. Morris does not refute the argument that there might have been a Zionist wish to transfer the Palestinians, reflected in part in Plan Dalet, but says that there was never a cabinet decision to expel the Palestinian population. Rather, events were haphazard and without any inherent order (Morris 1987:106). The Zionist wish to ‘clear the land’ of the native population was never transformed into direct policy, and it can therefore never be proven that such a transfer policy guided the acts of Zionist leaders, claims Morris. Rather, the leaders of the Zionist movement and the new state of Israel were taken by surprise by the events of war and by the scale of the exodus. The fact that the exodus took place could, however, be exploited (ibid.: 87; Benvenisti 2000:126). Chaim Weizmann, the first president of the state of Israel, claimed that the exodus was ‘a miraculous clearing of the land: the miraculous simplification of Israel’s task’ (Masalha 1992:175). Meron Benvenisti states that David Ben-Gurion did not need to give explicit orders. Instead, the Jewish/Israeli leadership was taken by surprise by the mass exodus and sought to capitalise on it. Benvenisti also claims, however, that it is necessary to assess the different phases of the war in different regards. By and large, Benvenisti concurs with Morris as to the first half of the war, i.e. during this time there was no expulsion order (Benvenisti 2000: 127). However, from the founding of the state until mid-June 1948 there was expulsion on a grand scale, reminiscent of an ‘ethnic-cleansing’ project (ibid.: 145). After the ‘miraculous exodus’ had taken place and it had become evident that the establishment of a Jewish state without Arabs—a possibility that the leaders of the Yishuv had not previously envisioned—was indeed achievable, ‘ethnic cleansing’ became an acceptable, or even a desirable, means of achieving it. (Benvenisti 2000:149) Recently, Morris (2001) has modified his findings after analysis of previously unknown documents. Morris now gives greater weight to the thoughts of transfer that existed prior to and during the war. His conclusion in 2001 was that the proportion of the refugees that fled as a


result of outright expulsion was greater than previously believed. He maintains, however, that this did not imply an explicit policy of transfer. Arab/Palestinian leadership Among the contributing factors of the exodus is also the lack of strong organisation among the Arab/Palestinian leadership. The poorly equipped, poorly trained and largely unaided Palestinian guerrillas had little with which to confront the onslaught. There was no national authority to take decisions, and there was generally a lack of information. In the later phase, the Arab Higher Committee (AHC)6 sought to stop the exodus and to organise resistance, but to no avail. Neither the Arab states nor the AHC provided the population with any clear guidelines, and decisions were left to local leaders (Morris 1987:68). There was never a plan through which to counter the Jewish offensive. Instead, the leadership on the Arab and Palestinian side remained confused (ibid.: 289). In a recent contribution, R.Khalidi (2001) focuses on the weakness of the Palestinian leadership. This weakness is attributed to internal divisions characterising Palestinian society prior to 1948. One underlying cause of lack of organisation is claimed to be the effects of the Great Revolt, which left over 10 per cent of the adult male population dead, wounded, imprisoned or exiled (ibid.: 27). The economic situation deteriorated considerably after the revolt, further fragmenting the notables. Hajj Amin al-Husayin, the mufti7, was exiled and lived in Beirut, but closely guarded leadership of the national movement. His exile and his leadership style meant a weak organisational structure. No return What is beyond any doubt is the Israeli refusal to allow refugees to return after the war. As early as spring 1948, refugees attempted to go back to their lands, primarily to reach crops or to be able to harvest, to water plants or simply to fetch things from their homes. The driving force was often sheer hunger (Morris 1988:256). During this period approximately 20,000 Palestinians were deported (Morris 1991:338). Initially a number of measures were taken in order to prevent refugees from returning. At the end of May a Transfer Committee was set up, proposing that return be barred and that the Arab Palestinian population be assisted in being absorbed elsewhere. In this plan, villages were to be destroyed during military operations, cultivation was to be hindered and Jews were to be settled in towns and villages (Morris 1987:136). The plan


became official policy during the latter part of the war. Again, the official motives were security related, but they also had to do with the perceived need to secure the new state from the creation of fifth-columnists in the form of a sizeable Arab minority within state borders, as well as the need to settle the Jewish population and economic requirements. However, the issue was not uncontroversial and Israel was under pressure, not least from the UN and Folke Bernadotte. Morris argues that the denial of any right to return stemmed from the ‘needs of the new Jewish state’ (ibid.: 155). In June the Israeli government decided officially to bar a return, (ibid.: 132) in order to maintain what had, from a Zionist perspective, been achieved. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) had received an order to halt any movement of refugees back to Israel by the use of fire (Morris 1988: 256). In the wake of the war 418 villages were destroyed, according to the research conducted by W.Khalidi (1992). Traces of Palestinian inhabitance and residency of the country were simply erased. The destruction of villages was controversial, however, and in July the IDF General Staff ordered that it was forbidden to destroy Arab villages and to expel Arab inhabitants without special permission or an explicit instruction from the minister of defence (Morris 1987:163). As Jewish immigration began to take on mass proportions, the urgent need for housing also implied that villages were saved rather than destroyed. Yousef Weitz, the director of the Jewish National Fund’s (JNF) key Lands Department and chairman of the first and second Transfer Committees 1948–9, said that the empty houses were good for the settlement of [our Jewish] brothers, who have wandered for generation upon generation, refugees...steeped in suffering and sorrow, as they, at last, find a roof over their heads. (quoted by Morris 1987:169)8 This is how Levi Eshkol, head of the Settlement Department, described the relationship between Jewish settlement and Palestinian exodus: After the victory over our enemies, what was required was an act of conquest by settlement, an act of ingathering of exiles and of rooting our exiled brothers, in their multitudes (in the soil of the homeland). (Eshkol 1958:270ff.)


Replacing one diaspora with another was to an extent a deliberate policy. The destruction continued, as a policy of clearing areas for Jewish habitation or cultivation. Lost property in the form of land and real estate is therefore still part and parcel of the refugee problem. Attempts to solve the refugee problem (including the Lausanne Conference in 1948/9)9 came to naught, as Israel revealed only reluctant willingness (under US pressure) to let a maximum of 100,000 return, which was immediately rejected by the Arabs. UN officials were already considering the settlement of refugees in Arab countries on a permanent basis rather than pressing for return, although that would have been the optimal solution according to the international community. Becoming a refugee The majority of the refugees seem to have moved about within Palestine for some time (R.Sayigh 1979:87). When they eventually ended up in Arab states, arrivals in Egypt, Lebanon and Transjordan were troublesome, to a large extent dependent on the numbers. Although they were also met by genuinely empathetic attitudes and policies—exemplified by the words of Lebanon’s president: ‘Welcome home’—Palestinians often met with reservations. In many Arab countries, antagonism towards the refugees subsequently rose. There were accusations that Palestinians had deserted their cause and their homeland and now begged others for help (Morris 1988:255). From the very first moments, becoming a refugee implied stigmatisation. International concern regarding the plight of the refugees arose during the Autumn of 1948 as it became clear that the unsheltered and destitute refugees would have little prospect of making it through the winter. Also, the sheer magnitude of the problem meant that host governments could not possibly cope with the situation (ibid.: 265). International assistance was a necessity. For this purpose, UNRWA was created in 1950, in order to ‘rehabilitate’ the refugees. Since then, Palestinian refugees have been receiving support from that UN organisation rather than the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which manages the situation of all other refugees. Palestinian refugees constitute a unique category among world refugees as they are excluded from the 1951 Geneva Convention on the status of refugees, because the Geneva Convention does not apply to persons receiving protection or assistance from other UN agencies than the UNHCR. The definition of Palestinian refugees therefore derives from


relations to the specific organ UNRWA rather than the political circumstances causing the exodus.10 Since 1993, UNRWA’s definition of a ‘Palestine refugee’ reads:11 Palestine refugees are persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946, to 15 May 1948, and who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict. (UNRWA 1993:368–9) To be counted as a refugee, a person must have lost both her/his ‘home’ and her/his means of livelihood, meaning that tens of thousands fell out of the definition. For example, although they lost access to grazing lands (surely implying the loss of means of livelihood) and were severely affected by the exodus and the war, Bedouins did not count as refugees as they did not lose their homes. Those who fled the western parts of Jerusalem did not count as refugees, since the economic aspect was lacking. In addition, one was only eligible to be registered as a Palestinian refugee if one was settling in a country where UNRWA had decided to operate. Thus, Palestinians who sought refuge in Egypt or other countries could not register as refugees simply because UNRWA did not operate there (B.Schiff 1995:24; Tamari 1999:6). There are also instructions for how the status of refugee is passed on from one generation to another (UNRWA 1993).12 The main purpose of the definition has been to define who is in need of UNRWA assistance rather than to determine the rights of refugees. That is, rather than refugees with rights and claims related to the universal principle of rights, Palestinian refugees have been defined and counted precisely as ‘Palestinian refugees’, in a collective sense. Of particular relevance here is the absence of international protection for Palestinian refugees. Most refugees receive international protection, as defined by the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, from the UNHCR. In the case of Palestinian refugees there is no international body that provides full protection. UNRWA has occasionally taken on the task of protection, but in effect lacks such a mandate. The UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP), the body established by the UN under General Assembly Resolution 194 to provide protection for Palestinian refugees, ceased to work for the implementation of protection in the early 1950s (see Akram 2000a, 2000b, 2001).13 In the early phase of UNRWA’s existence, UNRWA distinguished between registered refugees eligible for service and relief and better-off


refugees who were eligible only for service (education and health). UNRWA has thus been crucial in both the economics and politics of Palestinian refugees. UNRWA and its cause The creation of UNRWA was the direct outcome of the failure of the Lausanne Conference in 1949. The formation of an agency such as UNRWA was intended to ‘rehabilitate’ the refugees, meaning to make them self-supporting (Adelman 1988; B.Schiff 1995; Weighill 1997: 297), to provide welfare and to create work opportunities. Therefore, in the 1950s UNRWA was more or less a development organ14 rather than an organisation working for the political rights of the refugees. The development focus of UNRWA has at times caused friction between the organisation and the refugees. By Palestinian refugee communities, UNRWA has sometimes been seen as an attempt to make Palestinian resistance quiescent by providing economic support. For one Palestinian interviewed in Gaza, the purpose of assistance was to ‘stuff our mouths with bread so that we could not talk’ (Weighill 1997:306). However, this is one side of the story, and refugees have also come to view UNRWA as a quasi-governmental apparatus and as embedded in their political struggle (Farah 1999). Development assistance and helping refugees provide for themselves would not only ease their immediate situation, but would integrate them more fully into countries of first asylum. Host countries were provided with assistance in a number of different development schemes and further benefited from the aid provided to the refugees. UNRWA has been pushed into other areas of work, such as during the first intifada, when positions as Refugee Affairs Officers were established in order to defuse violence, to report incidents, to assist in smoothing medical treatment of the sick and injured, and to provide a neutral presence. UNRWA and identity UNRWA’s definition of refugees has provided an unusual and paradoxical source of identity. To be defined as a refugee was the only way in which the loss was made explicit. The UNRWA ration card has often been the sole document linking individual refugees with their loss, and has thereby become a weighty symbol of Palestinian identity (Shamir 1980:152; Husseini 2000:52). In Iris Noble’s Mahmud’s Story, the hero of the book, Mahmud, cannot take employment as a teacher with UNRWA, since his


family would then be taken off UNRWA’s ration rolls. Mahmud’s father was afraid of this happening: ‘If we are struck off the register, we have nothing to show who we are and where our land is. We can never reclaim it. It is our only identification.’ He was terrified…. All the older men…held to the registration with UNRWA as the one and only written proof that such-and-such a dunnum of land was theirs, and that the house in the village beside their name on the register was really theirs. (Noble 1976:116) ‘The Palestinian clung to his UNRWA ration card as if it were title to his lost homeland’ (Brand 1988:152f.). As camps, tents and ration cards became symbols of authentic identity, UNRWA’s role in identityformation became increasingly substantial. UNRWA as an organisation has had to tread a difficult middle road in terms of the charged political atmosphere surrounding the refugee issue. UNRWA institutions have been protected by immunity from governments’ interference and, for example, from laws against labour organisation, and this is why those institutions have been bases for political activism. UNRWA’s engagement in so many aspects of refugee lives and the camp experience has enmeshed the organisation with the identity and culture of refugee camps throughout the region. This is especially so for the second generation of refugees, who have grown up with UNRWA (Farah 1997:266; 1999). It is important also to emphasise the clash of identity for UNRWA personnel. Most UNRWA staff are Palestinian refugees. That is, refugees are to serve refugees but from within an international agency. As Farah (1997, 1999) has noted, this means that refugee and UNRWA representations often overlap. The setback The second major cataclysmic event causing Palestinian dispersal was the war of 1967, which has been coined naksa, the year of the setback. The exodus related to the 1967 war is still less researched than that of 1948. It also has its controversies, however. This time, the dispersal was not only the result of sheer flight and expulsion. One category certainly left in relation to the fighting. Many of these were refugees from 1948 who had until then resided in refugee camps in the West Bank and who now fled for the second time. UNRWA


estimated that about 200,000, of whom 100,000 were UNRWA-registered refugees, fled the West Bank (B.Schiff 1995:67). For example, most of the inhabitants of the refugee camps in Jericho left for Jordan. Another category was composed of all those who were not allowed to return to the West Bank or Gaza after the war. Immediately after the occupation Israel conducted a census. All individuals who were abroad at that time, i.e. those studying and working abroad or who were away for other reasons, were defined as ‘foreign residents’. Therefore they lost the possibility of returning. The fact that they were not there, on the land, at the time of the war implied that they lost all their rights to live in their native land. Family members of those who were abroad at that time later left and joined their husbands, sons or fathers in exile. ‘Foreign residents’ who wished to return could potentially do so by applying for family reunification. Otherwise, such ‘foreign residents’ have been able to visit their former homes only as ‘summer visitors’ or ‘tourists’. Altogether, approximately 320,000 Palestinians fled, were expelled or lost the possibility of returning in relation to the 1967 war (Masalha 1999: 63). The UN called for repatriation. By 1969 approximately 17,500 people had returned (B.Schiff 1995:68). According to Gazit, between 1968 and the early 1990s a total of 88,000 had returned on family reunification schemes (Gazit 1995:68). UNRWA was mandated to provide assistance to 1967 displaced persons, who were never, however, to be registered as refugees. In the aftermath of the war, Palestinians were ‘encouraged’ to leave through various transfer schemes. In particular, residents of towns and villages near the Green Line were subject to expulsion. Also, ‘the Israeli authorities offered financial “incentives” and free transportation to Palestinians willing to leave’ (Masalha 1997b:5). Among the first to be evicted were the residents of al-Magharbe Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. The quarter was located close to the southern part of the Wailing Wall and was completely demolished. Palestinians were also forced to leave the Jewish Quarter, in order to enlarge it. People were also forced to depart from other villages and localities, such as for example in the Latrun area. According to Masalha, 100,000 Palestinians were transferred from the West Bank to Jordan. This operation included taking Palestinians ‘free of charge’ by bus to the Allenby Bridge, on condition that they stated that they were leaving voluntarily. Many were, however, expelled by force (Masalha 1997b, 1999).


Forced migration continues Forced migration has continued throughout the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Deportations have been used by Israel as a means of punishment for activities which allegedly threaten security In the early 1970s, for example, the leadership of the Palestine National Front (PNF) was deported to Lebanon. This policy was invigorated during the intifada, the Palestinian uprising which broke out in December 1987, when a number of activists were deported to Jordan or Lebanon. Israel has also used deportations as a form of collective punishment. A spectacular event occurred in late 1992, following the Hamas kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, who was later killed. The Israeli government then decided to deport 412 Palestinians, allegedly suspected of membership in Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to Lebanon.15 The deportation was much criticised, and it jeopardised the bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations taking place in Washington, although the secret negotiations going on in Norway were not affected. Sheikh Bitawi told the Palestinian author Hisham Ahmed that ‘[t]o be away from the homeland was the most difficult trial to endure’ (quoted in Ahmed 1994:30) and ‘[t]he sheer fact of uprooting a person from his land, home, family and job and to throw him in a no-mans land is the worst a human being can face. Imprisonment compared to deportation can be considered a picnic’ (ibid.: 80). The 1992 deportations carried the whole symbolic discourse of uprootedness, dispossession, suffering and sacrifice. The image produced with the help of the international media showed a righteous, deeply religious, committed and steadfast community of men in the snowy Lebanese mountains who organised their lives and pursued their prayers in the cold in front of a worldwide media audience. Deportations are considered deeply inhuman and threatening. Through deportations, ‘roots’ are lost without the slightest possibility of influencing the decision to exile. However, deportations have also served to strengthen Palestinian nationalism, through their persistent emphasis on a theme, the unjust uprooting from the homeland. Jerusalem: silent transfer Another example of how forced migration continues is what the Israeli lawyer Lea Tsemel calls the ‘ongoing expulsion of Palestinians from Jerusalem’ or, in other words, ‘the silent transfer’ (Tsemel 1999:111 and 120). Following the formal Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem and the enlargement of the Jewish municipality in 1980, Palestinians in Jerusalem


were classified as ‘permanent residents of Israel’, placing them in a third category, separated from both Israeli Palestinians as citizens of Israel and West Bank Palestinians as permanent residents of the West Bank (see further Chapter 3). Permanent residence grants the same status to East Jerusalem Palestinians as to foreign citizens who have come to live in Israel. Entry into Israel is thus seen as a privilege and not a right. Permanent residency can be revoked if the Israeli authorities believe that a resident has changed her/his place of residence. This means that if anyone stays outside Jerusalem for more than seven years this person is considered to have changed her/his place of residence and therefore her/his right to live in Jerusalem expires. Since 1996 the West Bank is included in this category of places (Tsemel 1999: 112f.), implying that if a person goes to live in the West Bank for more than seven years, perhaps because of marriage or work, that person would automatically lose her/his status as a resident of Jerusalem. In 1998 it was estimated that 1,300 families each year lose their Jerusalem ID on these grounds (al-Shaml Newsletter 1998, no. 10, February). One has to prove that municipal Jerusalem is the ‘centre of one’s life’. Toward the end of the 1990s there were approximately 200,000 Palestinians in Jerusalem. During the early years of the peace process, and especially after the signing of a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, there was an increase in the number of Palestinians in Jerusalem applying for Israeli citizenship. The Palestinian National Authority vigorously criticised these procedures and the acquiring of Israeli citizenship has been seen as belittlement of Palestinian patriotism. According to Rubinstein (1999), it is fear of losing residency in Jerusalem that has driven many to seek citizenship. With the Netanyahu regime (1996–9) it became more difficult to acquire citizenship, partly as a result of coordinated JordanianPalestinian efforts to curb the process. In order to become a citizen of Israel the applicant had to prove that Jordanian citizenship had been relinquished. Paradoxically, despite Israel’s efforts to Judaise Jerusalem, and the politics of settlements and expansion, the proportion of Jew to Arab in Greater Jerusalem has not changed to the benefit of the Jewish population. Although in absolute numbers there has been an increase in the Jewish population, the enlargement of the Jerusalem municipality has in fact meant that the proportions have not changed (cf. Dumper 1997). The Bedouin community has been particularly effected by Israel’s Jerusalem politics. The Jahileen Bedouin society that has been living on the outskirts of Jerusalem since 1948 has been resettled by the Israeli authorities in order to create space for the expansion of the Ma’ale


Adumim settlement, which is just to the east of Jerusalem. Ma’ale Adumim is situated just where Jerusalem is descending into the desert slopes and this area has been used as grazing area for sheep and goats by the Bedouins. The Jahileen was offered to option of living near the municipal garbage dump in Abu Dis (Badil press release, Bethlehem, 1 December 1997). Patterns of new migration/labour migration As return to one’s place of origin was totally blocked, landless refugee peasants stranded in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon and Jordan desperately sought to make a new living. As their social mobility was severely restricted in many cases, many decided to seek their fortune elsewhere. Some moved to Amman. From Bethlehem, Ramallah and Jerusalem, many went to the USA, whereas a large part settled in the Gulf region. Flight for political reasons has thus been followed by migration for economic need. In order to make a living and find more acceptable forms of lives, Palestinians have continued to migrate, either from the West Bank or Gaza or from camps in Lebanon and Jordan. From, for example, the West Bank, there has been a large outmigration. Many went to the East Bank during Jordanian rule. During the 1950s this was coupled with Jordanian investment patterns which clearly favoured the East Bank over the West Bank. Jordan also assisted Palestinians to migrate (Migdal 1980:41). Many went to Iraq, from where one continued to Kuwait. According to Hilal, 375,000 Palestinians left Jordan between 1950 and 1967; 170,000 of these were from the West Bank (Hilal 1977). Palestinians have migrated to the Gulf since the late 1940s, but migration increased considerably during the 1970s. The Gulf was never the primary receiver of 1948–9 refugees, but constituted a destination of secondary migration. Support of families was the major reason for going to Kuwait and other Gulf states (Ghabra 1987:66). In the early 1950s many travelled by what was called the underground railroad, via northern Syria, to Iraq, where they travelled by train from Baghdad to Basra. From there, Palestinians had to find guides to take them across the desert to Kuwait (ibid.: 67). The journey to the Gulf was dangerous, as Palestinian ‘illegal migrants’ were at the mercy of human smugglers. This way of coming to Kuwait persisted until the late 1950s. From then onwards, a visa was no longer necessary to go to Kuwait (ibid.: 68).


Christian migration For the Christian communities, migration has been fuelled by particular factors. Christians in Jerusalem were, as a community, particularly hard hit by the nakba. During the Jordanian era (1949–67) the economic situation in East Jerusalem deteriorated, affecting the Christian community constituting the urban middle class in negative ways, leading to considerable migration. Between 1944 and 1961 the Christian population of Jerusalem declined from 29,350 to 10,982 (Tsimhoni 1993:19). Christians continued to target North and South America, but added to this pattern was increased migration to Amman. Jerusalem Christians have also moved to Jerusalem suburban surroundings such as Shu’fat and Beit Hanina, as well as to Ramallah (ibid.: 19). The Christian part of the population of Jerusalem has decreased from 15.8 per cent in 1967 to 8.4 per cent in 1989 (ibid.: 24).16 In 1999 it was estimated that 2.2 per cent of the population of Jerusalem was Christian (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistic 1999). In the West Bank the pattern has been slightly different, since Christian refugees from West Jerusalem and the coastal towns have resettled primarily in Ramallah.17 In absolute terms, the Christian population in the West Bank has therefore grown, but as part of the population it decreased from 6 per cent in 1944 to 3.2 per cent in 1989 (Tsimhoni 1993:23, based on different statistical sources). Economic deterioration has continued to serve as a push-factor behind Christian migration. According to Tsimhoni, several factors have contributed to sentiments among Christians of constituting a small and vulnerable community, ‘leading to the conviction that emigration is their only solution’ (ibid.: 24). Also contributing to Christian migration is the fact of their encounter with missionary schools, providing them with a better knowledge of and acquaintance with the West. Chain migration over the generations has been particularly important. Christian emigration was also boosted by the intifada in the late 1980s. According to figures presented by Tsimhoni, 2,000, or 5 per cent, of the 40,000 remaining in the West Bank and Jerusalem emigrated during the first three years of the uprising (ibid.: 29). It also appears that the increased assertiveness of Islamist movements has triggered Christian fears, in turn feeding into decisions to migrate. Therefore, Palestinian migration patterns are intricate and complex. Although the nakba and the naksa of 1948 and 1967, respectively, are behind the Palestinian exodus(es) in a general sense, for individual people and families there are also more immediate causes behind migration and remigration.

3 PALESTINIANS IN THE WORLD

Although Palestinian refugees for the most part ended up in countries with similar ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic structures, their ‘outsideness’ in the Arab world was striking from early on. The majority of Palestinian refugees live in Jordan, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria, but Palestinian communities of various sizes exist all over the Arab world. Their situation varies from exclusion in Lebanon to relative integration in Jordan. According to projections made by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in late 2000 there were 7.9 million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and the diaspora. Of these, 4.5 million lived in the diaspora (al-Quds, in Arabic, 11 January 2002). According to UNRWA figures, there were nearly 3.9 million registered Palestinian refugees in June 2001. The lion’s share of refugees from 1948 live in Jordan (1.5 million) and in the West Bank and Gaza (1.46 million). In Lebanon there are 380,000 registered refugees1 and in Syria there are 392,000 (UNRWA 2001). In Jordan there are approximately 1 million additional non-refugee Palestinians. All numbers and statistics around the Palestinian refugees are potentially problematic, since they are based on UNRWA registration and not all refugees are actually registered with UNRWA. One-third of registered refugees live in 59 refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. The remainder live in towns, cities and villages. In 1991 it was estimated that there were 325,000 Palestinians living in ‘non-Arab states’ (New York University Journal of International Law and Politics, vol. 24, 1992:1,512). Another figure is 450,000 in ‘the rest of the world’ for the same period of time (Facts and Figures about the Palestinians 1993). Most of those live in the Americas. In what follows we will present an overview of the whereabouts of Palestinian refugees. We will cover issues pertaining to policies of host states vis-à-vis the refugees; as well as the PLO; PLO politics, since this

PALESTINIANS IN THE WORLD 45

is one of the most enduring features of Palestinian life in the diaspora; the economic situation; and issues of identification and relations with host populations. The PLO and its activities and networks throughout the world indicate the pervasiveness and salience of diaspora politics in international relations.2 Jordan Jordan holds a specific position in the Arab world simply because of the large number of Palestinians residing in the country and because of Jordanian administration of the West Bank and East Jerusalem between 1949 and 1967. The first category of Palestinians in Trans-Jordan was those who migrated throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The second category was the large amount of refugees of 1948, when approximately 450,000 refugees arrived. Urban refugees moved into Amman and other towns, while peasants ended up in refugee camps (Plascov 1981). The massive influx proved unmanageable for the Trans-Jordanian authorities (Morris 1988:257). The population more than doubled, which put pressure on the land, and a rapid process of urbanisation ensued as Palestinians migrated to Amman. Subsequently, restrictions were enforced on migration to the capital. Also, refugees were removed from overcrowded urban areas to refugee camps. A third category consists of the 1967 ‘displaced persons’. Since they did not cross any international border, but rather moved within the Jordanian kingdom, the term ‘displaced’ was employed. Today, there are 10 recognised refugee camps in Jordan and three unregistered. Some 287,000 refugees live in the camps, out of the total of 1.5 million registered refugees in Jordan; 33 per cent of the population in Jordan consists of Palestinian refugees (UNRWA 2001). Citizenship and identity Jordan is the sole Arab country where Palestinians have been able to receive citizenship on a larger scale.3 All registered refugees are holders of the Jordanian passport, except for those originating from Gaza. UNRWAregistered refugees could thus be at the same time citizens of a state and stateless refugees. The Jordanian passport has become an important ‘asset’, enabling the Palestinian holders of such a passport to enter other Arab countries. Legislation passed also allowed refugees to participate in the parliamentary elections, gave every refugee the right to be employed, to acquire land and a home ‘until the final settlement in Palestine’, indicating


the temporary nature of the refugee presence in Trans-Jordan (Plascov 1981:44f). With the Jordanian disengagement in 1988 (the Decision for the Administrative Disengagement) from the West Bank, changes were made regarding Jordanian citizenship for West Bankers. Jordanian passports were to be issued for a period of two years for Palestinians in the West Bank at Palestinian request. West Bank Palestinians were from now on to be considered Palestinians and not Jordanian nationals.4 In the wake of the peace process, the Jordanian government in 1995 issued new regulations, so that ‘West Bankers who had a Palestinian passport before July 1988 could replace their two-year documents with a regular five-year passport, even if they had lost their right to West Bank residency’ (Arzt 1997:40). Following the Declaration of Principles between Israel and the PLO, and later the Peace Accords between Jordan and Israel, there were reports that many Palestinians residing in the East Bank had been deprived of their right to five-year passports (Abu-Odeh 1999:194). In 2001, in relation to the intensification of violence in Israeli—Palestinian relations, Jordan tightened its immigration rules for Palestinians (‘Peace Monitor’ 2001:117). Jordanian politics Jordan was affected not only by the large influx of refugees, but by the fact that the West Bank was annexed by the Jordanian kingdom between 1950 and 1967, causing the Hashemites to see themselves as the representatives of what was left of Arab Palestine. In governance, King Abdallah sought to utilise the local hamuleh system, with the co-option of Palestinian notables into the Jordanian administration. Palestinian institutions were dissolved. The objective was to undermine tendencies towards the centralisation of Palestinian leadership and, in fact, to eradicate all forms of identity with ‘Palestine’ (Mishal 1978; Migdal 1980:38). Those who supported the king, such as members of the Nashashibi, Tuqan, Dajani, Abd al-Hadi, Jayyusi and Nusseibeh families, were given prominent positions (Smith 1986:97). In 1951 King Abdallah was assassinated by a Palestinian when he visited Jerusalem, aggravating the troublesome relations between Jordan and the Palestinians. In the 1950s the government made an effort to provide support to the refugees and grant them rights within the kingdom. At the same time, however, the government continued to stress the exclusiveness of the refugee situation in order to attract international financial support (Plascov 1981:44). This was a difficult political balancing act.


Equal representation was guaranteed, but only to the lower house of parliament. The majority of refugees were prohibited from taking part in elections and politics, due to the requirement of paying tax on property in order to be able to cast a vote (Brand 1988:16). Palestinians entered governmental structures and played a considerable role in civilian bureaucracy The armed forces (Arab Legion), however, were kept a uniquely Trans-Jordanian affair, as very few Palestinians were recruited. Palestinians were regarded as strangers and as not trustworthy or worthy of defending the kingdom (Plascov 1981: 97). This exclusion increased Palestinian sentiments of being not only excluded, but vulnerable and insecure. Pro-Hashemite Palestinians have, however, been recruited into the army. In 1976 military service became obligatory and greater numbers of Palestinians thus joined the armed forces in lowerechelon positions. PLO politics Although most camp refugees initially respected the Hashemite regime and did not engage in opposition politics, radical nationalist forces in the form of the Communists5, the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM),6 the Ba’ath7 and the Muslim Brotherhood grew in the 1950s. Under the leadership of the nationalist Sulayman al-Nabulsi, Palestinians and Jordanians combined demands for reform. The elections in 1956 brought Nabulsi and a nationalist coalition to power for a short period of time. Not until the mid-1960s did the Palestinians engage in a political movement asserting an autonomous Palestinian political strategy vis-à-vis the regime. When the PLO was formed in 1964, fears arose in the kingdom over the challenge it implied to Jordan’s claims to sovereignty over the West Bank. The PLO made an effort to assure Jordan that the PLO would not act so as to tear the West Bank apart from the East Bank (cf. Mishal’s quotation from the document in Mishal 1978:68, n. 40). The early phase of the Palestinian revolution was to a large extent acted out on the Jordanian stage, posing a serious challenge against the Jordanian regime. Palestinian guerrilla cross-border activities triggered Israeli retaliation, threatening Jordanian interests. PLO institutions and military presence included the potential for a coup d’état. In 1970 the leftist PLO fronts (most notably the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; PFLP) carried out terrorist activities such as aeroplane hijacking with Jordan as their base. To the Hashemite regime, this was the ultimate trial. The fedayeen openly disobeyed Jordanian laws and authority, fuelled by growing resentment against the Jordanian regime among the Palestinian


population. The bitter civil war between Jordanian forces and PLO troops in 1970/1—‘the battle for Jordan’ (Abu-Odeh 1999:183)—led to the virtual elimination of the PLO in Jordan. Palestinian bitterness against Jordan grew considerably. In 2001 it remained difficult or impossible for many to talk about what happened during this period (cf. Farah 1997: 280). The expulsion of the resistance movement led to increased vulnerability of the Palestinians in Jordan. In 1972 King Hussein outlined his United Kingdom Plan, whereby the West Bank would be granted autonomy within a scheme of overall Jordanian control (cf. Ma’oz 1984:101), which provoked strong reactions from al-Fateh and the PLO. In the aftermath of the showdown of the early 1970s there was an increased assertiveness of ‘Trans-Jordanian nationalists’ and antiPalestinian sentiments (Abu-Odeh 1999:189ff.), which meant that the number of Palestinians in the administration was subsequently reduced. This process was also triggered by the Arab League Summit in Rabat in 1974, when the Arab League recognised the PLO as the ‘sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people’. In November that year, the percentage of Palestinians in the cabinet was reduced from 46 to 20 per cent (ibid.: 211). Palestinians were increasingly alienated and marginalised from the state at the same time as the Jordanian regime maintained a discourse of also being the state for its Palestinian citizens (ibid.: 200). At the same time, a division grew in the Palestinian community between proHashemite and pro-PLO sections of the elite. With the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel in 1979, rapprochement occurred between Jordan and the PLO. Jordan again severed its relations with the PLO in the early 1980s. In 1983–5 relations were once more improved and in 1985 the Amman Accord between Jordan and the PLO suggested a confederation between a future Palestine and Jordan.8 After 1985, Jordan sided with Syria, however, and together they attempted to manipulate and divide the PLO. The PLO cancelled the Amman Accord, and a few months later Jordan closed the PLO offices in Jordan. A renewed recovery of the relationship occurred in 1988, along with the withdrawal of Jordanian claims to the West Bank as a response to the intifada. A confederation was again discussed in relation to the peace process and the establishment of Palestinian self-rule. Also, during the time of the peace process Jordanian-Palestinian relations have fluctuated and tensions have arisen particularly over the issue of sovereignty over Jerusalem. When Israel and Jordan signed the Peace Accords in October 1994, Arafat was not even invited to the ceremony. The Peace Accords further granted a specific role to Jordan vis-à-vis Jerusalem. At the time of


the celebrations, Palestinians in the West Bank went on a general protest strike. Since 1989 Jordan has undergone a partial process of political liberalisation. Parliamentary elections were held in 1989,9 1993 and 1997. Few Palestinians have stood in the elections (Brynen 1998). In the 1993 elections al-‘Ahd (a Jordanian nationalist party opposing Palestinian influence) became the second largest party. In the elections of 1989 the Islamists gained a large portion of parliamentary seats, and reforms were designed to minimise the possibility of Islamist opposition in future elections. In administrative reforms, new governorates have been added. These administrative units have become the bases for elections, meaning that candidates for the parliament are chosen at a district level. Only one of the 12 governorates (Zarqa) is predominately populated by Palestinians. This system, combined with predetermined allocation of seats for minorities (Christian, Circassian and Chechen), ensured that the proportion of Palestinians in the parliament could not exceed 25 per cent (Abu-Odeh 1999:230). Between 1993 and 1997, Palestinians occupied only 13 of the 80 seats in the parliament. In the early 1990s Tahir alMasri was appointed prime minister. Masri belongs to the prominent Nablus-based Masri family and was the first Palestinian in decades to be appointed prime minister. The reasons were, first and foremost, to be found in the king’s need to create legitimacy for his peace politics (Brand 1999:56). The regime of Masri was short-lived, however, as a coalition of Islamists and the Constitutional Bloc managed to get through a noconfidence vote in October 1991. In December 1999, King Hussein died and was succeeded by his son, Abdallah. Elections planned for 2001 were postponed. Integration Also, the refugees have had a difficult time trying to balance their political rights and the need to lead lives as decent as possible in Jordan. There has thus been an acute tension between the political right of return and economic and social rights in the situation in which they were. The refugees were against all attempts at integration and settlement. Resettlement plans were regarded as part of Western imperialism and a plan to eliminate the refugee problem—UNRWA was accordingly (in the early 1950s) seen as an agent of imperialism. The government, however, encouraged UNRWA’s policy of building huts to replace the initial tents in the camps. Such programmes were from the outset rejected by camp inhabitants, who saw them as attempts at integrating them in host


societies. However, camp inhabitants began to improve their conditions and their shelters for reasons of health and security. As shelters were improved, the camps began to expand as they now attracted people moving into the camps. Ten years after the exodus the camps came to resemble villages. ‘In 1959 refugees even began planting trees’, which symbolically indicated the potential of rooting oneself or at least accepting where one was (Plascov 1981:67). Living conditions in refugee camps established after 1948 have been improved substantially Socioeconomically, the Palestinian community in Jordan is rather diverse. Wealthy Palestinians have come to make up the economic elite of Jordan, controlling the private sector. The existence of refugees in the kingdom has altered Jordan’s economic outlook. The loss of the West Bank to Israel in 1967 therefore became a major blow to the economy of Jordan. In the Arab world, it was only in Jordan that refugee families were able to buy plots of land, often through government aid or helped by wealthier relatives. The gravest condition, in both economic and legal terms, is that of refugees from the Gaza Strip who are not Jordanian citizens. According to some figures, there are around 100,000 Gaza Palestinians in Jordan who hold Egyptian travel documents. Jordanian—Palestinian relations In the aftermath of 1948 there was a great deal of sympathy with the plight of the Palestinians. This attitude changed, however, in 1951 with the assassination of King Abdallah in Jerusalem. Suspicion and wariness have since been part of attitudes towards the Palestinian presence. Suspicions in relation to employment were aggravated with the entrance of UNRWA, since UNRWA employed only refugees. Trans-Jordanians resented what were seen as Palestinian attitudes of superiority and their education. Many thought that the Palestinians had failed to defend themselves in 1948 and that the Arab Legion had attempted to rescue them because of Palestinian inferiority and ‘cowardice’ (Abu-Odeh 1999:57). Relations worsened in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and military actions, on both sides, Israeli and Palestinian. Also, as in many other Arab countries, the Palestinians were accused of betraying their country and of acting in an arrogant and expansionist manner in host contexts. Trans-Jordanians also saw the anti-monarchist Palestinian position as ungrateful, as ‘an ingratitude unbecoming of guests’ (Plascov 1981:34). As in other refugee contexts, hostility from host country


populations exalted Palestinian identity. The Palestinians ‘were constantly reminded in various ways that they did not really belong there’ (ibid.: 35). They were foreigners, guests who were supposed to be grateful for the generosity of their hosts. In 2001, Palestinian refugees in Jordan appeared very careful in their judgements about the Jordanian regime and the Jordanians. Jordan was called the ‘best of the bad’, the ‘best government of the bad’, ‘the best of bad choices’. Many asserted that although they were not precisely happy in Jordan, the situation for Palestinians was ‘okay’ (interviews, May 2001). However, there were also complaints about what was seen as discrimination in, for example, the labour market (cf. Farah 1997: 278f.). Many of those interviewed for this project said that they felt that they had been turned down when seeking jobs or when dealing with the authorities, because they were Palestinians. It does not mean that you can hear it in the street, but you can feel it and you can touch it while you’re going to have an opportunity to a job in the government or any position. You will find that there are many people who are less qualified. You are more qualified than them, but they have better chances of getting the job. Because you are Palestinian. (Ahmed, Rusaifeh camp, Jordan, 30 May 2001) There is also mischief about taxes and fees that are said to be higher in Palestinian-populated areas. One quite typical statement would be: I am a stranger, I am not from here. If there is something that I can do a little better, then suddenly you hear, ‘yes, you are a Palestinian, you have blue blood, you can do everything’. (Ghassan, Ramtha, Jordan, 2, June 2001) In Jordan, the peace process has spurred Trans-Jordanian nationalism and the idea that ‘Jordan is for Trans-Jordanians’ (Brand 1995; Abu-Odeh 1999:194). While proponents of Trans-Jordanian nationalism have argued that the Palestinians should be expelled from Jordan, Palestinians in Jordan have instead claimed their right to equality (Abu-Odeh 1999:194f.). Nonrefugees and refugees living outside the camps are more at ease and identify more solidly as Jordanians of Palestinian descent. As Israel and Jordan signed their peace treaty, US President Bill Clinton indicated that Jordan should see itself as a potential permanent home for Palestinians:


Your nation’s commitment to pluralism has been matched by a remarkable generosity of spirit, for you have opened your doors to millions of your Arab brethren. And they have come here, year after year, seeking refuge in your nation. And here they have found a true home. In return, they have enriched your economy and culture. (President Clinton’s address to the Jordanian Parliament, 26 October 1994; quoted in Abu-Odeh 1999:266) Lebanon Approximately 104,000 Palestinians fled from northern Palestine to Lebanon in 1948 (R.Sayigh 1979:99), a ratio of about 1:10 to the Lebanese population (R.Sayigh 1994a:17). Initially the refugees clustered in the south. Eventually, however, the Lebanese government adopted a policy to ‘thin out’ the concentration of Palestinians in the south, out of fear of ‘infiltration’ and smuggling; this was similar to the Jordanian policy of moving the Palestinians away from border areas. In the 1960s the south was declared a military zone and entry was restricted. The government also wanted to reduce refugee concentrations around Beirut (R.Sayigh 1988: 281) because of Maronite fear of a Palestinian takeover of the city. The majority of the refugees settled in Muslim, mainly agricultural areas. As soon as there was a possibility of doing so, refugees migrated to urban camps (R.Sayigh 1994a:24). Currently, there are around 380,000 Palestinians who are registered as refugees in Lebanon, making up 11.3 per cent of the population (UNRWA 2001). More than half of those live in the 12 UNRWA refugee camps which are scattered around the country However, emigration from Lebanon has reduced the number who actually reside in Lebanon to approximately 200,000 (Uglerud 2002). Much of the Palestinian history in Lebanon must be understood in relation to the sectarian make-up of Lebanon and the fear that the influx and potential settlement of Palestinians there would endanger the balance between different confessional communities. Another determining factor is the linkage between the sectarian/segmentary principle guiding political life and familism/clientelism in Lebanon (Klaus 1999). ‘Foreigners’ Lebanon has refused to apply the League of Arab States Protocol of 1965, which called for Arab host states to give Palestinian refugees the same rights as their own citizens. Instead, the Palestinians have been considered


‘foreigners’, implying a wide range of restrictions. Palestinians have, for example, during extended time periods been required to procure a work permit, which has been difficult, not to say impossible, for most. There has been a long list of jobs that could simply not be held by ‘foreigners’. Far-reaching restrictions have been placed on building and expansion of the camps. In 2001, Palestinians were barred from owning property. Citizenship has been an opportunity only for a small portion of predominantly wealthy Christians or through marriage. From the mid-1960s the policies towards the Christians have also, however, seen increased restrictions (R.Sayigh 1988:279; Hudson 1997). In 1995 it was decided that Palestinians with Lebanese travel documents were required to have an entry visa in order to return (al-Shaml Newsletter 1996, no. 2, March; al-Natur 1997), which restricted freedom of movement even for Palestinian refugees legally registered in Lebanon. In January 1999 the new Lebanese government announced that it was lifting the 1995 legislation (al-Majdal, March 1999, issue no. 1) and that holders of Lebanese travel documents were to be treated as passport holders (alShaml Newsletter, no. 15, February 1999). During recent years there has been an increase in the number of Palestinians who have been naturalised in Lebanon (Peteet 1996; al-Shaml Newsletter, no. 15, February 1999). Acquiring citizenship has, however, been met with resentment from other Palestinians. Further, exclusion and marginalisation remain the most prominent features of Palestinian experience in Lebanon. Nevertheless, it is also true that interchange of various forms is part of the story. This was in particular the case during the early years of Palestinian existence in Lebanon (Klaus 1999). PLO politics The advance of Palestinian commandos and guerrillas in Lebanon, particularly after Black September in 1970, heightened the impact of the Palestinian presence. This occurred at the same time as Lebanon’s political crisis was manifested. The fragile sectarian balance of Lebanon as a state proved increasingly untenable. Formally, the intention of the Cairo Agreement of 1969 was to reconcile Lebanon’s authority over its sovereign territory with the Palestinian presence. The Agreement legitimised the Palestinian armed presence in the country and therefore strengthened the de facto Palestinian territorial control in parts of Lebanon. It gave the PLO the right to have a military presence in the camps and to provide camp residents with


security. The Agreement also stipulated the right to employment and residency for all Palestinians at the time residing in Lebanon. Initially, there was cooperation and solidarity between the Palestinian forces and the Lebanese nationalist left, including the Arab Nationalist Movement, the Syrian National Party, the Ba’ath and the Lebanese Communist Party (R.Sayigh 1994a:25f.). There was also support from the Sunni community and to some extent the Greek Orthodox and the Shi’ites. The resistance movement also attracted support from underprivileged Lebanese as well as amongst the urban intelligentsia and middle class (Shiblak 1997). Soon, the PLO entered a coalition with the Lebanese National Movement (LNM), a coalition of Muslim-dominated forces on the ‘left’. By the mid-1970s the PLO had developed extensive territorial control as well as built up an impressive bureaucracy PLO Chairman Yasser ‘Arafat was now a head of state in all but name, more powerful than many Arab rulers. His was no longer a humble revolutionary movement, but rather a vigorous para-state…. Its role in Lebanon had also changed profoundly, as had Lebanese attitudes toward it. (Khalidi 1986:29) The Palestinian ‘state within the state’ was the ‘Fakhani republic’. Fakhani was the place in West Beirut where most Palestinian offices were located. The south of Lebanon was called ‘Fateh-land’ or ‘PLO-land’ because of the heavy PLO/Fateh presence and the frequent attacks and infiltration against Israel. By the Maronite elite, the Palestinian resistance movement was seen as a potential cause of internal turmoil and as jeopardising Lebanon’s sovereignty. The first real clash occurred in 1969 and violent incidents have since been part of the relationship. Israeli reprisals against guerrilla raids into Israeli territory further destabilised PLO-Lebanese relations as civilians (mostly Shi’a peasants) were forced to flee en masse from the south. The Palestinian resistance and its alliance with the National Movement and the left eventually became a direct ingredient in the civil war. The starting point of the war is usually seen as the clash between the Phalanges and a Palestinian organisation on 13 April 1975. The incessant fighting cast Beirut into an exceedingly violent period, with a paralysation of government from early on and fragmentation occurring at all levels. The army disintegrated, with officers joining different militias. The leftist PLO organisations were deeply engulfed in the situation from early on, while


Fateh tried to stay out of the imbroglio. The PLO Executive Committee authored a memorandum in October 1975 intended to reassure the Lebanese right about the non-provocative approach of the PLO. rejection of ‘any country as a substitute for the occupied Palestinian homeland’…, second, rejection of ‘any nationality or political identity that may be offered as a substitute for their Palestinian nationality’, third, reaffirmation of the PLO’s ‘concern for the security, stability and sovereignty of Lebanon for its territorial integrity and the unity of its people, with all that this involves in the way of the state’s reaffirmation’ of ‘the agreements concluded between the Lebanese state and the Palestine Liberation Organization as being the formula that governs Lebanese— Palestinian relations and the basis for resolving any problems or complications’. (quoted in Brynen 1990:85f.) From 1976, the PLO as such was entrenched in LNM’s fighting against Syria and the right. This alliance also meant a development of a common sociopolitical ground, aiming at challenging the family/sectarian style of politics. The slogan of ‘sha’b wahed’, ‘one people’, was employed and there were all forms of social exchange. The refugee camps were increasingly the targets of military assaults. Camille Chamoun’s10 right-wing militia surrounded the Tal al-Zataar camp in 1976 and the camp endured a seven-month siege. It was the brutal Phalange strategy against Palestinian refugee camps which finally drew Fateh into the war, as Fateh and the PLO were eventually forced to intervene. There was also involvement of Syrian forces, placed in Lebanon in order to curb simmering violence. The situation for Tal al-Zataar became increasingly disastrous. When the camp eventually fell, 3,000 Palestinian refugees were killed. The PLO held Syria ultimately responsible (Brynen 1990:103). One account of the siege of Tal al-Zataar is that by Lyana Badr (1983/ 93) in her novella ‘A Land of Rock and Thyme’. The story is about a young woman, Yusra, who recalls how ‘Everyone expected death; no one in Tal al Zataar thought to live out their natural life’ (ibid.: 11). Daily chores such as fetching water from the well amounted to a flirtation with death. When the camp fell, its habitants surrendered, and upon leaving the camp people cautioned each other to remember to say that they were Lebanese if they were stopped and questioned by militias. Yusra’s brother


Jamal forgot this simple fact of survival and answered ‘Palestinian’. He was immediately shot. The end of the Fakhani republic The PLO was then a party to the conflict as much as any of the ‘internal’ actors, although the blame put by a large part of the Lebanese right (cf. elKhazen 1997:275) on the PLO for causing the civil war is misplaced indeed. Gradually, the PLO diminished its influence in Lebanon. The Israeli invasion of 1978 caused some 200,000 refugees (Brynen 1990:125), mostly among the Shi’a peasantry The establishment of the security zone and the continuous Israeli onslaught against the south meant heavy pressure on the PLO. The situation deteriorated rapidly Hostility by broader strata of the Lebanese population was inflamed by arrogance and misconduct among the Palestinian forces in the form of, for example, severe human rights abuses. The definitive end of the ‘Fakhani republic’ occurred with Israel’s 1982 invasion and Operation Peace for Galilee. After months of fierce fighting, the PLO was evacuated from Lebanon and the Beirut era was over. An agreement was negotiated through the USA and special envoy Philip Habib, and meant harsh terms for the PLO. What was of major importance for the PLO was protection of the refugee camps, something that the Americans verbally promised they would safeguard. When the PLO left Beirut the Palestinian refugees were left largely without protection, as was grimly pointed out by the Phalange massacre of Palestinian refugees in the camps of Sabra and Shatila while the camps were lit up by the IDF (see R.Sayigh 1994a).11 Sabra and Shatila reinforced Palestinian identity as victims and have served as a mighty symbol of Palestinian suffering ever since. This period also witnessed disintegration of the PLO when al-Saiqa and the General Command of the PFLP (PFLP—GC) withdrew from the PLO and a mutiny occurred within al-Fateh—a ‘civil war within a civil war’ (Kimmerling and Migdal 1993:236)—through Abu Musa’s al-Fateh Uprising. Increasing Shi’a resentment against the Palestinians was channelled by the Amal movement, which was linked with Syrian interests in power and attempts to oust the PLO. Amal hostilities culminated in another disaster, the Battle of the Camps,—the sieges of the camps in South Lebanon which continued until late 1987. The sieges included three assaults by the Amal on the Shatila camp during the period 1985–6.12 Sieges of the camps in South Lebabnon which continued until late 1987. The sieges served,


however, to reunify Palestinian ranks, and Fateh and Arafat came out stronger than before. At the same time, PLO links and relations moved away from the secular left to the Shi’a Hizbollah. The Ta’if accord of 1989 formally ended the civil war. After Ta’if, Palestinian groups were also to be disarmed. Weapons were handed in to the authorities and the Palestinians withdrew from the south. In addition, the Lebanese authorities extended their security controls around the refugee camps. In the early 1990s, with sporadic Israeli bombing of PLO bases and Syrian involvement against the PLO, the decline in power of the PLO in Lebanon was further accelerated. Since the 1990s and the Gulf War, the PLO has increasingly come to disregard the Palestinians in Lebanon. Due to financial strain, the PLO in the early 1990s reduced all forms of aid to refugees in Lebanon (R.Sayigh 1995:41). The peace process has further triggered a political fragmentation of Palestinian organisations in Lebanon, as a severe polarisation has occurred, within the Fateh movement too. Anti-Arafat tendencies are strongest in the north, where opposition factions are in control. Socioeconomics The PLO also established an economic sector of considerable strength in Lebanon. A separate Palestinian economy involving a large administrative apparatus, social institutions, productive institutions such as factories, etc. was gradually established and expanded. The resistance movement eventually employed some 65 per cent of the Palestinian workforce (sources cited in R.Sayigh 1988:286). In 1982 the Palestinian economy generated more than 15 per cent of the Lebanese gross national product (GNP). Also, voluntary taxes on Palestinian emigrés and contributions from rich Palestinians paved the way for a social welfare system on the side of UNRWA. After 1982, not only were the Palestinians vulnerable in terms of security, but there was an economic squeeze on them, called khanq, strangulation, by the Palestinians (R.Sayigh 1994a:322f.), meaning even further restrictions and hardships. In 1987 the Lebanese Parliament declared the Cairo Agreement of 1969 null and void, forcing the Palestinians once again to acquire a work permit. Only employment within the camps and with UNRWA is excepted from this rule. About 11 per cent of the UNRWA-registered Palestinian population is registered as Special Hardship Cases, families unable to sustain themselves (UNRWA 2001).


Lebanon’s reconstruction programme has not included the refugee camps, which means that infrastructure is still poor and there has been no reconstruction of what was destroyed during the war (Besson 1997: 340). The Lebanese government has declined to rebuild destroyed camps. It is forbidden to build new camps or to enlarge existing camps. Even to bring building material into the camps in southern Lebanon is prohibited. In the late 1990s unemployment among the Palestinian labour force in Lebanon was estimated at 30 per cent, and more than 50 per cent worked as day labourers in construction and agriculture, where a permit was not needed, earning US$200–300 per month. UNRWA remains the main permanent employer of Palestinians. UNRWA’s financial drain has left much of the social infrastructure in a miserable shape. UNRWA schools are the only existing educational option, except for a minority of Palestinian families who can provide their children with expensive education in Lebanese private schools. UNRWA’s budget crisis has brought primary education in the refugee camps to the verge of collapse (al-Majdal, March 1999, issue no. 1). The Palestinian community in Lebanon has also suffered from the loss of employment opportunities in the Gulf and the loss of remittances from Palestinians in the Gulf after 1991. As a stark contrast to the life of camp refugees, the Palestinian privatesector elite has found few restrictions in Lebanon. The Palestinian business elite established themselves in banking, tourism, manufacture and imports (R.Sayigh 1988:285) and played a cardinal role in Lebanon’s economy prior to the war. Stigmatisation and identity In the period between 1948 and 1969 there was little overt hostility between Palestinians and Lebanese. The reception of Palestinian refugees was replete with social warmth and assistance was provided from many sources. Marriage and other forms of social interchange between Palestinians and Lebanese Sunnis were fairly frequent. There was also an initially quite widespread belief that the refugees would soon be repatriated. Anti-Palestinianism was/is strongest among the Maronites, whereas sympathetic approaches were/are most frequent among the poor Shi’ite stratas (R.Sayigh 1988). Between 1969 and 1982, with the forceful emergence of the resistance movement, a process of polarisation occurred. Lebanese society was shattered into pro- and anti-Palestinian sentiment. The period since 1982 has been characterised by a sharp rise in the threat perception


of Palestinians in Lebanon and their vulnerability has increased (R.Sayigh 1988:275; Badran 1991; Natur 1993). Anti-Palestinian attitudes have sometimes been formulated around the poverty of the Palestinians and the creation of stereotypes relating to fears of crime. At other times, however, it has been their relative advantage that has been seen as revolting. The existence of UNRWA has been taken as a sign of injustice and as a token of Palestinian privilege. The stigmatisation taking place has also involved accusations against the Palestinians that they have ‘given up’ and ‘sold their land’. The Lebanese authorities have used extensive means of control and repression vis-à-vis the camps (R. Sayigh 1979:132f.). The security organisation Deuxième Bureau has its special Palestinian section, using force when it is thought necessary. Repression grew harsher in the 1960s as Palestinian activism grew stronger (ibid.: 150). Palestinians have been excluded from all forms of formal representation and there is therefore no mechanism to advocate civil rights. All improvement of houses has been made conditional on permits, as has construction of all kinds (R.Sayigh 1994a). Repression and discrimination directed against Palestinian identity as such was commonplace. A common story is that when Maronite soldiers wanted to distinguish Lebanese from Palestinians at any of the numerous checkpoints regulating life in the civil-war days each person was asked to say ‘tomato, which is pronounced bandura in Lebanese colloquial Arabic and banadura in Palestinian accent. To use the banadura-pronunciation could mean detention or death’ (Peteet 1995: 176). Many learnt the Lebanese accent for security reasons. However, there has also been a process of accommodation of styles, especially among the younger generation, who socialise rather intensely at institutes of higher education. Perceptions of the Palestinians and their strength might be formulated in the following way: There were two brothers living near each other. A guest arrived and asked for shelter. Our brother closed the door; the other was more tolerant, and invited the guest in. The guest stayed longer than anticipated. He then brought his wife, and then his cousins, and then even his friends. While originally he had occupied a little corner of the three bedroom house, he soon took over most of the house and was knocking at the master bedroom. This is our story with our brothers the Palestinians. (quoted in Salem 1995:60)


The Palestinians were thus viewed with increasing hostility, as imperialist, expansionist and ungrateful (cf. R.Khalidi 1986; R.Sayigh 1994a: 102). Refugee camps were called ‘zoos’ (Peteet 1995:178). A refugee woman in Burj el-Shemali in 2001 phrased how she felt about Lebanese attitudes in the following way: The Lebanese hate us, they make us feel and never forget that we are unwanted in this country, they would like to see us all dead and don’t treat us as human beings. (Kamila, Burj el-Shemali, 15 August 2001) Interaction is more frequent in Beirut and the cities, but camp populations for the most part socialise less intensely with Lebanese. For university students, friendship across ethnic boundaries is more frequent. Interaction and social relations have, however, been submerged since the war. When Libya’s president, Mu’ammar al-Qadaffi, decided to expel thousands of Palestinians, a number of whom held Lebanese travel documents, the Lebanese government refused to admit them into the country. This was intended as a political message to the world that any plan to resettle the Palestinians in Lebanon would be vehemently opposed. Passions flared to such an extent that one minister declared that ‘Lebanon was not a dump for human waste’ and the Lebanon’s refusal was intended to put an end to the ‘human invasion’ of Palestinians. (al-Safir 1995:9 September; quoted in Nasrallah 1997:357) Stigmatisation has been further heightened since the initiation of the peace process, increasing Lebanese fears of an incumbent process of integration and tawteen. In the Lebanese media there has been a campaign charging the Palestinian camps with being zones of militarisation as well as criminality. For this reason, camps in south Lebanon were placed under siege. The gravest danger against Lebanese security and stability is therefore seen as coming from the Palestinians (Suleiman 1999:72). The Lebanese foreign minister, Faris Buwayz, proposed in April 1994 that all Palestinians be removed from Lebanon (interview with al-Safir, 18 April 1994; quoted in R.Sayigh 1995:43). President Elias Hrawi has said that since the Palestinians now have their own territory Lebanon cannot accept the permanent settlement of refugees (Sosebee 1996).


For entirely different reasons, there is thus consensus among Lebanese and Palestinians that ‘permanent settlement’ (tawteen) is to be utterly rejected (Weighill 1997:308). Throughout the civil war, approximately 100,000 Palestinians left Lebanon (Takkenbeg 1998:18); another 50,000 were internally displaced13 (Rubenberg 1984; Natur 1993), and 12,000 PLO fighters were forced to leave in 1982 (Hijazi 1993). Palestinian migration has been caused by growing feelings of insecurity and lack of safety, but also by economic factors, unemployment and the impossibility of finding a secure livelihood. This means that the actual number of Palestinian refugees residing in Lebanon is considerably lower than that registered with UNRWA. Nabil states that he felt at home in Lebanon until 1975, but that after the war that was no longer possible: From that time on I felt that it wasn’t my home anymore, when we came back, and now my relations are almost entirely with Palestinians, with the camps etc., and I feel that it is over, it is not our country and we can’t feel safe here or live comfortably, not even for a day. (Nabil, Beirut, 31 July 2001) Egypt Although Palestinians had already sought residence in Egypt during the British mandate, the Palestinian community in Egypt proper has always been rather small. The number of initial refugees in 1948 has been estimated at 11,600 (Brand 1988:43). To most, life in Egypt was initially extremely hard. The majority was gathered in a military camp in al-Kantaara in the Sinai (Yasin 1999), while wealthy refugees found housing in Cairo. According to figures from the US Bureau of the Census, there were in the late 1990s between 50,000 and 100,000 Palestinians in Egypt (Takkenberg 1998:151). The Palestinians in Egypt were initially, as were the refugees in Gaza, provided with Egyptian identity cards that were later replaced by All Palestine Government travel documents (Brand 1988:50; Yasin et al. 1995). In 1984 legislation was issued which meant that Palestinians were not to be seen as Egyptian nationals. In order to re-enter Egypt, Palestinians must obtain a visa (Yasin 1999). Palestinians may only have temporary residence permits, valid for one to three years (Takkenberg 1998:152). Further, concerning Gazans carrying Egyptian travel


documents, Egypt only allowed passage across Egyptian territory to those to whom the Israeli authorities had granted approval to return to the Gaza Strip (‘Palestinian Displaced of 1967 and the Peace Process’, al-Shaml Newsletter 1996, no. 2, March). In 1996 the Egyptian authorities announced that restrictions on Palestinian entry into Egypt would be eased (al-Shaml Newsletter, no. 4, September 1996:5). A few of the wealthier Palestinians in Egypt have managed to obtain citizenship, but most have not (Brand 1988:52). In the beginning there were severe constraints against the possibilities of working. These restrictions were eased as Jamal Abdel Nasser rose to power. Palestinians could now also engage in trade, and were allowed to practise as professionals, such as medical doctors and dentists, on the same basis as Egyptians. They were also permitted to take state-funded positions. Healthcare was free and Palestinians attended Egyptian universities (ibid.: 52f.). Migration from Gaza was restricted. However, many students from Gaza resided in Cairo due to the fact that there was no higher education in Gaza prior to 1967. During the 1967 war, members of the Gaza police and the Palestine Liberation Army retreated together with the Egyptian army, which doubled the amount of Palestinians in Egypt (ibid.: 46). ‘Since then, the borders have been kept generally closed to Palestinians’ (Arzt 1997:55). The Egyptian government has conducted resettlement plans and sent refugees from Egypt proper to the Gaza Strip. During the period of Jamal Abdel Nasser and the heyday of Arab nationalism, Palestinians were attracted to Arabism and engaged in various pan-Arab organisations. The Nasserite ANM was the most influential of such groups. With the organising of student’s unions and women’s movements, a basis for political establishments was laid, and although the Fateh movement was created in Kuwait its main founding fathers had studied in Egypt and belonged to the rank and file of student politicians. With the Sadat regime many of the benefits that the Palestinians in Egypt had enjoyed were cancelled (Brand 1988:61). In 1978 new legislation meant that Palestinians were not to have the same employment status as Egyptians. Palestinians were further barred from trade and commerce as well as from owning agricultural land. It also became more difficult to obtain higher education, and after the Camp David accords hundreds of Palestinian students were imprisoned. The PLO and the Palestinians wholeheartedly opposed the Camp David agreements, setting the Egyptian regime and the PLO further apart. Gradually, attitudes and political discourse became more anti-Palestinian. With the Mubarak regime, Egyptian—Palestinian relations changed for the better. When in


the late 1980s Jordan and Syria manoeuvred against the PLO, the PLO and the Palestinians gravitated towards the Egyptians. During the 1990s President Hosni Mubarak endeavoured to be at the centre of peace efforts in the region. The situation of Palestinians in Egypt has been aggravated since the start of the Gulf crisis. Further restrictions have been imposed on schooling and education (Takkenberg 1998). The Gulf In 1990 there were nearly 400,000 Palestinian residents in Kuwait (Lesch 1991:42), the largest recipient of Palestinian migrants in the Gulf. Although Palestinian communities of considerable size exist in other Gulf countries, is a lack of sources on the situation in countries other than Kuwait. During the early years of the oil boom, Palestinians were able to benefit from the growth. Initially migrants to the Gulf were made up of skilled labour, members of the intelligentsia of lower- or middle-class origin. In the Gulf, Palestinian migration satisfied mutual needs. Demands for labour in the expanding economies coincided with migrants’ quest to sustain their families. In the beginning there was a lack of regulations in Saudi Arabia, which made it possible for Palestinians to invest in commerce and trade. Many of the early migrants were professionals, physicians, teachers, accountants, engineers, managers and consultants (ibid.: 42), providing for a high percentage of public servants. In 1966–7, 49 per cent of Kuwait’s teachers were Palestinian (ibid.: 43). Toward the end of the 1950s Palestinians in Kuwait were the wealthiest in the diaspora (Smith 1984: 127). The second major group of Palestinians arrived in the early 1950s and belonged to the peasantry: ‘They were transformed into an urban proletariat or an urban lower class’ (Ghabra 1987:63). Palestinian labour was used to build ports, rail and residential facilities, and to work as seamstresses, tutors and personal maids in private homes. Personal ties and family connections were often used to find labour opportunities. Migrants meeting each other on their trek to Kuwait formed bases for social networks (ibid.: 38ff.) to assist each other in finding housing, jobs, etc. New arrivals found housing with family and village networks, creating new forms of social-security net. Nationalisation efforts Although the Palestinians in the Gulf have for the large part been well off, the early ‘El Dorado’ was soon transformed as regimes initiated stricter


regulations. Some of these changes in government policy were induced by the political discontent that was growing among Palestinians in the late 1950s. Strikes and demonstrations took place in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia (Smith 1986) as workers demanded the right to form trade unions, improvement in housing conditions and more equitable distribution of oil revenues. The turbulence led to worries among the Gulf regimes and consequently to a reduction in the importation of foreign labour as a whole (Smith 1984:173). At the same time, the local bourgeoisie had begun to expand and thus to challenge the position of the Palestinians. This implied a nationalisation policy in the Gulf countries at large. In Kuwait, residency regulations for non-Kuwaitis were established. Palestinians have not been allowed citizenship in Kuwait—as no foreigners can be citizens—but have nevertheless been able to benefit from the socialwelfare system (Brand 1988). Furthermore, foreigners cannot own property or businesses. After the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian migration to the Gulf intensified (ibid.: 116), now also including whole families (Ghabra 1987:125). In 1968/9 a guarantor system was introduced, so that Kuwaitis were responsible for their non-Kuwaiti employees, in order to control the massive influx of Palestinians following the 1967 war. Residency could only be found through a Kuwaiti employer, and as soon as a job ended residence ended. Access to free public education was restricted. The PLO was, however, allowed to use public school buildings after hours and the PLO paid the teachers. Immigration policies also hardened in relation to the economic recession in the 1970s, the civil war in Jordan in 1970–1 and the inception of civil war in Lebanon in 1975. In 1976 the PLO schools were closed, leading to pressure on the official education system, which was then restricted to expatriates who had lived in Kuwait since 1963 (Lesch 1991:44). As a substitute, Palestinian women’s organisations started to organise education. The politics of ‘Kuwaitisation’ largely depended on the feelings of threat perceived in Kuwait, which was heavily dependent on foreign manpower, causing fears of the effects of being a minority within their own country. Relations between Kuwaitis and Palestinians were, however, relatively harmonious (Brand 1988:122) until the outset of the Gulf war in 1990/1. Although Palestinians have felt themselves discriminated against in the Gulf (Hovdenak 1997:47ff.)—migrant workers have for example been removed once a local person is available for a job—many Palestinians see Kuwait prior to the Gulf War as a paradise of sorts (ibid.: 51).


Connections with Palestine In terms of politics, the PLO has in a sense been able to function with fewer restrictions in the Gulf countries, because of the fact that Gulf states do not have an issue of contention of their own with Israel. However, although it is true that al-Fateh was originally founded in Kuwait, the diaspora in Kuwait has not been crucial in political mobilisation. The PLO has always been cautious about Kuwait’s sensitivity to unrest and has therefore sought to prevent radical Palestinian groups from taking root. In addition, the PLO and the Palestinians have supported the Kuwaiti regime in times of external threat (Iyad 1978: 38). Connections with Palestine have therefore largely taken the form of social and cultural gatherings, remittances and support of institutions in the West Bank and Gaza. The Kuwaiti regime has, however, been wary of the Palestinian left. In the late 1980s Kuwait and Saudi Arabia increasingly came to support the major contender against Fateh’s dominance in the West Bank and Gaza, namely Hamas. The Gulf War The Gulf War of 1990–1 dramatically altered Palestinian existence in the region. The Palestinian community in Kuwait was longstanding; many had lived there all their lives and formed a semi-permanent community of ‘denizens’ (Van Hear 1998:82). The PLO distanced itself from the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. With the increased American military build-up, attitudes shifted in favour of Saddam Hussein, who challenged US interests and military strength. Also, the connection made by Saddam Hussein between the Iraqi occupation and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank was supported not least by West Bank/Gaza Palestinians. The PLO advocated an ‘Arab solution’ and abstained in vote on the Arab League decision in early August 1990. As the Gulf states accused the Palestinians and the PLO of supporting Iraq, PLO assets in Gulf bank accounts were frozen, diplomatic relations were severed and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians left the region. After the liberation of Kuwait, Palestinians were subject to violent attacks (Lesch 1991:47) and PLO offices were closed. Many lost assets and savings. In fact, the Palestinians in Kuwait differed towards the Iraqi occupation. To be sure, some were enthusiastic over the regional ramifications of the invasion. Others, however, were in shock. Some Palestinians even joined in Kuwaiti resistance organisations, and there was a split between the PLO


office in Baghdad and that in Kuwait as to whether to join Iraqi security units (ibid.: 46). However, members of the Arab Liberation Front and the Palestine Liberation Front Abu Abbas group joined with the Iraqi forces. During autumn 1990 more than half of the Palestinians in Kuwait fled as a result of fear or persecution (Van Hear 1998:83). Detention, harassment and human rights abuses of various sorts continued after the restoration of the al-Sabah regime. Regulations on residence were considerably tightened and the general environment of insecurity triggered a continuous Palestinian exodus. Toward the end of 1992, it is estimated that only 30,000 Palestinians remained in Kuwait; the majority of those were holders of Egyptian travel documents, originally from Gaza. The bulk of the Palestinians leaving Kuwait went to Jordan, as most of them were Jordanian citizens, although from the West Bank. Also, holders of Egyptian travel documents from Gaza ended up in Jordan. Some had property to return to. The West Bank also received a partial in-gathering of exiles. Many also went to the USA. For Jordan, the influx of Palestinians from Kuwait in the short term meant increased strains in an already precarious economic situation. The arrival of returnees eventually created a building boom, leading to economic growth in Jordan. Returnees also invested savings in small business units, often in commerce. In the mid 1990’s Palestinians formerly working in Kuwait to an increasing extent resettled in the West Bank and Gaza instead. Although most returnees found work in Jordan, they were paid considerably less than in Kuwait and were able to enjoy fewer benefits. Most were dissatisfied and longed for Kuwait as their lost paradise (Le Troquer and Hommery 1999:42). Some were able to recover assets left behind in Kuwait, which helped make establishment in Jordan less painful. However, savings and assets were rapidly diminishing (Van Hear 1998: 157). According to the data presented by Le Troquer and Hommery (1999), slightly more than half of the returnees wanted to return to Palestine. Those over 30 had a higher tendency to say they wanted to return, while young people dreamed of returning to Kuwait or emigrating to the West. Highly Westernized consumption patterns—more than lifestyles—and a diminishing political activisim in recent years— could account for the lessening of the old ideal of ‘return’ to Palestine. (Le Troquer and Hommery 1999:48)


In March 2000 Kuwait declared that it had started accepting job applications from Jordanians, Palestinians and Yemenis for the first time since the Gulf War (‘Peace Monitor’ 2000). Gaza/West Bank Although the refugees in the West Bank and Gaza are part of a Palestinian community and share experiences related to the land and the occupation, refugees have also been regarded with social distrust in the West Bank and Gaza. In the West Bank in 2001 there were 608,000 registered refugees and in Gaza 853,000 (UNRWA 2001), out of a population of 2.2 million in the West Bank and 1.2 million in Gaza.14 Similarly to other contexts, West Bank residents intially sometimes saw the refugees as ‘defeaters’, and sometimes as themselves responsible for their plight (Bisharat 1994:174). A study conducted by Shamir in the Jalazoun refugee camp in the 1970s lay bare the insecurity sensed by refugees due to the fact that losing land meant a loss of social status and position (Shamir 1980). This subordination because of land lost was most accentuated among the older generation and did not carry the same significance among younger generations. Refugees in the early 1990s were still seen as ‘guests, and certainly not as genuinely belonging’ (Rubinstein 1991:35), although the overall discourse of national identity has attempted to conceal such fissures. On the other hand, refugees have defined themselves as representing the purified essence of Palestinian identity through their loss and their sorrow, which made them different from the muwatineen, or natives (Hass 1996:175). Social tensions have existed throughout the occupation between muwatineen and muhajireen, meaning that it is, for example, highly uncommon for nonrefugees in Gaza to marry refugees (Hass 1996; Tuastad 1997). Refugees have also perceived themselves as more part of the struggle, and, although we cannot know this for sure because of lack of data, it appears to be true that refugees have more frequently been active in different forms of struggle, evident as early as the late 1960s as well as in the first intifada (cf. Yahya 1990). In the late 1960s the PLO and the fedayeen made attempts at organising resistance cells in the West Bank. These efforts were largely unsuccessful, but the mobilisation that did occur was to a large extent based on the refugee population. Still, in the early 2000s the refugee camp population is worse off than non-refugees when it comes to unemployment and economic opportunities. Refugees have also been subject to imprisonment and Israeli repression to a greater extent than nonrefugees (al-Qudsi 2000).


West Bank The Jordanian influence in the West Bank continued to be considerable also after the Israeli occupation (e.g. Ma’oz 1984). The traditional moderate elite, the West Bank mayors, in general favoured Jordanian rule rather than liberation. Gradually, social processes—in the form of increased education and new employment opportunities in Israel undermined the influence of the traditional elite. Student movements, women’s movements and trade unions were founded—the latter strongly influenced by the Communist Party.15 Healthcare institutions, development organisations, agricultural institutions and self-help organisations were also formed and served as a counter-structure to the occupation power in the absence of a real state. New ideological currents gained in influence after the occupation, such as Marxism—Leninism as well as al-Fateh’s ‘Palestinianism’ (e.g. Sahliyeh 1988). West Bank political figures called for some kind of entity to be established in the occupied territories (cf. Ma’oz 1984; Brand 1988). These political developments influenced the PLO’s adoption of such a strategy in 1974. Palestinians in the occupied territories from early on leaned more towards a political solution than exile. The Palestine Communist Party (PCP) advocated a Palestinian state in the occupied territories, alongside Israel, as did the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) (cf. Sahliyeh 1988). The PCP opposed the Jordanian annexation in 1950 and advocated instead ‘the establishment of a separate Palestinian State in part of Palestine, according to the 1947 UN Partition Plan’ (Ma’oz 1984:10). The PCP was further influential in the Palestine National Front (PNF), established in order to assimilate the PLO and the occupied territories (see Cobban 1984; Ma’oz 1984). A split developed, however, between the PNF in the West Bank and the PLO outside regarding legitimacy and representation, as the inside structure was seen as a challenge to the PLO outside (Litvak 1997:175). In the municipal elections of 1976, the pro-Jordanian elite was swept away from municipal office and was replaced with nationalist, pro-PLO mayors (Maoz 1984:145). After 1976, no elections were held under Israeli occupation. Most mayors and members of municipal councils were fired in 1982 due to their refusal to cooperate with the newly installed Civil Administration. Since then, and until the implementation of autonomy agreements, the towns were run by Israel, with the exception of Bethlehem, whose mayor, Elias Freij, remained in office until his death in 1998. The early 1980s witnessed a harshening of Israeli politics as the Likud government implemented its ‘iron fist’ policy.


Gaza According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Gaza’s population in 2001 was 1.2 million (al-Quds, in Arabic, 11 January 2002). Gaza is thus one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Seventy per cent of the total Gaza population are registered refugees. As has been stated, ‘Gaza is fundamentally a large but confined refugee camp’ (Weighill 1999:26). Most refugees in Gaza originate from the Gaza and Lydda Districts. In December 1949 it was estimated that 200,000 refugees had entered Gaza (Cheal 1988:139). The massive influx forever changed the character of the Strip. Prior to 1948 Gaza City had been a market town, selling citrus, wheat and other crops from the Gaza district as a whole. After 1948 Gaza was cut off from its supply sources as well as its markets. The economy was ravaged: within a few months the strip had come to depend almost entirely on imports. (Cheal 1988:139) As in many other places (e.g. Lebanon), poor indigenous residents resented the fact that only the refugees were provided with relief efforts. In contrast to the West Bank, the PLO and Fateh were already successful in Gaza in the 1960s. Gaza has been a symbol of thriving Palestinianism from early on. This is dependent partly on the large number of refugees and Gaza’s confinement from other areas, as well as its relations with Israel and the large number of labour migrants entering Israel from Gaza. Gaza was administered by Egypt between 1948 and 1967 (with a four-month interruption during the Israeli occupation in 1956). The Student’s Union, whose base was Cairo, in 1956 established an underground resistance movement in Gaza, called the Popular Resistance. Ideologically, the Popular Resistance was a combination of sentiments from the Muslim Brotherhood and Ba’athism, competing with the leftist-oriented National Front, led by Haidar Abdel-Shafi.16 Both organisations suffered from the harsh Israeli occu pation, along with a subsequent Egyptian clampdown, when Gaza was again returned to Egypt (Cobban 1984:180f). Fateh became the dominant organisation in the 1970s. There have been no elected municipalities. Politically, Gaza suffers from its isolation from the Arab world at large as well as from the West Bank. The Israeli government has pursued large-scale resettlement schemes, such as Sheikh Radwan in Gaza City in the 1970s, in order to control the refugee population and prevent militant activism (B.Schiff 1995:197). The


idea was to move residents out of the camps to better housing. Camp areas could be redeveloped and improved. Those who were made to move had their homes demolished as part of security policies and rebuilding was not permitted. During the same period, a project of road widening and security measures left refugees in Rafah camp homeless. These were provided housing in Canada camp, which, when Sinai was returned to Egypt, came to be situated in Egypt. The rebuilding of homes and/or their expansion have in all of the West Bank and Gaza, for refugees and natives alike, been subject to permits, which has not been easy to acquire. Many eventually ignored regulations, meaning that they risked having their homes demolished. It is thus no coincidence that it was in Jabalyia refugee camp in Gaza that the intifada commenced in December 1987. A disillusioned and frustrated young generation, who had grown up with the occupation and for whom the military repression had become commonplace, no longer feared the Israeli army and authorities. Moreover, they had lost patience with the diplomatic turns of the PLO and confidence in the capability and willingness of the Arab states to assist. Previous tensions between the West Bank and Gaza were—initially—bridged by the intifada and its creation of greater cohesion. Daily labour migration With the land alienation that followed upon the Israeli occupation and the expropriation of land, the Palestinian peasantry was turned into a cheap labour force in Israel, working largely in the agricultural and construction sectors. Prior to the Gulf War in 1990–1, 35–40 per cent of the Palestinian labour force, or approximately 110,000 people (Jerusalem Post, 26 October 1990), commuted each day to Israel for work.17 A new social class was created, the daily or weekly Palestinian guest workers. Since 1993, the number of Palestinian labourers in Israel has diminished. In March 1993 the Israeli government directly linked their dependency on the Palestinian workforce to security and sealed the occupied territories for an ‘indefinite time’ after an increase in violent incidents. Since then, there has been permanent closure of the West Bank and Gaza from Israel, meaning overall restrictions on the movement of labour, goods and factors of production. In order to enter Israel from the West Bank or Gaza (or the West Bank from Gaza and vice versa), any individual needs a permit, which is hard to come by. In addition to this general closure, total closure refers to absolute banning of any movement. This type of closure is imposed in relation to security threats or attacks against Israel. A third type


of closure is ‘internal closure’, meaning restriction of movement between localities within the West Bank, which was made possible by the Interim Agreement of 1995 dividing the West Bank into different zones (cf. Roy 1999). When there is not a total closure, the following categories may apply for a permit to enter Israel: ‘workers with steady jobs in Israel, truck owners importing or exporting goods (but only with an Israeli military escort), businessmen, sick people, those with special permits for “personal reasons”…and high-ranking Palestinian officials and police’ (Hass 1996: 235). Men need to be married and over a certain age limit, which varies between 25 and 40. The Gaza Strip especially has become a fenced-off, locked, confined, isolated camp, from which there is no exit and to which there is no entry.18 Gazans often describe the Gaza Strip as a prison. Passing the security zone at Eretz checkpoint between Israel and the Gaza Strip is an act of humiliation. Workers have to queue for hours to pass through the barbed wire, the security checks, the control of ID cards and permits. Permits to go to Israel were, after the establishment of the PNA,19 to be sought from the Palestinian National Security Police at Eretz. The closure means that it is impossible for the vast majority to travel between the West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli siege of the West Bank and Gaza during the al-Aqsa intifada has been particularly harmful in this regard. In principle, however, closure has been part of Israeli policy since 1991, when closure was first introduced as a larger strategy in relation to the Gulf War. The closures effectively demonstrate the complicated nature of mobility for the Palestinians. Voluntary movement is curtailed to the extent that it is sometimes outright impossible, while forced movement continues to define Palestinian existence. Amira Hass calls it a ‘theft of space and time’ (Hass 2002:10). Movement has been turned into a luxury for which one has sometimes to beg (ibid.). The closures had a devastating impact on the Palestinian economy. Estimated unemployment in the West Bank and Gaza for 1996 was 31.5 per cent, compared to 18.0 per cent in 1993 (Middle East Economic Digest, 22 August 1997). Throughout 1998 and 1999 the economy recovered as the number of closures decreased (UNSCO 1999; World Bank Group 2000). Occupation as ‘diaspora’ The occupation in itself and its consequences could be read as a ‘diasporic’ condition, in the sense that for West Bank and Gaza residents too there has been a process of alienation from land, with implications for feelings of meaningful belonging (Hanafi 2001). Israel has regarded the Palestinians


not as ‘citizens’, but as ‘foreign residents’. As a population under occupation, West Bank and Gaza Palestinians have lacked nationality, although many, especially West Bankers, have Jordanian citizenship. Since 1967 the Israeli authorities have confiscated land amounting to 79 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza territory (PASSIA Diary 2001). Property that was registered in the name of non-residents has been termed abandoned and turned into Israeli property. Land of which there was no resident owner was in 1980 turned into ‘state land’, and other land was expropriated for public use. Land could also be labelled a ‘closed area’ for military use, or combat zones. Major construction was prohibited on land close to main roads, military installations and settlements. Settlements remain one of the most thorny issues in the continuous displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Initially, under the Labour government which was in office immediately after the occupation in 1967, settlements were established for alleged ‘security reasons’. When the Likud government came to power in 1976, the settlement policy became increasingly ideologicaly motivated and more aggressive. Israel issued identity cards in a system ultimately geared towards exclusion and categorisation. East Jerusalemites had blue identity cards, West Bankers orange, while Gazans were required to carry magnetic ID cards from 1988 onwards. These identity cards needed to be carried at all times and closely guarded for display at numerous checkpoints and controls of various sorts. Former prisoners have their term in prison marked on their identity card, meaning that they are seen as presenting a continuous security risk from Israel’s perspective. Amira Hass describes how the Israeli system of categorisation has worked so as to erase Palestinian identity officially If a holder of a Gaza ID was born in what has since become Israel, the only word in the space for ‘place of birth’ is Israel (Hass 1996:179)—so that if you were born in Burayr in 1930 you were, accordingly, born in Israel, although Israel did not exist at the time. The most typical site of Palestinian-Israeli encounter is the checkpoints, the locations where within the 1949 armistice agreements Israel and the West Bank/Gaza are to diverge. Here, car registration plates have been signs of separation and exclusion, as West Bank, Gaza and Israeli licence plates have different colours. During the intifada, intense stone-throwing incidents against cars meant Jerusalem Palestinians risked having their windows smashed by stones, and so a sign of identification became the kefiya placed in the window. In the catch-22 situation defining Palestinian mobility, it has been as difficult to travel as it has to stay To obtain a travel document or a laissez-


passer, the West Bank/Gaza applicant must pass through several phases. Palestinian holders of foreign passports can only stay on tourist visas or other temporary visas. Many holders of foreign passports simply extend their stay in the West Bank/Gaza illegally in order to be able to stay without the risk of having their application turned down by Israeli authorities: I had been in the West Bank without a valid tourist visa since May 1995 and no matter how much I tried to get some form of residency approved by the Israelis, they always had an excuse for delays. In the end, I stopped caring whether they gave me residency or not. I mean, I was born in Jerusalem and considered living in Palestine my right. I didn’t need Israel to legalize my residency there. I already existed there, with or without their consent. True, I couldn’t travel to Gaza or abroad, but I existed nonetheless. Of course, I can’t deny that the notion of paying a fine or being prevented from leaving the country terrified me. Friends loaned me money for the fine, just in case, but I didn’t believe that the Israelis deserved to take the money. In principle, I was against having to pay a fine for staying in ‘my’ country It just defeated logic. Any kind of logic. (Hamzeh 2001) Israeli citizens: ‘refugees in the homeland’ Today, there are approximately 1.2 million Palestinians residing in Israel and with Israeli citizenship.20 After the war, those who had remained in what became Israel were turned into a minority in their own homeland. In 2001, between 200,000 and 250,000 of these belonged to the category ‘internally displaced’ in the 1948 war. Internal displacement was contingent on destruction of villages as well as on legislation. Even if one left one’s village only for a brief time during the war, one was labelled an ‘absentee’ and one’s property was termed ‘absentee property’, meaning that rights to home and land were lost. For the internal refugees, exile was not to some far-off place; it was exile within their own homeland. It does not require a great deal of sensitivity to understand the intensity of their everyday pain and frustration. (Benvenisti 2000:209)


The Palestinians in Israel lived under military rule until 1966. As a result of land confiscations, discrimination, exclusion, lower education, higher unemployment and lower income there has been a proletarianisation of Palestinians in Israel (Zureik 1979). There is discrimination in all regards. Palestinians were banned from obtaining membership in Israeli parties until 1952. Labour only opened up to Palestinian membership in 1973. However, until the mid-1990s most Palestinians in Israel voted for Labour or other Zionist parties. Active mobilisation occurred mostly among left-wing parties. The Israeli Communist Party managed to muster support through Rakah (the ‘Arab’ party that was the result of the split of the Communist Party in the mid-1960s).21 Also, the Democratic Arab Party (DAP),22 which was formed in 1988 by MK Abdalwahab Darawshe as a response to Israel’s treatment of the intifada going on in the occupied territories, became a vehicle for political mobilisation. There were also ‘lists’ of various sorts linked to Labour and other major parties, but created in order to attract Arab voters. Rakah formed the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash), which attracted a number of Palestinian voters. In the 1970s the nationalist Abna al Balad (Sons of the Village) gained in prominence. The organisation boycotted Knesset elections as a consequence of its nationalist outlook. Another nationalist organisation is the Progressive Movement, later the Progressive List for Peace, calling for full equality for Palestinians in Israel. Since the beginning of the 1980s the Islamic Association has increased in assertiveness, concentrating largely on the municipal level. In the 1996 elections Palestinians increased their representation in the Knesset. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by university professor Azmi Bishara, represents a novel form of political mobilisation in the sense that it maintains the possibility of preserving Palestinian identity while claiming full civil and political rights as Israeli citizens. In 1999 Azmi Bishara decided to run in the prime ministerial elections as a token of the aspirations of equality among Palestinians in Israel. Subsequently, he withdrew his candidacy. The slogan of NDA is a state for all its citizens. In the 1999 elections the DAP and the Islamic Movement formed a common platform (as they had done since 1988) and managed to receive 31 per cent of the Palestinian votes, whereas NDA gained 17 per cent and the Democratic Front 22 per cent. In 1999 Labour received only 8 per cent of Palestinian votes, which is a considerable decline since the early 1980s, when 29 per cent voted for Labour. In 1999 22 per cent voted for other Zionist parties (Ghanem 2001). In February 2001, 82 per cent of the Palestinians in Israel boycotted the prime ministerial elections.


Apart from political parties, other specific organisations have been mobilised, such as for example the Association of Forty, concerned with the unrecognised villages of the Galilee. In 1992 a Committee for the Defence of the Rights of the Displaced in Israel was formed. Land/place On the question why he chose to stay during the fighting in 1948, one Palestinian living in Nazareth explains: Why should I go into exile? I’ve never dreamt of it. I would die if I went into exile, like a fish on the shore. I never thought of this. Why should I go? These theories were inserted into our minds by Zionism, that one can choose his homeland. They not only choose their homeland, they change their names as well…. It is a very natural thing to stay in one’s homeland. (quoted in Slycomovics 1998:130) One account of the specific relationship to land is that of Susan Slycomovics, who writes of the village Ein Houd, whose inhabitants fled in 1948. Most were forced into exile, while others remained in the vicinity of the village. Ein Houd was taken over by Israel and subsequently made into a Jewish artists’ town. Members of the most important clan in Ein Houd built a new village—Ein Houd al-Jadidah —which was not recognised until 1995 by the Israeli authorities (Slycomovics 1998:127). Many deserted towns, villages and houses have been turned into tourist sites—for example the creation of artists’ colonies in Safed, Ein Houd, Old Jaffa and other locations. Deserted houses have become restaurants and summer homes (ibid.; Benvenisti 2000). Israeli legislation has been a key tool in gaining control over land. A number of laws have been designed for this purpose, most significantly the Absentees’ Property Law of 1950, which transferred the right of possession of refugees’ property to the Custodian for Absentees’ Property, who is allowed to sell it only to the Development Authority. Abandoned land was acquired through the Land Acquisition Law of 1953. The land and the landscape have changed completely The most devastating blow to the landscape has been the actual destruction of villages that was conducted in the aftermath of the flight with the purpose of barring a return. Furthermore, the moving in of immigrants, the creation of kibbutzim and moshavim with entirely different modes of cultivating the land has also altered the landscape. Thus, the loss was not


only due to detachment, but the destruction of what once was. Benvenisti speaks of the ‘disappearance of the landscape’ (Benvenisti 2000:231): ‘But the olive and pomegranate trees of the “primitive” Arab village were no more’ (ibid.: 216). One hundred villages are named ‘unrecognised’ (cf. Schechla 2001: 25), meaning that there is no basic infrastructure or municipal services. Construction outside villages is illegal, and there are also other restrictions on building. An example of the ordeals suffered by inhabitants of unrecognised villages is that they do not have an address. Officially those villages do not exist. The mailing address is ‘travelling post’, and inhabitants of unrecognised villages have to pick up their mail at nearby kibbutzim or villages (‘Ayn Hawd and the “Unrecognized Villages”’ 2001: 41). Confiscation of land continued on massive scale until 1976. On 30 March 1976 Palestinians in Israel launched a heavy protest against the confiscations, declaring the ‘Land Day’. Six people were killed in confrontations with Israeli police. Ever since, Land Day has been one of the important days in the Palestinian national political calendar, commemorated each year. The Land Day implied that massive expropriations were brought to an end, but other means of Judaising the land were applied instead. More than 90 per cent of the land in Israel is owned by the Jewish National Fund or the state. Judaisation has also occurred through official Israeli practices of differentiating place as well as (re)inventing it. Arab towns and villages are, for example, marked differently on road signs. While Israeli Jewish sites are marked with large green signs, Arab villages are given small, white signs. Meron Benvenisti describes in detail the intricate ways in which Zionism and Israel have taken possession of the land. Places have been changed and renamed. Existing villages are not always placed on the map and traces of destroyed villages have been erased. For example, efforts have been made to find biblical-sounding names that could be regarded as ancient (Benvenisti 2000:20). There are even stories of replanting olive trees uprooted from Palestinian areas in order to nourish a tale of antiquity. Identity dilemma Identity has been and continues to be problematic. In official categorisations, such as the Israeli census, the Palestinians in Israel are categorised in religious subcategories, i.e. Muslims, Christians and Druze. In Israeli discourse, Palestinians in Israel are called Israeli Arabs or ‘Arabs’. Here, we will use the categorisation ‘Palestinians in Israel’, since that is a way


in which Palestinians in Israel actually define themselves (Rouhana 1997: 8). Since Jewishness remains the most salient criteria in defining Israeli citizenship, Palestinians have a hard time gaining such citizenship if they do not already hold it. The Nationality Law of 1952 barred many Palestinians in Israel from citizenship due to its restrictions for Arabs. The law was altered and some of the conditions were eased in 1980. The Law of Return of 1950 (amended a number of times) is especially enigmatic for the Palestinians, since it provides people born of a Jewish mother or converters to Judaism the right to migrate and settle in Israel, but excludes that right to Palestinians. The Law of Return also provides the right of citizenship to newly arrived Jews. This is not the place to repeat the scholarly debate on the identity of Palestinians in Israel, although some features should be mentioned. Although Palestinians in Israel identify as Palestinians or Arabs politically and culturally, Israeli citizenship is also important (Smooha 1989, 1992). To some, this is taken as a sign of integration in Israel. Sammy Smooha has argued that Israelisation and Palestinianisation occur simultaneously. According to Smooha and others, Palestinians in Israel are gradually integrated into the state. To some extent, there is certainly some kind of integration taking place, evident in Palestinians participating in institutes of higher education, mobilisation for Knesset participation and for their rights, in popular culture, in the labour market, etc. However, it remains true that Palestinians in Israel are still excluded from most important positions, that the investment level in Palestinian-populated areas is much lower than in Jewish areas, that Palestinians lag behind when it comes to income, education, health standards, social welfare and participation in the labour market, and thus virtually all political and socioeconomic indicators. One account of how the identity of Palestinians in Israel is ques tioned in relation to moving/travelling is the following, by Mahmoud Darwish: You want to travel to Greece? You ask for a passport, but you discover you’re not a citizen because your father or one of your relatives had fled with you during the Palestine war. You were a child. And you discover that any Arab who had left his country during that period and had stolen back in had lost his right to citizenship. You despair of the passport and ask for a laissez-passer. You find out you’re not a resident of Israel because you have no certificate of residence. You think it’s a joke and rush to tell it to your lawyer


friend: ‘Here, I’m not a citizen, and I’m not a resident. Then where and who am I?’ You’re surprised to find the law is on their side, and you must prove you exist. You ask the Ministry of Interior, ‘Am I here, or am I absent? Give me an expert in philosophy, so that I can prove to him I exist’ Then you realize that philosophically you exist but legally you do not. (Darwish 1973, Journal of an Ordinary Grief, in Arabic; quoted in Muhawi 1995: xiii) Palestinians in Israel have also been regarded with suspicion by exiled or West Bank/Gaza Palestinians. Elias Chacour recalls how his identity was questioned when travelling from Israel to Beirut in 1975, which he was allowed to do because he was a priest. Chacour was stopped by a PLO cadre: I could see malevolence and scorn cross the man’s face when he examined my Israeli passport. My heart sank to my shoes. How can I explain to this man that I am an Arab Palestinian with Israeli papers? How can I tell him I am not his enemy, despite my identity as an Israeli? How insane my life is, I thought. The Jewish Israelis see me as an Arab and an enemy despite my papers. Arabs see me as an Israeli and an enemy because of my papers. No wonder we Palestinians inside Israel hardly know who we are anymore. (Chacour 1990:108) In October 2000, after the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada, massive demonstrations took place among Palestinians in Israel—especially in the Nazareth area—leading to harsh reactions by Israeli police. Thirteen Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli security forces. Not since 1976 had the relations between the state and the Israeli Palestinians been that violent. Already prior to the uprising and the intensified violence, Palestinians in Israel had begun to assert Palestinian-ness as important to their identity. In 1999, 32.8 per cent of Palestinians in Israel described themselves as ‘Israeli’, compared with 63.2 per cent in 1995 (Ghanem and Smooha 2001; cited in Shafir and Peled 2002:129). Latin America Migration to the Americas has a long history, but there is very little scholarly knowledge on the Palestinian communities there. Migration to


the Americas has been constituted by family-related chain migration and is not directly related to the nakba like that of most other migratory processes. Apart from the USA, sizeable communities reside in Chile, Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires, Uruguay, parts of Central America, and in particular Honduras (González 1992:63f.). The Palestinian community there is almost exclusively made up of Christians from Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour. The communities in Latin America are among the wealthiest in the diaspora (Smith 1986:91). In terms of relations with Hondurans, there has been a considerable degree of hostility vis-à-vis Palestinians. Palestinians have frequently been called ‘Turcos’, stemming from their early migration during Ottoman rule. Resentment has also grown in relation to the economic fortunes of Palestinians. For example, González states that ‘the most desirable residential neighbourhood in San Pedo Sula is inhabited almost exclusively by Arabs’, causing resentment (González 1992:143). With increasing international focus on the Israeli—Palestinian conflict, there has also been increasing tension between Palestinians and others in Honduras (ibid.: 143). There has been envy of Palestinian economic success as well as growing fears of terrorism (ibid.: 169). Palestinians, for their part, in the beginning viewed Hondurans with contempt. In comparison with Bethlehem, Honduras was a ‘wild’ and ‘primitive’ place. In the 1990s, however, this was reversed, as those born in Honduras, as well as many newcomers, thought of Palestine as more ‘primitive’ in comparison (ibid.: 170). The Latin American diaspora has not been so active in nationalist politics (Smith 1984; González 1992), but according to González has been fairly accommodationist, and, despite noticing resentment vis-à-vis the Palestinian community, González and others also emphasise integration as a defining characteristic of Palestinians in Latin and Central America. The USA In 2001, Christison extrapolates the figure of 200,000 Palestinians in the USA (Christison 2001:74).23 As in Central America, many of the Palestinians in the USA are Christians, originally migrating from the towns of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Beit Jala. Ramallans especially have constituted a close-knit community in certain American cities (Christison 1989). Hammer estimates that around half of the Palestinians in the USA are of Christian origin (Hammer 2000). Although a number of immigrants arrived after 1936 and 1948, the bulk of Palestinians in the USA arrived after the June


War of 1967. Furthermore, tens of thousands of West Bankers and Gazans and other members of, for example, the Gulf diaspora study in the USA, and many of them decide to remain after finishing their studies (Turki 1994:9). Also a large number of Palestinians left for the USA because of the civil war in Lebanon. The largest concentrations of Palestinians in the USA are to be found in Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles. Migration is frequently constituted as chain migration, i.e. migration is facilitated by relatives already settled in the USA. To promote the Palestinian cause has primarily been the work of Arab— American organisations. The foremost of these has been the American— Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, founded in 1980, and working to change negative stereotypes of Arabs in the USA (Shain 1999). Other organisations, such as the National Association of Arab Americans, emphasise the need to present the Palestinian cause to the American public opinion and to counter the powerful Jewish lobby in the USA. The PLO had a Palestine Information Office that was registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent until 1988, when it was closed. As a result of the initiation of a US-PLO dialogue in the late 1980s, the office was reopened in 1989, now called the Palestine Affairs Center. The USA only officially recognised the PLO in 1994. The PLO office is called the PLO mission and has quasi-embassy status. The Gulf War and, even more so, the peace process have contributed to a split in the Arab-American community between an integrationist approach and a more radical line of opinion (ibid.). The main purpose of many of these organisations has been to influence American foreign policy. To Palestinians in the USA, American policy vis-à-vis the Palestinian— Israeli conflict (Christison 2001:79) has been a cause of constant tension. Western Europe There is still a lack of sources on Palestinians in Europe, but an important contribution is being made by Abbas Shiblak, who has collected a number of descriptions on different European contexts to be published by the Institute of Palestine Studies. There are no definitive accounts of the number of Palestinians in Europe, but Shiblak mentions a figure of 177, 000, the vast majority having arrived from Lebanon. The majority are also stateless holders of refugee travel documents (Shiblak forthcoming). Migration to Western Europe was initiated during the British mandate, and made up of students, civil servants and advisers to the Mandatory government (Shiblak 2000). There are also Palestinian communities in Russia and Eastern European countries. Due to political sympathies and


alliances during the Cold War, a fairly large number of Palestinians received scholarships to study in the socialist countries.24 Migration patterns changed during the 1970s and 1980s, when large numbers of Palestinians left an insecure situation in Jordan or Lebanon for Europe. Business communities started to migrate to Britain or the USA rather than staying in Lebanon, where economic potential had been ruined by the civil war. Engineers, doctors and teachers also went to the USA or Europe. The largest group of Palestinians is the community in Germany, consisting of approximately 80,000 (ibid.). There are only a few accounts of the Palestinians in Western Europe. One rare description is provided by Ghada Karmi (1999a), who left Palestine for Great Britain with her family in 1949. One thing that is revealed is how difficult it was to settle in London, especially for Ghada Karmi’s mother: My mother made no secret of the fact that she resented being in London. She complained endlessly that there was no decent food to cook, none of the vegetables we were used to. Even garlic, the staple of all Arabic cooking, was a luxury. She hated the cold weather and the rain and complained that she could scarcely keep the house warm. She was lonely and longed for company…. In London, she had no neighbors she could talk to, no family beyond her immediate family, and few friends. In the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, there was only a small number of Arabs in England and hardly any Palestinians besides us. (Karmi 1999a:53) Abdulrahim (1993), who has studied Palestinian women in West Berlin, reveals how women were very much ‘re-traditionalised’ and domesticated. The close neighbourhoods of the camps of Lebanon, where women had a sphere of control of their own, were lost. Instead, women became isolated. As was the case for the refugees in the Arab world, kinship and family structures were strengthened, but in Europe this meant that women were more confined to their homes than previously. Ghada Karmi’s mother eventually compensated for her loneliness through an intense socialisation with other Arabs in London, and in particular Palestinians. Her mother also made a strong effort to live Arabic’ by, for example, cooking Arabstyle (Karmi 1999a:55). Ghada’s parents clung to the ‘Arabic/Palestinian culture’ that contributed to their further isolation.


Sweden In Sweden, as in other Western European countries, Palestinians arrived because of the civil war and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The Palestinian experience in Sweden has to a large extent been flavoured by Swedish policies in the Middle East. Swedish foreign policy changed from a fairly staunch support of Israel in the aftermath of the war in 1948 to a more pro-Palestinian line during the 1970s with the Olof Palme regime (Bjereld 1989). Swedish Social Democratic governments have, however, maintained cooperative relationships with the Israeli Labour party Although Palestinians have been subject to suspicion of terrorist activities by the Swedish security police (Säpo), Palestinians have felt that they are among friends in Sweden. With Göran Persson as Sweden’s prime minister, a shift occurred in Sweden’s policy after 25 years of fairly consistent politics. Göran Persson’s international profile centred around his efforts to create an official international commemoration of the Holocaust and a large Holocaust conference was held in Stockholm in 1999. A follow-up was held 2002. Persson also initiated a policy that was more friendly to Israel than that of previous Social Democratic governments. When the violent demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza in autumn 2000 met with deadly use of heavy artillery by Israel, Sweden was one of few countries to abstain in the vote in the UN Security Council. Resolution 1322 of 7 October 2000 condemned acts of violence and particularly excessive use of force by Israel (UNSC 1322 2000), but Sweden refrained from voting. During 2001, the cleavage within the Social Democratic Party became obvious, as the former minister of foreign affairs, Sten Andersson, who also worked as the special envoy of the government in Middle East affairs, openly criticised the prime minister. In March 2002 Sten Andersson noted that after the party congress of the Social Democrats in autumn 2001 he and Göran Persson now agreed on fundamental points concerning, for example, international law and the Israeli occupation (Andersson, 2002). In early 2002 the Swedish position vis-à-vis the Israeli government became more critical (see Chapter 6). The very first group of Palestinians arrived in Sweden in 1962. They were students and came to Sweden in order to receive supplementary education. Most of them returned to Lebanon, Jordan and West Bank after completing their education. Another group arrived after the civil war in Jordan in the early 1970s (SIV 1991:63). The largest group arrived, however, in the early 1980s. There were reportedly 13,000 Palestinians in Sweden in the late 1990s. Statistics are uncertain, since Sweden does not


register refugees according to ethnic identity but according to the country that they came from, meaning that most Palestinians are registered as ‘stateless’ or with ‘unknown’ citizenship. It is therefore not possible to know either the exact number of persons of Palestinian origin residing in Sweden or the number of Palestinians seeking asylum each year. The category ‘stateless’ or ‘unknown citizenship’ in Swedish statistics, however, is largely composed of Palestinians. Since the Ta’if accords of 1989, Swedish official policy does not acknowledge the refugee status of most Palestinians, whether from Lebanon or elsewhere. The paradox is thus that Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are refugees with no protection in Lebanon, but could not be considered refugees from Lebanon and therefore not as in need of protection in a third country. During the late 1990s there was a slight increase in the number of asylum-seekers of Palestinian origin. According to Birgitta Elfström at the Migration Authority (interview, 21 January 2001), more arrived from the West Bank and Gaza than before. This was a new phenomenon. It remains difficult to know why people chose to migrate during the years of the peace process, but reasons given relate to opposition to the Oslo process as well as the precarious situation in Lebanon. Some claimed political reasons, i.e. that since they identified themselves with the Palestinian opposition they were fearful of staying in the West Bank and Gaza under the Palestinian Authority (PA) regime. Most of those who arrived were UNRWA-registered refugees, but holders of Palestinian passports also sought asylum. With the escalating violence in 2001–2, the number of stateless asylum-seekers to Sweden increased somewhat (www.migrationsverket.se). Sweden pursued a strict policy when it came to granting Palestinians visas to Sweden. One example of the ramifications of this is when the Ramallah-based theatre group Al Kasaba was to visit Sweden to participate in an international dance and theatre festival in August 2002. The members of the group were first denied visas. After lobbying, the decision was changed. The PLO office in Stockholm was opened in 1976. Various groups have been formed. For some time, the most prominent was the Union for Palestinian Workers, closely associated with the PLO and cooperating with the Swedish Social Democratic Party. There has been close cooperation between the youth branch of the Social Democratic Party and the Fateh Shabiba movement in various activities, such as summer camps. Such activities have served as a habitat of Palestinian-Swedish relations. The leftwing party has also supported Palestinians and Palestinian groups, as have smaller leftist parties. There are a number of smaller organisations working


to promote the Palestine cause. Swedish organisations working in solidarity with the Palestinians have been found on the left in Swedish political society. The Palestine group is the largest explicitly Swedish-Palestinian non-governmental organisation (NGO), working with, for example, healthcare projects in Lebanon and in the West Bank and Gaza, and trying to give voice to the Palestinian perspective in Sweden. In 2000 the Association for the Palestinians’ Right of Return was formed in Göteborg, with a similar organisation in Stockholm, inspired by the Return Centre in London. This association was independent from the PLO and political groups. Like many other migrant communities in Sweden, Palestinians suffered from the decline in the Swedish labour market during the 1990s. Although there are no figures, a fairly high percentage of Palestinians are unemployed. Employment and the labour market are important factors for integration, and a lack of opportunities to participate effectively in the labour market has amplified feelings of isolation. Some notice acute apathy and difficulties in adjusting. Hence, Palestinians are truly a dispersed nation. The experiences of Palestinian lives include ultimate destitution in Lebanese refugee camps and relative affluence for intellectuals and representatives of Palestinian diaspora capital in the West and in the Gulf. As with any other nation, there is a gulf between lived experiences related to class. However, the catastrophe of 1948, the refugee status and the statelessness of Palestinians add up to a shared reality.

4 STATELESS, ROOTLESS, HOMELESS Meanings of homeland in exile

Lost Paradise! You were never too small for us, But now vast countries are indeed too small. Torn asunder your people, Wandering under every star. (Mahmud al-Hut)1 On the move The exile condition is by necessity a rootless condition, a condition of ‘wandering’ and unwanted ‘mobility’. Rootlessness has a tendency to trigger sometimes desperate searches for roots that have been lost. A state of nostalgia, of sad interrogation of the past, of the homeland that is grieved and longed for is very much true of the Palestinian diaspora, nurturing a constant dream of reversing the present condition of denial, exclusion, humiliation and estrangement into a triumphant return. This chapter intends to investigate narratives related to place and homeland within Palestinian discourse. Palestinian narratives abound with descriptions of an identity that is out of place,2 without centre and on a constant journey. One quite typical story of deportees3 reads: I was deported in 1988 to South Lebanon. I was taken from Jneid prison in Nablus by helicopter together with a group of others. We were picked up by two Mercedes that drove to Beirut, where we were taken to the International Red Cross. I was in Lebanon only two months; thereafter I went to Tunis, to be near our leadership. Then

86 MEANINGS OF HOMELAND IN EXILE

I went to Geneva for two years, where I was advisor to the PLO representative to the UN. (Ahmed Aldiik, Fateh-member, Ramallah, 27 October 1994) Stories like the one above accentuate the fact that the Palestinian experience implies not movement to one place, but each and every individual (potentially) finds herself/himself in many different settings.4 Narratives are framed by journeys from one place to another. This constant flux on a collective, as well as individual, basis has led to shattered families and communities. Our family is scattered. I have a son in Abu Dhabi. I have brothers in Libya. I have sons in America. I have to travel to see my kids. When I am in Lebanon, I can’t stop thinking about what’s happening to my kids in America. The day I get to America and see my kids, I start thinking, how are they doing back in Lebanon? I don’t find anybody with anyone else any more. (Um Ossama, in Lynd et al. 1994:105f.) The very lifestyle becomes shattered as families are spread across the Arab world, the Americas and Europe. In one family, there might be stateless refugees as well as people with Jordanian, German and American citizenship. The condition of being Palestinian is, then, to move. And if a person does not move much by her- or himself, then almost certainly he/she will have friends, family and kin who lead travelling lives, and family members residing elsewhere will come to visit. All these examples underline the profound meaning of such metaphors as ‘wanderers of the earth’, coined by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.5 Palestinian identity is constituted in these journeys, but also through the suspicion, mistrust and outside catgorisations (cf. Daniel and Knudsen 1995) with which Palestinians are met because of this homeless wandering. The Palestinians are, indeed, ‘victims of the map’ (Darwish et al. 1984). Shut out ‘We are thrown from one airport to another and no-one wants to accept us’, said a Palestine People’s Party (PPP)6 sympathiser in the West Bank to portray this aspect of Palestinian identity (interview, Ramallah, 4 September 1994). ‘I am nobody. I want to be somebody’, is the way another Palestinian political activist expressed the feelings connected to the

MEANINGS OF HOMELAND IN EXILE 87

statelessness7 and rootlessness of the Palestinian predicament (interview, Ramallah, 27 September 1994). Such statements indicate the constitution of identity by difference as well as by outside ascription and labelling. The Palestinians are constantly faced with suspicion, harassment and exclusion because they cannot prove a national identity, a citizenship legally inscribed in their passports.8 Concrete de facto and de jure rejection and exclusion force continued unsettlement and are thus unceasing reasons behind the prolonged journey. Khalidi persuasively elucidates this part of Palestinian identity: The quintessential Palestinian experience, which illustrates some of the most basic issues raised by Palestinian identity takes place at a border, an airport, a checkpoint: in short, at any one of those modern barriers where identities are checked and verified. What happens to Palestinians at those crossing points brings home to them how much they share in common as a people. For it is at these borders and barriers that the six million Palestinians are singled out for ‘special treatment’, and are forcefully reminded of their identity: of who they are, and why they are different than others…. As a result, at each of these barriers which most others take for granted, every Palestinian is exposed to the possibility of harassment, exclusion and sometimes worse simply because of his or her identity. (R.Khalidi 1997:If.) Palestinian difference is created at such borders and crossing points. The very boundary of the ‘Other’ reinforces the articulation of Palestinian-ness. It is here that the peculiarity of not belonging to any one particular state becomes painfully clear. It is at the border and through the sharing of harassment and injustice that it becomes obvious what it means to be a Palestinian. It is thus the ‘wandering’, the denial and the exclusion which to the Palestinians represent their (unwanted) pilgrimage, described by Anderson (1991) as constitutive of the imagined community. It is this journey that is the common experience forming the basis of a shared identity. ‘Wherever he is, a Palestinian is homeless’ (quoted in R.Sayigh 1977a:21). Or, as a Palestinian woman living in Sweden said: In my dream, Jaffa is home, but in reality, I have no home. I belong to nowhere, and it is so difficult, not to have a place. (Fadwa, Göteborg, 26 February 2001)


Palestinian narratives are composed of myriad stories of what happens at different kinds of borders and crossings. Tawfiq Sayigh9 describes the trauma of lacking a valid passport, of being singled out as ‘special’ at international crossing points, of being questioned and suspected because of this simple fact alone: Edging closer, but without admission, it goes on and you never reach your aim. Your lacking a passport means statelessness, no entry. (Tawfiq Sayigh, 1923–70, ‘To Enter a Country’, translated by Adnan Haydar and Jeremy Reed; in Jayyusi 1992:286ff.) The journey is portrayed as endless. Since the Palestinians do not carry passports, and since the international system does not regard them as belonging anywhere in particular, they cannot belong—in a nutshell capturing the catch-22 of being a stateless refugee. Since you do not have a home you cannot have one, is the rationale. This condition of ‘passportlessness’ is described in myriad ways by Palestinians (cf. Farsoun with Zacharia 1997:159f.). The author Fawaz Turki10 describes an episode of striking familiarity to a great number of Palestinians. I get off the plane at Frankfurt. I have no visa. Only my stateless travel document. ‘You have no visa. You can’t enter the country,’ I am told by the immigration officer. ‘You are stateless; a visa is necessary’ Help me, man, ignore my little document of disgrace. You go back to Saudi Arabia, he says. Fuck you, I say. I don’t care where you send me. Send me to heaven. I have been to hell already. (Turki 1972:93f.) Turki’s story moves on: the official told him that he could go to England, where he had been visiting before. He could get a visa at the German embassy there and then come back. Turki flew to London and back without leaving the airport. He was not allowed entrance to Great Britain, since he was considered ‘of dubious nationality’. Back in Germany, he was put on a plane to Beirut (ibid.: 94). On another occasion, Turki, after several trips throughout the world, tried to go back to Beirut, where he grew up in the refugee camp Burj alBarajneh, but was denied entrance. The reason was that his Australian


passport, acquired during a long sojourn in Australia, said that he was born in Haifa, Israel. The Lebanese official at the airport asked: ‘Are you an Israeli,’ he says with horror. ‘No! I am a Palestinian.’ He points to my passport and tells me that it says Israel there. I tell him that although Australians believe I was born in Haifa, Israel, he and I know that I was born in Haifa, Palestine. (Turki 1972:163) It needs to be repeated that camp refugees are not the ones leading extravagant, travelling lives. However, for Palestinians in Jordan there are of course travels to the West Bank, for those who are allowed, but the procedure at the Allenby Bridge keeps many from making them. Palestinians are forced to travel, to move, not to be settled, but are at the same time restricted from travelling, from exiting and entering countries. This is how the trip to the West Bank across the Allenby Bridge was described by a Palestinian woman: You leave at four o’clock in the morning and then you are there at six or seven, and then you stand in line at the Jordanian border. Then you get your papers in order and the stamps and everything. You get on the bus and you think that you are on the first bus, but when you look ahead you see that there are five buses and you are sweating inside the bus. And you are number six. And you wait and it is very hot and you are hungry and thirsty and you sit on the bus and wait for your turn. After a few hours, it is your turn and you feel relieved, finally it is our turn. And the bus drives a little bit and then it stops and then the soldiers—the Israeli soldiers—arrive and they tell you to get off the bus. So we get off the bus and they get inside and search the bus. Then we show them our IDs. After that, we get on board the bus again and we go to the Israeli border. There it is another control. Then we walk into the building, clothes and bags go by themselves. You sit there and wait and then you get your stamp and your papers and you walk out and then you have to wait for the bags and the clothes. They check every item and you just want to walk away Sometimes you can’t even close the bag afterwards. Maybe you have to tie a rope or something. And then you wait for your papers again; they have to be controlled by the security. If you have letters or photos or gold, that also needs to be checked. Then you walk out from there and you think, finally. Then they check your body, you have to take off your clothes. One time I had to


change the diapers of Leyla in front of this police, they search the diapers also. Then you come home, well, at seven in the evening. A whole day Sometimes, if there are a lot of people, in the summer, you have to sleep there, at the border, two, or three days. (Intisar, Irbid, 6 June 2001) Concrete mechanisms of exclusion at borders and crossing points are equally felt by West Bank and Gaza Palestinians. When entering or departing from Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Palestinians are singled out for special treatment, meticulous security controls and questioning. Restrictions on mobility in the form of Israeli military checkpoints mean that life is hindered to such an extent that it is seen as a prison. The numerous checkpoints separating Jerusalem from the West Bank and the Eretz Checkpoint between Gaza and Israel are other border localities where Palestinians are reminded of the formal fragility of their identity. West Bank and Gaza Palestinians always nervously check that their IDs and their permissions are in order. Checkpoints as well as arbitrary controls on the street turn life into a Kafkaesque experience. Raja Shehadeh recalls his preparation for a daytrip: In the morning, I checked the most important item of all, my identity card—without it I could end up in jail—and set off. (Shehadeh 1982:20) One incident during the 1990s further illustrates the absurd tragedy of the condition of simultaneous enforced movement and restriction. As part of a political ploy in September 1995 Libya’s president, Mu’ammar alQaddafi, expelled Palestinians from Libya.11 The motive was to manifest what Qaddafi saw as the dysfunction of the Oslo agreement. The Arab states from which these Palestinians had once emigrated to Libya and for which they held travel documents refused to permit their entry. Israel refused them entry to the Gaza Strip. Thus the Palestinians were left on a bizarre journey between checkpoints. Many were stranded in no-man’s land on the Libyan-Egyptian border until Libya consented to their return. Others were left on ferryboats in the harbours of Cyprus. Syria eventually allowed many of those to enter (e.g. Shiblak 1995; Nasrallah 1997; Farsoun with Zacharia 1997:160). During the 1990s the Arab world became more closed to the Palestinians. What these examples illustrate, then (whether taken from poetry, real politics or individual memory), is that an essential way of experiencing Palestinian-ness is as a journey without end. There is no point of arrival,


except through returning to the homeland. There is no waiting home except for Palestine, which has been lost and is therefore not quite there any longer. Palestinian-ness is constituted through and in an endless— but not aimless—journey Life as prison or no life at all Border procedures are often situated within a discourse of life as ‘prison’. The journey is forced. Being on a ‘journey’, or the travelling condition of the Palestinians, is confined and restricted. ‘Prison’ is therefore a forceful metaphor signifying the plight of exile. For Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, the occupation restricts life to such an extent that the metaphor of the prison is often found to be the most appropriate symbol of how life is controlled, checked and coerced. Another meaning of the prison metaphor is found in the ways that authors residing in Israel have been described as ‘captive writers’, as Israel is depicted as a big jail. The land itself is imprisoned. Also, camp life is frequently equated with a jail experience since the camps were, at least initially, heavily confined and restricted. Being away from the homeland is equal to finding oneself in a prison. Another similar analogy is life as a ‘graveyard for the living’ (interview, Rania, Rusaifah camp, May 2001) or ‘no life at all’. One woman of Burj el-Shemali, a ‘special hardship case’, described that she had ‘no life at all’ and that she and her family were ‘forced to exist, not to live’. Of particular difficulty were the housing situation and the restrictions on building permits (Kamila, 15 August 2001). Maissoun, in Ein al-Hilweh, said that life is just ‘wait[ing] for our time to come’, i.e. for return, and that the ‘family just tries to survive, what can we do?’ Further: ‘When someone lives in his homeland, he will be content with life. Here, in exile, we are always depressed’ (Maissoun, Ein al-Hilweh camp, 13 August 2001). Missing home: estrangement, victimisation and suffering The term that the Palestinians have employed for their diaspora is ‘ghurba’, signifying estrangement from home and meaningful belonging. Loss, denial and injustice have produced a self-image partly constituted by suffering and vulnerability. One side of Palestinian self-identity is as the ‘victim’. Siddiq explains: ‘a passive victim of malicious circum stances he neither controls nor comprehends. To be a refugee is to be deprived not only of home and country but also of individuality and all attributes of


personal identity’ (Siddiq 1995:94). The ‘victim identity’— although continuously relevant (cf. Lindholm Schulz 1999)—was particularly manifest in the immediate aftermath of the nakba and therefore among the generation experiencing the exodus first hand. The feeling of immense injustice caused by the catastrophe occupies a central place in Palestinian narratives of selfhood. There has been a continuous disbelief that something like the nakba could really happen and that the world did not act more forcefully to restore justice. Julie Peteet (1991, 1995) reveals the anxieties of exile’s early years. Social relations until then had to a large extent been connected to village life. Being transformed from peasants to ‘refugees’ implied a feeling of a shattered identity Shamir’s field study in the 1970s discovered that what refugees lacked most in life was istiqrar, a sense of ‘stability, security, and peace of mind’ (Shamir 1980:148). In addition, as refugees the Palestinians were now subject to charity and international relief, further adding to a loss of self-confidence. Rosemary Sayigh’s fieldwork revealed the same kind of sorrow. Al-nakba represented an end to something, a finality of life as it had been unfolding until then. In describing their first years as refugees, camp Palestinians use metaphors like ‘death’, ‘paralysis’, ‘burial’, ‘non-existence’, ‘we lost our way’, ‘we didn’t know where to go’, ‘what to do’, ‘we were like sheep in a field’. Thirty years after the uprooting, the older generation still mourns. (R.Sayigh 1979:107) Shamir’s field study in the West Bank found similar results. The trauma of being deprived of land must also be situated in relation to the concept of honour, so important in structuring social status in Palestine and large parts of the Eastern Mediterranean world. The honour of the family is strongly connected to the land. A Palestinian/Arab proverb states: ‘He who has no land has no honour.’ Suffering became ‘a core element of identity, a mode of perceiving the world and of acting toward it’ (R.Sayigh 1998:49). The nakba meant the end to something, to a way of life, but it was also the birth of the Palestinian nation; it was a beginning of a story (R.Sayigh 1998). The suffering is dated to a particular time, the nakba, which represents the ‘birth’ of Palestinian misery. This departure, the abrupt breaking point in history, is recollected by Turki:


A breeze began to blow as we moved slowly along the coast road, heading to the Lebanese border—my mother and father, my two sisters, my brother and I. Behind us lay the city of Haifa, long the scene of bombing, sniper fire, ambushes, raids, and bitter fighting…. Before us lay the city of Sidon and indefinite exile. Around us the waters of the Mediterranean sparkled in the sun. Above us eternity moved on unconcerned, as if God in his heavens watched the agonies of men, as they walked on crutches and smiled. And our world had burst, like a bubble, a bubble that had engulfed us with its warmth. From then on I would know only crazy sorrow and watch the glazed eyes of my fellow Palestinians burdened by loss and devastated by pain. (Turki 1972:43f.) To leave the homeland—one’s source of security and belonging—is thus thought of as an end-station, as a final point. When one was actually leaving the homeland life was ‘ending’. Forced exile means an abrupt disruption between real, meaningful life and a condition of grief and waiting—the liminal condition (Hanafi 2001). In Palestinian exile, home is where you are not and where you cannot be. Home is somewhere else, from where you once came or where you originated, but where it is impossible to reach. The misery inherent in this condition is related to the significance of ‘home’ (cf. Chapter 1). In Lebanon as a refugee, Darwish continues, ‘you know for the first time what home is. It’s the thing that is lost, the awaited return’. (McKean Parmenter 1994:96) Life in liminality Exile means place-disorder, as home is out of reach and the exile is placed where home can never be restored. This disarray also denotes a temporal confusion, adding up to a limbo condition, a state of not really being in the world. Life in exile has to the Palestinian refugees implied a temporal situating of meaning in the past and future tenses. In the tradition of Van Gennep (1960) and Victor Turner (1969), Nels Johnson has described Palestinian society as a ‘liminal body’, as an ‘anti-structure’, ‘defining its presence in terms of its past and its future in terms of inversions of normality and with reference to what it has lost’ (Johnson 1982:65). Finding oneself as a community scattered and detached from the homeland means new negotiations of the meaning not only of ‘place’, but


of temporal constructs (cf. Babha 1990). To Palestinians in the diaspora, a process of temporal alienation has materialised; both from the past, from what used to be, and from the present, from the host society. Thus, the future must be described as a reversal of the present, which in turn is merely a transitionary period, a ‘rit de passage’. As Fawaz Turki has phrased it, ‘Our present is intolerable’ and ‘Only the future matters’ (Turki 1994:38). The present must be defined as temporary; it is too replete with suffering to be defined as normality. The Palestinians ‘are’ what they have lost and what they will become, not what they experience in the present. Time is thus structured in relation to the land. Fawaz Turki12 again illuminates how Palestinian identity is caught between these temporal and spatial constructs: With our memories of places and times we had known before, rational and good, floating in the space around us and within us, we existed not in the present tense, the tense of reality, but the future imperfect, when next year, next time, next speech, the wrongs will have been righted, the grievances removed, and our cause justified. We lay, as it were, supine under a tree; but, in a world where men will calmly use historical reality to suit their own issues, Godot, for whom we waited, never arrived. (Turki 1972:16) The Palestinian intellectual Hisham Sharabi, who lives in Washington, DC, says the following about the condition of not really living, but waiting: I left the country in 1949 but in reality I did not emigrate. Migration means uprooting and the start of a new life. But I never cut my roots from the homeland and I did not start a new life. My roots stayed implanted in the soil I was so far away from. Until today I am a stranger in this country in which I spent the most part of my life. Every morning in summer and fall I sit on the balcony overlooking our small garden and smell the perfume of the flowers my wife planted according to my wishes. Close my eyes and imagine that I am smelling the roses in Akka. And when I pick a leaf off the green thyme that my wife planted for me and roll it between my fingers I smell its perfume and I see myself in the mountains of Lebanon, at Suq al-Gharb and higher. And when my wife offers me the last grapes of the season I remember the taste of the golden grapes from Ramallah which they would bring to us upon our return


to the Friends School in the beginning of the fall. And in summer, at the seashore of Virginia, everything that surrounds me, the water of the sea, the sand of the beach, the distant horizon and the air full of the smell of the sea, all that is turned into images and sensations I remember from the seashores of Jaffa, Akka and Beirut. The reality I have been living here for the last forty years is not in my possession. I am like the traveler whose heart is full of longing since the minute he lost the coast of his country from his sight. And he lives a transitory life, his suitcases always packed, awaiting the hour of return. (Sharabi 1998a:26; translated by Juliane Hammer) The present is often portrayed as a condition of ‘waiting’, a condition that is not really lived, but a predicament that could only be endured through biding one’s time: ‘We only live on the hope that we will get our country back’ (Amira, Ein el-Hilweh, 13 August 2001). This position is defined by the sense of injustice. The wrongdoings can simply not be true, and therefore the injustice must be undone. The Palestinians persist by steadfastly waiting for the future to arrive, for return to be realised and for home to be re-established. Since the present has meant such violent societal transformations and such immense injustice, the future must mean that what was will become so once again. The violent destruction of the past is unacceptable. My grandfather died with his gaze fixed on a land imprisoned behind a fence. A land whose skin they had changed from wheat, sesame, maize, watermelons, and honeydews to tough apples. My grandfather died counting sunsets, seasons, and heartbeats on the fingers of his withered hands. He dropped like a fruit forbidden a branch to lean its age against. They destroyed his heart. He wearied of waiting here, in Damur. (Darwish 1995:88) Palestinian identity is therefore described as not yet really fulfilled, or as interrupted. Identity can only be fully expressed in the future, when the terrible present has been changed, when the Palestinians have achieved what others already have, i.e. a state, a passport, a place to call home, when waiting has delivered. The Palestinians are to endure, to go through this process of waiting, and be transformed in the process. In a way, the transformation has occurred already when in exile, as Palestinians have gone through a period of mourning to a sequence of struggling (see further


Chapter 5). A Fateh activist in the West Bank expressed this achievementoriented aspect of national identity. To be a Palestinian is To have a state, a land and a passport, because they stop the Palestinians everywhere. To have a country To have watan, homeland, to be able to go everywhere. And to be related to somewhere and not all the time being kicked out from everywhere. (Fateh activist, West Bank, 16 November 1994) Palestinian identity is thus strongly oriented towards the future (Boullata 1999:165). Despite this discursive rejection of the present, the current does contribute to both the suffering and the struggling of Palestinian identity On the one hand, identity is not yet, and cannot yet be, fulfilled. The loss leaves the Palestinians in a floating concept of identity. On the other hand, and despite the denial of the present, the construction of meaning built around loss as a shared experience takes place in the present and through the absence of land. The contemporary experience of continuous exile and the near impossibility of return has proven to be a stable and durable condition. It is not what was before al-nakba, but the nabka itself that signifies what the Palestinians have in common. It was not in the ‘rootedness’ and peasant past that Palestinians sensed a particular form of Palestinian-ness. Only when they were forced to leave did Palestinian-ness and Palestine acquire their profound contemporary meanings. It was thus not by staying put, but by being expelled to homelessness that Palestinian-ness was ultimately formed (cf. R.Sayigh 1977b:22f.; Peteet 1995). However, it needs to be underlined that a Palestinian identity was emerging in the 1910s in the form of peasant as well as elite resistance against Zionism and against emerging land alienation (R.Khalidi 1997). However, a national identity did not gain mass loyalty until later. One could thus say that Palestinian identity and society are, on the one hand, severely disrupted by the dispersal and the conflict and, on the other, constituted in that damage-causing loss—‘dispersion unites’ (R.Sayigh 1977b:23). Land of longing What has a man but his God in heaven above and his land on the earth below? (Palestinian peasant saying; quoted in Rubinstein 1995:17)


Usually a man lives in a certain place in the world, but for the Palestinian the place lives in the man. (Shalhat 1987; cited in Rubinstein 1991:7) Even if she or he is born in Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza or Burj elBarajneh in Lebanon, a Palestinian refugee is still from Acre, Haifa or Jaffa. Locality, the specific village of one’s parents, is still how one defines oneself in terms of origin. Knowing the origins of a person is to know the most important piece of information about someone (cf. Rubenberg 2001) apart from family connections. In exile, homeland takes on new and specific meanings in composing grounds for community, solidarity and in narrating identity. The remembered Palestine is a glorified, romanticised dream Palestine (see Abu el-Sa’ud 1994; Agha 1994). It is where home is situated, where the past occurred and where futures are to be realised. The land is still the old land despite pawned trees on the hillsides despite green clouds and fertilized plants and water sprinklers spinning so efficiently. On the startling road seized from the throat of new accounts the trees were smiling at me with Arab affection. In the land I felt an apology for my father’s wounds and on all the bridges, the shape of my Arab face echoed here in the winding rings of smoke. Everything is Arabic still, despite the change of language despite the huge trucks, and foreign tractors. Each poplar and the orange grove of my ancestors laughed to me, my God, with Arab affection. (Layla ‘Allush, ‘The Path of Affection’ , translated by Lena Jayyusi and Naomi Shihab Nye; in Jayyusi 1992:106f.) Remembrance and longing imply a fixation of the land; the homeland in the mind remains forever as it was.13 There is no change. The land is capable of resisting the transformation that it is superficially undergoing because of Israeli modernisation, and becomes an actor in itself. It is a subject of its own, which is ‘smiling’, and ‘singing’ ‘with affection’. Land has been bestowed with personal qualities, with emotions and a potential for action. Kanafani’s Land of the Sad Oranges (Kanafani 1978) talks about a land that is sad, a land in which the orange trees would die and cease to bear fruit when its native people had been forced to leave (Bardenstein


1999). The land and the landscape mourn the fact that its people have been dispersed. One aspect of this was conveyed by a Palestinian filmmaker, who said that while Israeli Jews call Palestine their homeland, to the Palestinians it is the land which owns the people and not the other way around (Seminar at the Göteborg Film Festival, January 2002). Furthermore, the exile’s relationship to the land is described in organic terms. The land is portrayed as ‘primordially’, essentially Arab, and, despite the forced expulsion, there is an almost enigmatic relationship between the evicted people and the land that has stayed within its geographical confines. This romantic style has its clear counterpart in official ideology and formal definitions of the nation, as evident in the following excerpt from the Palestinian Declaration of Independence of 1988: Palestine, the land of the three monotheistic faiths, is where the Palestinian Arab people was born, on which it grew, developed and excelled. The Palestinian people was never separated from or diminished in its integral bonds with Palestine. Thus the Palestinian Arab people ensured for itself an everlasting union between itself, its land and its history. Resolute through that history, the Palestinian Arab people forged its national identity, rising even to unimagined levels in its defence, as invasion, the design of others, and the appeal special to Palestine’s ancient and luminous place on that eminence where powers and civilisations are joined…. All this intervened thereby to deprive the people of its political independence. Yet the undying connection between Palestine and its people secured for the land its character, and for the people its national genius. (The Palestinian Declaration of Independence, Algiers, 15 November 1988; quoted in Lukacs 1992:411) The union between the land and the people is ‘ancient’ and ‘everlasting’. This essentialism has almost biological connotations, as if the people grew from the land. Expulsion has distorted this natural state of affairs. Quite contrary to the ways in which landscape is recollected, the Israeli conquest has resulted in change beyond recognition through the destruction of villages, the establishment of kibbutzim, the transformation of sites into artists’ centres or tourist places (cf. Slycomovics 1998). Israel’s and Zionism’s drive to create hegemony over the landscape has meant Judaisation in the form of naming, mapping and representation to the extent that the Palestinian part of the past is effectively erased. In order to assert Israeli dominance over the landscape, all symbols of the ‘other’s’


relation to the land have had to be replaced or destroyed. Raja Shehadeh recounts how Jaffa has been completely changed: directly after parking the car, I ran into a tourist group and heard the guide’s explanations. And I saw through his listeners’ eyes the ‘cute’ Israeli ‘reconstructions’ of Old Jaffa: the site of my romantic longings, plastered over into art galleries, discos, expensive restaurants, fancy shops. No tourist or Israeli my age could ever guess that thirty-five years ago this was the vibrant, flourishing Arab centre of Palestine. No trace of it is left; its people are scattered all over the world. (Shehadeh 1982:21) Jaffa used to be one of Palestine’s prime seaports, a centre of trade and travel, of landing missionaries and travellers. Since 1948 Jaffa has come under Tel Aviv municipality, and its importance in trade and as a gateway to the world is no more. Instead, ‘old Jaffa’, as it is called today is a Jewish artists’ centre, made attractive to tourists. In oral history, land is as present as it is in poetry and official discourse: I returned to my village after the ’67 war. A military base prevented us from getting close to it. I brought back some dirt and I let my kids step on the dirt so that they can be tied to the land. (Khaled; quoted in Lynd et al. 1994:33) The concrete soil, the earth, the dirt was imbued with meaning. To feel it would supposedly create connections also for the generation that had never set foot in Palestine and on the land. To feel and sense the land gave comfort. When Israel withdrew from south Lebanon, in May 2000, many Palestinians travelled to the zone in order to meet with relatives and penpals and to actually see the homeland. Some received gifts in the form of food, olives and olive oil from kin in the Galilee. Relatives found each other and kissed and hugged through the barbed wire. Those on the Lebanese side of the border collected dust from the other side of the fence. When Manar, living in Deheishe, visited the village of her pen-pal Muna, living in Shatila, in order to tell her something of what the village looked like, she gathered earth in a little plastic bag and sent it to Muna, in order for her to connect with the homeland (Masri 2001). Commemoration and the rhetoric of geography also express a highly emotional relationship to the land. Palestinian poetry often expresses a ‘love’ for the homeland, for particular villages and cities, for Jaffa,


Jerusalem and Haifa. In much of the poetry, ‘love’ is a frequent theme, such as in myriad hymns and elegies for the landscape, and as in the titles ‘A Lover from Palestine’, ‘Love Palestinian Style’, ‘Dearest Love’, and ‘I Love you More’. Amongst our people, we talk more about our love for our land than we talk about our hatred of our enemy. That is significant. That means our motive is love, even if we are not aware of it. (Salah Tama’ari; quoted in Lynd et al. 1994:108) In the Palestinian case, Anderson’s (1991) explanation of nationalism as a form of political self-love and narcissism comes forward as love of the land. Idealistic assessments of Palestine are also revealed in folk culture. One such example is a wall magazine produced by youth in Shatila camp, and published in al-Shaml Newsletter. Here, refugee youth describe Palestine as ‘very, very, very beautiful’, ‘full of fresh water’. There are ‘no alleys’ and ‘no garbage’. In Palestine ‘parents find work’ and ‘every child in the family has his own bedroom’; ‘parents don’t die’ and ‘don’t divorce’; ‘all parents are wealthy’ and ‘everybody is happy’ (al-Shaml Newsletter, no. 2, June 1999). Safety, cleanliness, order, beauty, health, wealth and personal happiness are therefore situated in Palestine, and Palestine alone. Picturing Palestine has become an ideology of the future; only in Palestine may the ideal society be constructed and personal happiness be realised. As one Palestinian woman in al-Baqa camp in Jordan phrased it: I know it through my parents’ stories, their memories. And then there is television, photographs, the news. I imagine a place where the weather is pleasant, where water to cultivate the earth is plentiful. I think that everything you need, everything you want, you can find it there. (Izdihar; quoted in Latte Abdallah 1995:65) The feminisation of land He fell down on his land, excitedly taking in the smell of its moist soil, He clung to its trees and embraced its stones, Rolling his cheeks and mouth in its wide bosom


Rolling his cheeks and mouth in its wide bosom He threw onto it all the weight of years of pain. (‘Nada’ al-ard’, in Fadwa Tuqan, ‘Diwan Fadwa Tuqan’; McKean Parmenter 1994:44) In the text above, the land, Palestine, is embraced, touched, kissed. Palestine becomes a beloved woman (cf. Slycomovics 1998:178). In several poems Palestine is a ‘she’. Mahmoud Darwish exclaims to Palestine: ‘You are my virgin garden’ (Mahmoud Darwish, ‘A Lover from Palestine’, in Elmessiri 1982:125). Such feminisation of land is frequent in land discourses.14 Palestine is represented either as the beloved woman (wife, mistress) or the comforting, consoling mother, thus representing passion and romance as well as safety and protection. To return to Palestine is either to be reunited with a missed lover or to be embraced by a mother’s arms. The motherland is represented as the nurturer, the provider of food and shelter. The land is the mother from whom the child ‘suckles the milk of the oranges’ (Rashid Husayn, ‘Jaffa’, in Elmessiri 1982:51). In ‘Awaiting the Return’, Mahmoud Darwish writes: ‘Wait for us Mother, at the door; we will return.’ And he continues: What have you cooked for us, Mother, for we will return? They have looted the oil jars, Mother, and the flour sacks. So bring us grain from the fields! Bring in greens, We are hungry (Mahmoud Darwish, ‘Awaiting the Return’, in Elmessiri 1982:157) The land therefore has all those capabilities of providing harmony, safety, shelter, food and consolation as well as passion and potential seduction: Is it true that you were young, And that your wavy hips Caused seduction among young men? It is true that you presided over high society And that fashion magazines Devoted their numbers to your dresses? I do not believe. It is true that you turned your husband into a leader and he led


And built you hanging gardens, O my country? (Tawfiq Sayigh, ‘A National Hymn’, in Elmessiri 1982:73) Olive trees and rootedness As in many nationalist discourses, connections between land and the people are described using metaphors relating to what grows and to what the land gives. In 1948 the bulk of the Palestinian population were peasants, and a peasant-based culture is still nurtured as an essence of Palestinian experience (Swedenburg 1990, 1991). The symbolic use of the peasant, the fellah, as an icon of the Palestinian past is a counter-argument to Zionism and its presentation of Palestine as a ‘land without people for a people without a land’. Therefore, the peasant is a potent nationalist symbol since he/she signifies both struggle, as in the Great Revolt of 1936– 9, and deep historical attachment to the land (Swedenburg 1991:168; 1995). The fragrance of orange blossom, the jasmine, the green fields, the flowers, the thyme, the soft hills and valleys are frequent metaphors. Refugees from 1948 often begin their narratives by telling of what used to be cultivated in the past. One refugee family in Burj el-Shemali, for example, began their description of life before the exodus by telling how they used to grow yellow and white corn, wheat, cereals, sesame, big beans, white beans, lentils. There were plenty of vegetables and fruits, apricots, peach trees, plums, grapes, cherries (quite rare in the region), really big and sweet watermelons and honeydew melons. Also, children assisted in telling the story as second-generation refugees have made an effort to learn stories of their parents’ house and village in detail. Based on oral storytelling, they are often able, with much pride, to give detailed images (cf. Farah 1999:25). A particular place is held by the olive tree. In Palestinian nationalist discourse, the olive tree is particularly meaningful, symbolising both ‘roots’ and identity and serving core functions of production (cf. Bardenstein 1999). The olive tree has historically been used to produce olive oil for cooking, for lighting before kerosene and for the production of soap. Thus, the olive tree has been a basic ingredient of subsistence. In addition, olive trees may become very old and need very little to grow, further giving meaning to the discourse of a Palestinian ancient (and unflinching) connection to the land.


Our Palestine, green land of ours; Its flowers as if embroidered on women’s gowns; ... Among the olive trees of our valleys, and in the ripeness of the fields We wait for the promise of July And the joyous dance amidst the harvest O land of ours where our childhood passed Like dreams in the shade of the orange grove, Among the almond trees in the valleys. (Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, ‘In the Deserts of Exile’, in Elmessiri 1982:69–71) Here, the olive tree is recollected, as are the harvest and the orange groves. The fields are ripe and awaiting the promised July. The flowers are like embroidery on women’s dresses. The theme of the tree that grows and cannot be uprooted, of the seed to be replanted and of the beauty of blossoming trees is endlessly repeated in Palestinian diaspora poetry. Suheir Hammad’s account is similar; Palestine is the ‘land of figs and olive trees’: the land his people had come from land of figs and olive trees what should’ve been his phalasteen it was close god it was so close and forbidden to him him the son of the land his love for phalasteen so fierce he could’ve swam there so light with such heavy longing he could’ve flown there swore he could smell the ripe olives. (Suheir Hammad 1996b:3, dedication) The landscape of Palestine is thus a landscape which is intensely sensed and experienced. It is beheld, smelt and felt, taken in with all senses. The landscape is colourful and filled with scents and colours from olives and oranges, apricots and almonds. It is a promised land. Although more or less the same metaphors recur in different textual styles, it is also important to emphasise that what is actually remembered is


often local settings, homes, villages, cities. This individual longing has had political ramifications. To the PLO, it was sometimes problematic that what refugees were missing was not always Palestine, but their house and neighbourhood in Jaffa, Haifa, Lydda, Ramle: In fact, the people of Tal Zataar were prey to a narrow regionalism. Coming from the part of Palestine that became Israel in 1948, they considered themselves foreigners in the West Bank! (Iyad 1978:142) This PLO position has put quite heavy pressure on individual refugees. In Israeli discourse, too, Palestinian ‘localism’ has been emphasised. The argument that Palestinians miss their homes more than Palestine is, however, not a politically neutral or uncomplicated statement. As Benvenisti rightfully explains, there is an assumption here that the Palestinians are incapable of feeling a sense of metaphysical belonging to the landscape and of calling it the ‘homeland’—a feeling that supposedly beats only in the hearts of ‘modern people’. It follows, then, that the Arab exodus is not such a great tragedy. (Benvenisti 2000:246) Loyalty towards both locality and country is, however, not necessarily a contradiction. The olive tree has served as the ultimate symbol of rootedness and sumud, steadfastness, representing the Palestinian political strategy pursued from 1967 onwards in the West Bank and Gaza. Sumud was a strategy closely related to the land and agriculture, as well as indigenousness. The ideal image of the Palestinian was the peasant who stayed put on his land and refused to leave. On the surface, it was a more passive strategy than that of the fedayeen and the exile (see further Chapter 5), a strategy which was further nurtured after the devastating evacuation of Beirut. It also constituted an important subtext to the Palestinian as the fighter/feday, in symbolising continuity and connections with the land, with peasantry and a rural life. This strategy indicated that uprootedness was not absolute, that the Palestinians were still ‘there’, on the land.15 ‘The Palestinian, secure in the knowledge of his rootedness, simply takes his time’ (Elmessiri 1982:15). Another symbol of Palestinian steadfastness is the cactus. Cactuses were traditionally used as fences between properties. Since cactuses cannot be uprooted, their presence in the landscape of Israel tells


stories of destroyed Palestinian villages (Bardenstein 1998). The colloquial word for cactus and the Arabic word for patience are the same (‘sabr’).16 Here we shall stay Like a brick wall upon your breast And in your throat Like a splinter of glass, like spiky cactus And in your eyes A chaos of fire… Here we shall stay. Do your worst. We guard the shade. Of olive and fig. (Tawfiq Zayyad, 1932–94, ‘Here We Shall Stay’, trans. by Sharif Elmusa and Jack Collom; in Jayyusi 1992:327f.) Political strategies and modes of resistance have differed between outside and inside and have been guided by these two potential ways of relating to the homeland: longing or staying. Sumud as a political strategy, as a prerequisite for fighting, was described thus by Arafat in the mid-1980s: The most important element in the Palestinian program is holding on to the land. Holding on to the land and not warfare alone. Warfare comes at a different level. If you only fight— that is a tragedy. If you fight and emigrate—that is a tragedy. The basis is that you hold on and fight. The important thing is that you hold on to the land and afterward—combat. (Yasser Arafat, in al-Fikr (Paris), June 1985; quoted in Mishal and Aharoni 1994:13) Sumud represents staying put despite continuous assault. It is thus not merely a reflection of passively enduring, but an act of unyielding resistance and defiance (Peteet 1991:183). Sumud could also characterise the refugee experience as such. Refugees often describe their ability both to resist and to endure camp life as sumud, In particular, holding out against assaults directed against the camps of Tel al-Zatar (1976), Sabra and Shatila (1982) and the camp war against Shatila in the mid-1980s is often described as sumud (cf. R.Sayigh 1994a). A West Bank sumud perspective in the portrayal of the olive tree is provided by Raja Shehadeh:


Sometimes, when I am walking in the hills…unselfconsciously enjoying the touch of the hard land under my feet, the smell of thyme and the hills and trees around me, I find myself looking at an olive tree, and as I am looking at it, it transforms itself before my eyes into a symbol of the samidin, of our struggle, of our loss. And at that very moment I am robbed of the tree; instead there is a hollow space into which anger and pain flow. (Shehadeh l982:87) Shehadeh’s experience of the olive tree is thus direct and concrete. At the same time, the symbolic (and political) dimensions of this land discourse are brought forward. Looking at the olive tree, it becomes a symbol of Palestinian identity, ‘of our struggle, of our loss’. Sensing that symbolism, Shehadeh is deprived of the tree, just as the Palestinians are deprived of their identity The olive tree becomes part of the conflict and a symbol of identity, ‘a hollow space into which anger and pain flow’. The significance of this kind of land discourse is particularly evident when seen against the backdrop of Israeli political strategies to acquire land. Occupation politics Apart from confiscation of land and the establishment of settlements, the Israeli occupation power has used a number of mechanisms that have further deprived Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza of both place and home. One ingredient in the occupation policy and the struggle over land has been the uprooting of olive trees. The symbolism of the uprooting of trees cannot be overstated. Other elements of this policy have been the sealing or demolition of homes as a security measure, meaning that the safety of the home, the house, the family could never be certain. There was always the possibility of nightly intruders, of trees being uprooted, of houses being demolished and of family members being deported or imprisoned. Between 1967 and the late 1990s over 6,000 houses were demolished in the West Bank and Gaza and 2,500 in East Jerusalem (LAW 2000).17 The force of this policy is thus much greater than the immediate human rights violations or individual suffering. Such policies also manifest a mighty discourse claiming that ‘you might be here, but don’t be so certain. We have the power to uproot you’. Israeli occupation policies have also strictly regulated and obstructed the development of Palestinian agriculture, inventing a range of different techniques in the land struggle. The policy of destroying houses as a security measure has a historical resonance, and was actually initiated by the British Mandatory authorities.


It is easy to imagine the terrible significance of the demolition of a man’s house and his eviction from it: along with the house, his whole world was destroyed. (Benvenisti 2000:90) Another example of the politics of trees is how Israel has planted cypress trees among original olive and fruit trees outside and around unrecognised villages. Since cypresses are fast growing they soon suffocated shorter trees, and hid the villages and their inhabitants from the outer world (‘Ayn Hawd and the “Unrecognized Villages”’ 2001:45). Israeli forestation projects on a massive scale are one ingredient in the strategy to erase traces of Palestinian origin and memory (Bardenstein 1998:8). Land lost, time lost The landscape/homeland does not only signify place/space, but also temporal constructs and a time that has been lost: Sons of the fatherland! Do you remember our homes in Safed? Do you remember its dreamy days, Its majestic Jarmaq, The morning in the heights of Galilee, The happiness of the days at Dair a-Asad? (Ahmed Fahmi; quoted in Tibawi 1963:511) There has also been a bereavement of childhood, happiness, innocence, of dreamy days and of time.18 Jabra says, ‘O land of ours where our childhood passed.’19 Homeland represents Paradise Lost20 and a time that was constituted by rural life, rural production, community solidarity and stability. At least that is how that life is remembered. In oral histories, too, the land is connected to a particular time—a time that represented richness in the sense that one could live from the land, and a time that represented happiness: The pre-1948 history that my grandfather gave me was not a history of tragedy. It was a history of how well we were doing in the land, how much we loved our land. He would talk about how he had horses that worked the land…. But he would always rather stay in his own house, even if it was in a refugee camp. While he was living in the refugee camp, he spoke


constantly of how life was before, and he died in his memories of what was going on before his Dahaisha time. (Sarona, in Lynd et al. 1994:81) Palestinian refugees frequently remember their past as ‘We lived in Paradise’ (R.Sayigh 1979:10). One Palestinian living in Sweden recalls how his mother used to tell him stories about her life in Tiberias as if nothing had changed. To her, the time that had passed was ‘like time that had been cut off. She still imagines that the horses are left and that the food that they gave them was enough for this time’ (interview, 24 January 2001). The specific house and home in a surrounding village remains one of the most important focal points in remembering. The village is remembered in romantic terms. Poverty, conflict, social asymmetry are all aspects that are concealed in individual life stories (cf. R.Sayigh 1979; Ghabra 1987; Rubinstein 1991; McKean Parmenter 1994; Slycomovics 1998). The homeland lost represents the concrete loss of homes and houses, and the specific house manifests the Palestinian linkage with an ordinary, everyday life. Simplicity is a defining concept: It was a rather simple house, that had a nice little garden where they had coffee and the children played. They had geese and ducks, and hens, and pigeons. Their life was as simple as could be. (Muhammad, 11 May 2001) Refugees tell of how their ‘house was beautiful’, how they had everything they needed, that they were ‘content and happy’, that ‘life was beautiful’. The importance of this lies in the weight of domestic life and the centrality of the family in Palestinian peasant culture (R.Sayigh 1979). The actual home and the house are organising focal points in structuring life. What is yearned for is the routine, stable, everyday life. Such commemoration is, of course, in a way ‘fictitious’ (Peteet 1991: 78) in ‘forgetting’ ordeals and plights. Representations of life before 1948 are, for one thing, almost entirely focused on peasant and village life. Urban life, class and economic tensions are erased and kept out of the stories. At the same time, Rosemary Sayigh (1979) reveals the solidarity, sociability and stability that did exist in peasant Palestine, which make the unproblematised representations of the past understandable. Swedenburg (1991:172) notes that recasting the past as wonderful is not simply a selective process of remembering, but includes a comparison with the present, with life as it evolves now, i.e. now life is unbearable. In comparison with today, life was really wonderful. Thus, what is


remembered is not ‘place’ itself, but the whole life that that place represents. Remembering life before 1948 as harmonious also serves a function in maintaining the discourse of return. Since the possibility of owning land has been so restricted in exile as well as in the West Bank/ Gaza and in Israel (cf. Chapter 3), the kind of life led in Palestine cannot possibly be reconstituted in exile, adding substance to the nostalgia of homeland memories. The construction of history implies remembering a morally superior social order, a sense of purity and perfection. The linkage between time and place is eloquently expressed by Mureed Barghouti: My relationship to place is, in fact, a relationship to time. I live in islands of time. Some of which I already have lost; others I possess for a moment, then lose them, because I am always placeless. The monastery spring is not a place, it is a period of time. Specifically it is the time when I was a child and my Uncle Ibrahim was a farmer and fisherman, whose traps enticed birds from four mountains…. The places we yearn for are really periods of time. (Barghouti 1998a:64) When place is lost, time is lost. One way in which this conflation of time and place emerges is the way in which Palestinians might answer ‘I am from 1948’ to the question ‘Where are you from?’ The part of Palestine that became Israel in 1948 is simply called ‘1948’, implying that one could be from a time. So ‘1967’ is then the West Bank and Gaza. Identification often occurs along these lines: the people from 1948 as opposed to the people from 1967. To many refugees, the ‘1967 areas’ are not even to be seen as Palestine, but Palestine equals ‘1948’, i.e. present Israel. Rami, who was born and grew up in Nuseirat camp in the Gaza Strip, said: It’s important to note that although we lived near Gaza in an area considered Palestinian, we never felt that where we lived was Palestine. Palestine for us was the occupied 1948 land. So when we traveled between Gaza and the West Bank, it was then when I felt I was in Palestine, when I passed through the beautiful mountains and the green fields away from the refugee camp. (Rami, e-mail interview, May 1998) For those who were born and grew up in exile, their position vis-à-vis identity is potentially even more troublesome. Growing up in refugee camps means that one is not in possession of the time that is lost. Mahmoud talked about his lack of a background:


I have nothing. I talk about Lebanon before and Sweden after. But the whole base is gone. My mother talks about something else. She talks about picking oranges, going in a horse cartridge. My father was a Bedouin. His sheep, his cows, his milk and land. I haven’t got that. (Mahmoud, 24 January 2001) Having left something means that you know what you miss. To Mahmoud and many others, there is not only a loss, but a lack of something. The basis of identity is not only lost, but never existed, and the dream of ‘returning’ represents a search for identity as much as for a place. Exile as deserts and placeless places Palestine is thus remembered and represented as a place of blossom, fragrance and colour. It is experienced in highly aesthetic terms: the landscape is sensed with joy, with passion and with love. Exile provides a stark contrast to this way of representing place. The place of exile, of ghurba, is often described as a desert—an unfriendly, hostile, dry, dangerous, empty, naked, rough, and endless landscape (Jayyusi 1992; McKean Parmenter 1994). As Toubbeh explains: ‘I have not yet met a Palestinian who has not been banished from an oasis to live in a desert’ (Toubbeh 1998:102). Hebdige points out the power of the metaphor of the desert; the desert represents ‘the place at the end of the world where all meanings and values blow away; the place without landmarks that can never be mapped; the place where nothing grows and nobody stays put’ (Hebdige 1993:275; cf. Lichtenberg-Ettinger 1994:54). Thus, the desert is a place of death, not of life. It is not possible to live there, and yet it is the space where Palestinian exile is situated. The desert is a place without meaning. Below is an illustration of how the desert as a metaphor emerges in Palestinian poetry: Remember us now wandering Among the thorns of the desert, Wandering in rocky mountains. … Our land is an emerald, But in the deserts of exile, Spring after spring,


Only the dust hisses in our face. (Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, ‘In the Deserts of Exile’, translated in Khouri and Algar 1974:225–9) Our land, Palestine, is an ‘emerald’, a jewel, but in exile there is only dust. In Ghassan Kanafani’s21 Men in the Sun (1978), the desert is a powerful metaphor. The story is about three Palestinian men who are on their way to Kuwait, desperately searching for a possibility of making a better life for themselves and their families.22 Barred from entry, they met with unscrupulous smugglers of human beings. In the end they decided to travel with a Palestinian who drove a truck between Baghdad and Kuwait. When passing border crossings, the migrants were to hide in the water tank at the top of the vehicle. During the first crossing, the men managed the unforgiving heat during the few minutes it took to pass. When they were entering Kuwait the driver was stuck in a discussion with one of the officials at the border. He was considerably delayed and when he arrived at a point where he could open the tank he found the three men dead, having suffocated, imprisoned as they were in the tank under the merciless sun. The story reveals the vulnerability of the Palestinians ‘on the move’—they are easy prey to greedy interests.23 The desert is the symbol of this vulnerability In the desert, what Palestinians meet is death: Desert, like gendarmes, like the Aliens Department, like work permits, were entities that had an element of terror to them that was to become your lot because you had nowhere else to go. (Turki 1974:11) Another way of portraying exile as space is as simply empty. Turki, whose writings are accounts of myriad travels, signifies the emptiness of place/ space in exile: that all the countries I had visited had been placeless places; that I wanted to escape the crazed condition of my history and my situation; so I travelled to Hind and to Sind, and I lived many lives except my own. (Turki 1977:74) Exile can in this sense be labelled ‘existential outsidedness’ implying a ‘sense of the unreality of the world, and of not belonging’ (Relph 1976: 51). In the kind of exile discourse discussed above, ‘home’ is so important


that being away from home equals not being in the world at all. Exile existence is in this way an unreal or a surreal condition. If you do not belong, who are you? The camp: site of marginality and resistance ‘The camp is our only country’, said a Palestinian refugee woman in Lebanon in an interview conducted by Rosemary Sayigh (R.Sayigh 1994a: 278). Although meaningless, placeless, desert-like, unfriendly, chaotic and dead, exile has also implied gatherings in spatial settings that have been capable of providing meaning:24 Tent # 50, on the left, is my new world, Shared with me by my memories; Memories as verdant as the eyes of spring, Memories like the eyes of a woman weeping, And memories of the color of milk and love! (Rashid Husayn, ‘Tent #50 (Song of a Refugee)’, in Aruri and Gareeb 1970:11) The refugee camp is a specific kind of space, symbolising the condition of ghourba. It is singled out, bounded—a site separated from surrounding localities.25 Sometimes these aspects of camp life are equated with living in a prison. The camp is the ultimate symbol of being different, of not belonging in the new place. Its inhabitants are alienated and marginalised, shut out, not only from the home ground and from entry to a number of places in the world, but from host societies. For the authorities the boundedness of the camps made them easy to control (R.Sayigh 1979), and camps were easy prey to violent onslaughts, especially after the evacuation of the PLO from Beirut. Host societies or ‘local residents’ often single out the camps as a peculiar and particular form of entity, as is evident in the fact that the Lebanese call refugee camps ‘zoos’ (ibid.: 126; Peteet 1995:17). Although refugee camps bring with them the connotation of barefoot children playing in an open sewer, tin shelters and crowding, some of the camps today resemble towns or cities more than temporary shelter. The Yarmouk camp in Syria, for example, with its 120,000 residents, is reminiscent of a city in itself (cf. al-Mawad 1999). For these reasons—i.e. the boundedness of the camps and outside labelling, challenges and threats—the camps have also been capable of providing a community of security, shelter and strength (R.Sayigh 1977b, 1979; Peteet 1995; Farah 1997, 1999). They have served as places that


foster a common identity, again illustrating the extent to which identity is formed in relation to ‘others’. The camps are places where refugee Palestinians live and share an experience. Thus ‘the refugee camp has become a living symbol of struggle. It is not a homogeneous space, alien and meaningless like the desert and the city’ (McKean Parmenter 1994: 66), since it is populated with other Palestinians. Therefore, the camp is a place where meaning can be reconstituted; it is a substitute ‘home’, the producer of authentic Palestinian-ness (Farah 1997:282). If I was not a Palestinian when I left Haifa as a child, I am one now. Living in Beirut as a stateless person for most of my growing up years, many of them in a refugee camp, I did not feel I was living among my ‘Arab brothers’. I did not feel I was an Arab, a Lebanese or, as some wretchedly pious writers claimed, a ‘southern Syrian’. I was a Palestinian. And that meant I was an outsider, an alien, a refugee, burden. To be that, for us, for my generation, meant to look inward, to draw closer, to be part of a minority that has its own way of doing and seeing and feeling and reacting. (Turki 1972:8) The camp signifies that its inhabitants are different, that they are not like host populations, which in turn implies an inward-looking gathering and search for community. Fawaz Turki also voices the ways in which solidarity has been built among the camp population. Camp residents were brought together and made aware of what they had in common. The loss and the suffering implied a close-knit affinity and ties of solidarity. Class aspects also influenced identity-construction, in the sense that it was the poorest who lived camp lives. Camps were turned into bastions of resistance and sources of pride. One young man in Ein al-Hilweh said that he would always hope to return to Palestine, but that he had to try to make something out of the life he had, trying to enjoy ‘big and small things in life, friends, good talking, coffee and argileh’. He was proud of the close-knit relations between people, the care of and connection with others that existed in Ein al-Hilweh (Hassan, Ein al-Hilweh, 13 August 2001). In the camps, ‘home’ could be partly recreated in the ways daily life was organised; by naming clinics, streets and neighbourhoods after places in Palestine; and by reconstituting village, clan and family ties. Substitute Palestinian sites were created and a ‘home’ of some sort was constructed. In refugee camps, residents of particular villages and towns often settled in the same areas of the camp (R. Sayigh 1979; Bisharat 1994). Camp


residents viewed the world outside the camp as dangerous. The camp community was closely knit and characterised by a large degree of social control, meaning that there was a sense of security (Peteet 1991:79). In Simon Shamir’s study from the 1970s, camp dwellers tell that they ‘want to live among refugees’ (Shamir 1980:152). Through this (re-)crafting of self, place and time in the camps, struggle and resistance were asserted and made possible. The ultimate example of the camp as a site of resistance was the entrance of the fedayeen (see the Chapter 5). The camps also symbolised the rights of the Palestinians and their continued connections to Palestine and no other place. Through living in camps it was possible to voice political claims (cf. al-Mawad 1999). The Palestinians were not integrated; they were stateless and continued to be homeless, which underlined their claims for rights: We were refugees. That was all. They were supposed to be magic words to explain the unexplainable. We were learning, feeling what the words meant. We were aliens. Pariahs. Untouchables. We were apart. But deep in our psyches, deep in our consciousness, we wanted to remain apart and hold on dearly, aggressively, to what we had left. We were not surrendering those intangibles that made us relate to our fellow Palestinians wherever they may have been, and bespoke the dimension of our problem. We held on, standing against a wall, imprisoned within the confines of our frustrations. (Turki 1972:56f.) The politics of this argument will be explored further in Chapter 5. However, the PLO political project measured up to the idea that Palestinian identity and political goals were embedded in refugeeship and camp life. A distinct Palestinian identity would be lost should that status be changed (cf. Johnson 1982). Thus, there was a certain clinging to camp life and a refusal of integration that served a functional purpose of underpinning Palestinian political demands. These things also provided a base for identity. Attempts by UNRWA in both Jordan and Lebanon to improve living conditions in the camps were often seen initially as attempts at resettlement or integration—tawteen. One telling example is how camp residents uprooted trees planted by UNRWA in order to turn the camps into more habitable sites (Weighill 1997:307). As trees represent rootedness, the symbolism of such attempts was quickly realised by camp residents:


The UNRWA begin to plant trees along the dirt track. They begin to rebuild some of the mud houses. They begin to remove the tents. They begin to beautify the camp. That’s what they say they are doing, making the place more habitable…. We don’t want the sons of dogs to make this place more habitable, they say to each other. We want to Return. What they are doing is to make our stay here more permanent. (Turki 1974:8) Similarly, UNRWA’s policy in Jordan in the 1950s to build huts rather than tents—supported by the Jordanian government—was vehemently opposed by camp residents, who saw the strategy as an attempt at resettlement. Another significant indication of the construction of meaning involved in camp life is how the houses were called shelter (malja’) rather than home (beit) (Bisharat 1994:172). In time, however, the camps gradually turned into ‘a temporary form of resettlement’ (Plascov 1981:67), as camp dwellers rebuilt and extended their shacks. Although they still opposed resettlement schemes and integration, most refugees experienced an immediate urge to improve their living conditions. Ideology and real-life concerns clashed. Ten years after the exodus, camps in Jordan had become a sort of village. ‘In 1959 refugees even began planting trees’ (ibid.). In addition, although they refused permanent absorption, an increasing number of refugees in Jordan settled outside the camps. This tendency has been reinforced by time (Tamari 1996; al-Husseini 2000:60). Refugees no longer saw a direct connection between the improvement of living conditions and their political rights of return. In Lebanon, on the other hand, camp residents have been restricted from building new houses and extending old ones as well as from moving outside the camps. More stable buildings were established in the camps only after the arrival of the resistance movement from 1969 and onwards. The political view held by the PLO that improved living conditions in the camps would lead to absorption and the gradual oblivion of the historical rights of the refugees has been countered by actual practices. However, the issue of permanent settlement is still highly sensitive, as evidenced by reactions to Jordanian plans to renovate camps, which met strong resistance from camp residents (al-Shaml Newsletter 1996, no. 3, June). The loss, dispersal and perils that are related to the detachment from territory and homeland have incited a particular meaning in being ‘Palestinian’, i.e. to feel oneself a victim and to foster a collective identity which centres around suffering and agony It is exactly this loss, however,


which has required resistance, struggle and assertion to recapture the homeland lost. Both these structuring poles of Palestinian-ness (cf. Lindholm Schulz 1999) thus refer to the ‘homeland’ and geopolitics of Palestine. Second, the diasporic condition itself, i.e. living in new and (often) non-welcoming surroundings, has implied stigmatisation, discrimination, exclusion and isolation from host societies. Exclusion is thus a continuous process. At the same time, the meaning of being a ‘refugee’ has also delivered a specific, distinct, particular and exclusive Palestinian identity in relation to host communities. In the words of James Clifford: This constitutive suffering coexists with the skills of survival: strength in adaptive distinction, discrepant cosmopolitanism, and stubborn visions of renewal. Diaspora consciousness lives loss and hope as a defining tension. (Clifford 1994:31)

5 RESISTANCE AND RETURN The politics of homeland

Between memory and a suitcase, there is no other solution but struggle. (Mahmoud Darwish)1 Despite their vulnerability, Palestinians (also) describe themselves as those who resist and fight, those who will never give up. In the notion of ‘struggle’, there is a great deal of pride and self-acclaimed strength. Struggle is the one component capable of challenging the Israelis as well as the general degrading situation of being refugees. Those concepts appear paradoxical, and so they are in a way, trapping Palestinian politics in a mystification and romanticisation of a victimised self. In another way, however, those basic notions function in an interacting process, reinforcing a common basis for politics and action. Loss and poverty pave the way for a particular form of strength. In order to restore their rights, there has been no option for the Palestinians but to struggle. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s guerrilla groups were formed that launched attacks against Israel. The actual ‘resistance’ was formed in the late 1960s, i.e. two decades after the nakba, The foundation of the PLO in 1964 was the result of the ambitions of Egyptian President Jamal Abdel Nasser and his attempts to control the Palestine question. The establishment of the PLO also responded to the grievances of the Palestinian population. At this time, the main ideological current in the Arab world, Arab nationalism or pan-Arabism, was also the prime focus of Palestinian ideological commitment. The question of Palestine was a joint task uniting the Arab world. PLO politics has since played a crucial role in regional conflict as well as in international politics. After 1967, the setback, the defeat of Arab armies and the decline of Arabism as ideology and worldview, the PLO adopted a new role and

118 THE POLITICS OF HOMELAND

subsequently became the heart of a mass-based Palestinian nationalism. The change in outlook of the PLO was partly the result of the emer gence of al-Fateh,2 which focused on the liberation of Palestine over the unity of the Arab world. Fateh was founded in the late 1950s by young refugee Palestinians from Gaza who had studied in Cairo. The main founding fathers and key future figures were Yasser Arafat, Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) and Hani and Khalid al-Hasan.3 Struggle as ideology It was therefore yet another human and political disaster that led to the embodiment of ‘struggle’ as the prime political principle and a main ingredient in Palestinian nation-building (cf. Y.Sayigh 1997). As Sayigh has put it: ‘The experience of al-nakba made for a distinct Palestinianness, but not necessarily for Palestinianism’ (ibid.: 666). For Palestinian nationalism to truly gain a mass following4 another ‘event’ was required. If nakba can be seen as constitutive of Palestinian national identity, then the setback was the major catalyst behind Palestinian nationalist ideology. The launching of the armed struggle is often dated at 1 January 1965, the date when Fateh commenced military attacks against Israel. This is marked as the ‘birthday’ of the revolution. In its ‘Communiqué No. 1’, Fateh stated that ‘the armed revolution is the way to Return and to Liberty…and that the Palestinian people remains in the field…has not died and will not die’ (Cobban 1984:33). Fateh drew inspiration from revolutionary experiences in Vietnam, Algeria and Cuba, and was inspired by the writings of Franz Fanon (1968) and ideas on the cleansing effect of violence (Y. Sayigh 1997:91). Despite proud declarations of the scale and scope of military operations, the attacks were initially disastrous in military terms (ibid.: 119). The goal of the PLO and its constitutive parts, the factions, was ultimately to liberate Palestine in order to be able to return. Article 9. Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine and is therefore a strategy and not tactics. The Palestinian Arab people affirms its absolute resolution and abiding determination to pursue the armed struggle and to march forward towards the armed popular revolution, to liberate its homeland and return to it [to maintain] its right to a natural life in it, and to exercise its right of selfdetermination in it and sovereignty over it. (The Palestinian National Covenant 1968; quoted in Lukacs 1992: 292)

THE POLITICS OF HOMELAND 119

As a counterbalance to the disasters befalling the Palestinians and to their ordeal and agonies, the meaning of Palestinian identity was now (also) sculpted through the influence of the feday ideology. In the aftermath of the war, al-Fateh, headed by Yasser Arafat, promoted a ‘popular war of liberation’ in the occupied territories and sought, unsuccessfully, to promote military activities from within the West Bank (Cobban 1984: 37; Y.Sayigh 1997:161ff.). Fruitful mobilisation was, rather, to occur on the ‘outside’. In 1968, with the battle for the Jordanian village Karameh (karameh is also Arabic for ‘dignity’), when Palestinian fedayeen challenged the Israeli army, Palestinian guerrillas became the daring heroes of the Arab world; they had proved themselves capable of demonstrating a threat to the Israelis in a way that the Arab armies had not. Although the Jordanian army also participated in the fighting against the Israelis, it is mostly the Palestinians who benefited from the event, in terms of the strong links made to Palestinian identity. With Karameh, it was proved that, despite the fact that Palestinians had been deserted and left alone and were fighting one of the strongest armies in the Middle East, despite their loss and suffering, the Palestinians would not surrender. In fact, the Palestinian guerrillas lost the battle against the Israelis, but they managed to inflict much heavier casualties on Israel than could have been expected. Thus, in Khalidi’s words, the battle of al-Karameh is the ‘foundation myth’ of the Palestinian commando movement (R.Khalidi 1997:196). As so many times before and after, ‘failure against overwhelming odds [was] brilliantly narrated as heroic triumph’(ibid.: 197). Karameh thus represented another break in history and storytelling. Fawaz Turki has said: Only Karameh was the antithesis of Refugee. The end of one road. The beginning of another. It brought to an end the Moatteren phase for the Palestinians and opened up the possibility where existential and political realities came together in an exquisitely aligned bond. Whereas before the Palestinians’ tragedy divided their past and their present, divided their range of human experience and that of their fathers’ generation, Karameh best defined these in relation to each other. (Turki 1974:16) The resistance implied change in a revolutionary manner. Grief, marginalisation and waiting were to yield to activism and militancy. Popular support for al-Fateh and for the fedayeen grew, and in 1969 alFateh gained the upper hand over the PLO and has, ever since, controlled


the movement and been the largest single organisation in it. In February 1969 Yasser Arafat was elected chairman. Now, the Palestine Resistance Movement, which had been established in the refugee camps in the Arab world, and the PLO merged into one, blending the nationalist legitimacy that was bestowed upon the guerrillas with the institutional structure of the PLO. In Lebanon, the revolution is dated to 1969. Here, the harshness of repression by the Lebanese authorities added its own momentum to the build-up of revolutionary readiness among the Palestinian masses. The struggle, resistance and revolution also periodically degenerated into sheer terrorism. PFLP5 became the forerunner in advocating terrorism (or ‘external operations’) as an instrument in the resistance (Y. Sayigh 1997: 213ff.). PFLP terror in the late 1960s, such as the hijacking of airplanes, was one of the main factors contributing to the devastating civil war in Jordan in 1970–1. After the war (1971–3), PLO international terrorism peaked6 as the Palestinian revolution was seriously crippled. Terrorism was partly born out of revenge, partly because the damage that had been done to the structure of the PLO pushed its member organisations to desperate measures. Now groups within Fateh started to use terror as a method; this was primarily carried out by the ‘Black September’ organisation, which was formed as a response to the Jordanian debacle. Struggle as identity In Chapter 4 we discussed how Palestinian identity has been formed out of loss, yearning and the joint cause of waiting. By adopting an assertive strategy of activism and militancy, the PLO and its factions added another core concept of Palestinian identity, that of the ‘struggler’. Identity was crafted around an idiom signifying actions, not to surrender, not to give up, never to yield, whatever the consequences. In a study conducted by Rosemary Sayigh, it is established that the personal qualities that are employed to describe Palestinian-ness are ‘struggle personalities’, ‘strength, courage, resourcefulness’ (R.Sayigh 1998:53). Resistance was a strategy to be launched not only against Israel, but against exile, against being defined as refugees, against landlessness and uprootedness, against assimilation in host societies, against the kind of life that was offered the Palestinians as refugees. It represented resolute rejection and negation of outside labelling; in fact, the Palestinians were to show the world that they were the opposite of the categories that were designated by others. Rosemary Sayigh’s insightful study in the late 1970s revealed in fascinating detail how


Palestinian refugees increasingly saw the struggle as providing identity and normality. The Palestinian felt after the Revolution that he’s living like a normal person again after a life of humiliation. The camps now are like fortresses, where in the past people had nothing to do but die under these zinc roofs. (quoted in R.Sayigh 1979:164) The resistance therefore amounted to possibilities of pride, self-respect, happiness, freedom. The people didn’t sleep for weeks afterwards, from happiness at seeing their youth carrying arms to liberate the homeland. They were in total support of the fedayyen, and showed this by bringing them food, tea, coffee. Those were beautiful days in the camp, like wedding days, after the uprising. (quoted in R.Sayigh 1979:165) Darwish gives his account of how the struggle initiated a new era: The homeland got farther and farther away, and the children got farther away from mother’s milk after they had tasted the milk of UNRWA. So they bought guns to get closer to the homeland flying out of their reach. They brought their identity back into being, recreated the homeland, and followed their path, only to have it blocked by the guardians of civil wars. (Darwish 1995:89) The decade of resistance has been called ‘the honeymoon of the revolution’, in a cult of militancy. Militant activism did not, however, first and foremost represent a cult of violence. Rather, it symbolised a futureoriented activism and progression. A new era was formed, an era of moving forward rather than simply waiting. The Palestinian ‘revolution’ was indeed revolutionary, but maybe not in the sense usually associated with the term. It was revolutionary change that was about to come, but not change of social stratification. However, the revolution did serve as an empowering process and it did alter social structures. The role of the notables changed drastically and the factions came to replace or challenge old forms of power and influence. New institutions were founded and the role of women as well as the poor was changed.


Yezid Sayigh has explained: Military action confirmed that the Palestinians, to themselves above all, were active participants in shaping their own destiny, rather than passive victims. True, Palestinian armed struggle had a negligible physical impact on Israel and was afflicted by wild exaggeration and jealous rivalries on the part of the guerrilla groups. Yet the excessive hyperbole and symbolism only went to show that military action served a different function entirely: to consolidate a national myth and imagined community (Y.Sayigh 1997:27) The real impact of the struggle was therefore not measured by whatever it might cause on the external arena, but by its internal consequences and the fact that the Palestinians now did something, they acted on their own behalf. Struggle represented something much larger than tactics or even strategy; it was a source of meaning and of being someone in the world. This aspect of struggle and militancy has constantly been misunderstood by Israel and the international community, despite the fact that Israeli Jewish identity is crafted in a similar way. The ‘new state Israeli Jew’ was to counter a victimised Jewish identity through the warrior identity (Kimmerling 1997). Israel has constantly misread Palestinian discourse, reading it exclusively from Israel’s own self-perception as perennial victim (Hass 1996:115). The prime example of this is Israel’s insistence on a change in the PLO Charter. In the Oslo process Arafat pledged to convene the Palestine National Council (PNC) in order to repeal parts of the PLO Covenant which were interpreted by Israel as calling for struggle against Israel and as continuously refusing to accept Israel’s existence. In April 1996 the PNC was convened and nullified ‘all articles’ that were seen as ‘contradicting’ the Mutual Letters of Recognition signed by Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin on 9 September 1993. To Israel, the wording was vague and the PLO Covenant remained an issue, to be raised, in particular, by Benyamin Netanyahu’s government in 1996–9. In the Wye River agreement of November 1998, it was established that the PLO had to reaffirm a letter sent by Arafat to US President Bill Clinton which declared which articles had been annulled. In December 1998 the PLO Central Committee gathered in Gaza: 81 delegates voted in favour of approving the letter, 7 against and 7 abstained. Opposition factions boycotted the meeting. Later in December the PNC assembled with other political figures (in all, 1,000


delegates) and approved of the nullification through a show of hands (‘Peace Monitor’ 1999:115).7 In the 1970s it was in particular a younger generation, those who grew up in exile, who sought identification in the struggle—the generation who did not experience the flight themselves or did so as children, those who grew up in refugee camps. This was the jil al-thawra, the ‘revolutionary generation’ (R.Sayigh 1979) as opposed to the mourning al-nakba generation. ‘Days of passivity’ and sorrow were turned into ‘days of euphoria’ (cf. Jayyusi 1992:4). The differences between the generation immediately experiencing the flight—being forced out, leaving homes, houses and fields, and who thus spent a generation grieving—and their children, without that immediate link, are therefore vast. Both experiences have been moulded into a nationalist discourse effectively defining the ‘Palestinian self’. Both the suffering and the unbending struggle have clustered around the camp as a focal point: ‘Clearly suffering and resistance are conflated with an assumed purity of identity that inheres in life in the camps’ (Peteet 1995:179). Camp Palestinians have thus been portrayed as the real Palestinians; they were both the real victims of the nakba and the real actors of nidal—the struggle. Also, they are the ones to return. Their ‘strength’ emanates from a marginal position, from being excluded, left out, and from the righteousness of the cause. Marginality therefore presents a source of potential power. Their weapons are what they have always been: refusal to forget, anger and a remarkable capacity for collective survival. (R.Sayigh 1998). Fawaz Turki has given voice to the change of perspective and how the struggle was sparked not only by the fact of being refugees, but by being placed into categories in Lebanese society. Exclusion served as a radicalising enticement to Fawaz Turki and many of his generation: I wanted to feel no longer inferior and helpless; I wanted to rid myself of the feeling that I was not a determining force in my life. I wanted to remove from my body and from my soul the grime of my refugeeism, statelessness, submissiveness, and the grime that was the blurred, degrading image that others had acquired of sense of humanity (Turki 1972:165)


A Palestinian residing in Sweden, coming there from Lebanon where he took part in the resistance, said: And identity, that is the strongest…I felt stateless and without identity, but the struggle and the revolution gave me a new identity. The revolution as identity, the PLO. (Mahmoud, Göteborg, 24 Janaury 2001) The armed struggle and the resistance in a very profound way thus informed what it meant to be a Palestinian. Struggle as a component of identity-formation was important also in the West Bank: While I am struggling against the occupation I am a Palestinian. (Fateh leader, West Bank, 29 October 1994) The revolution also had a strong impact on the identity of Palestinians by then residing in the USA: When we were in this country before the Palestinian revolution, we didn’t dare say we were Palestinian, we were ashamed of ourselves. (quoted in Christison 2001:190) In a sense, the struggle as ideology levelled class and other dividing and segmenting classifications. However, class also affected the experience of identity and struggle in different ways. There were, for example, tensions between ‘those who fight’ and ‘those who work in offices’ (Peteet 1991: 32). Those who worked in institutions were not seen as genuinely taking part in the revolution in the same manner as the ‘truer’ fighters. To provide meaning to the struggle, different symbols and icons were put to use or produced. The fellah and the feday Much use was made not only of the land, but also of the fellah and the Palestinian peasant culture in PLO official nationalism (R.Sayigh 1979, 1994a; Swedenburg 1991). The title to the masterly book by Rosemary Sayigh is, tellingly, From Peasants to Revolutionaries. For example, the kufiya, the chequered headscarf worn by Yasser Arafat in the shape of the map of Palestine, was ultimately something worn by peasants and Bedouins. Thus, the use of the kufiya by PLO representatives and by the fedayyen


ultimately meant a nationalist perception of the unification of social classes and strata in a coherent national identity. The ultimate symbol of the struggle was, however, the feday,8 the guerrilla-soldier who embodied the willingness to dedicate his life to the cause and the resistance. Fighting, struggling and resisting were articulated as something ‘natural’ and essential: it was something you had to do. It was not by choice; it was a given (Darwish 1982:16), but also a duty. Mahmoud Darwish even equated identity with the military struggle in rather absolute terms through the following phrase: ‘my iden-tity—my gun’. Kanafani’s Of Men and Rifles provides a similar naturalised account of the role of the feday. You just cannot ask a fighter why he is fighting. It is as if you asked a man why he is a male. (Kanafani, Of Men and Rifles; quoted in Siddiq 1984:40) Fighting is thus as natural as the sexes. Masculinity is ascribed to the struggle and militancy and gives meaning to the task of males, which is to reclaim not only the land, but honour. The futuristic action-oriented turn in Palestinian politics is reflected in Palestinian poetry after 1967 as much as nostalgia and homesickness are prior to that. Palestinian literature went through a tremendous transformation following 1967 as the literature of loss was turned into a literature of revolution. It is a highly rhetorical and demanding form of literature. Not being ready to fight represents cowardice. The slain motherland called for our struggle and my heart leapt with joy I raced the winds, but did not boast. Isn’t it my simple duty to redeem my country? I carried my soul in my hands asking any who feared death: do you hesitate before the enemy? Would you sit still when your country begs for your help? Would you back away from facing the enemy? If so, then go hide in your mother’s bedroom! May your hesitation humiliate you! The motherland needs mighty defenders who meet aggression but never complain; true lions on the battlefield.


… March on, to the field! Pour fire on the heads of the enemy everywhere. Nothing’s humbler than a people who shun the fight when their country calls for it. (Abd el-Raheem Mahmoud, ‘Call of the Motherland’, trans. by Sharif Elmusa and Namiu Shihab Nye’; in Jayyusi 1992:210f.) In the poem above, the land itself calls out for the strugglers. Tomorrow the night shall withdraw, humiliated, from our land, and the people abandon illusion, discovering their strength. Millions shall swear never to sleep while there be yet one foothold left for wolves, and through all the suffering they will yearn for that moment of reckoning truth. (Kamal Nasir, 1922–73, ‘Letter to Fadwa’, trans. by Sharif Elmusa and Namoi Shihab Nye; in Jayyusi 1992:236f.) In this kind of resistance-oriented verse and literature, much use is made of metaphors from nature such as ‘storms’ (cf. ‘Promises from—al Asifah’, Mahmud Darwish; in Elmessiri 1982:207), ‘hurricanes’, ‘typhoons’, ‘volcanos’ and ‘earthquakes’. Fateh’s military wing was named al-Asifa, the storm; the Syrian-based organisation was called al-Saiqa, which means lightning. A politico/cultural discourse utilising metaphors from nature thus persisted, although in a slightly different way. Whereas the nostalgic discourse/poetry/prose placed a beautiful, harmonious, pastoral landscape in focus, the forward-looking, future-oriented break focused on extraordinary natural phenomena—sudden, violent and unstoppable outbreaks. Violent rupture was needed to restore order and harmony, to salvage the country from the ‘wolves’. Embodied in the notion of thawra— revolution—is the notion of excitement, agitation, swirling up. It may also imply the eruption of a volcano. In intifada leaflets9 the intifada was often described in that way, as the eruption of a Volcano’ (e.g. CNU03A, [UNLU], January 16, 1988, in Legrain 1991). The ‘earth was trembling under the feet of the occupier’ (CNU03B [UNLU], January 18, 1988, in ibid.); the intifada was an ‘earthquake of the land’ (ibid.). The land discourse provided by the intifada attributed revolutionary qualities to the land. The land could then itself be patient or sad, as well as revolutionary


and full of wrath. Both the revolution and the uprising were thus like natural, evolutionary, unstoppable processes, their heat and strength symbolised by glowing lava. Intifada literally means a feverish shudder, shaking or trembling, like shaking the dust off something. The land as an actor was capable of shaking off the sinister enemy, the trespasser, who uninvited had conquered the treasured land. The martyr Another icon is the martyr, the shaheed. Literally, shaheed means one who bears witness, one who has died for God. In Islamic tradition those who die on the path of God are promised reward in paradise. If war is waged, it is to defend Muslim land, Muslim property and Muslim family. Someone who dies doing so is promised instant access to paradise without questioning on Judgement Day. Religion provides a source of meaning, an added significance, to what the martyr dies for. He dies not only for the nation, the homeland, but for God. Vice versa, his death is not only for religious reasons, but for the land. Nationalist rhetoric has adopted a concept that has a long tradition in the Islamic world and thus carries and combines religious and nationalistic connotations. In the case of Palestine, this connection is further strengthened by the significance of Palestine as the Holy Land. The conclusive renunciation is accentuated in the Palestinian Charter. Here, the individual is to be prepared for the sacrifice: sacrifice of his property and his life to restore his homeland, until the liberation of all this is a national duty. (Article 7, The Palestinian National Covenant 1968; quoted in Lukacs 1992:292) Sacrifice of one’s life is a national duty. As underlined by Anderson (1991), to die for the nation is treasured in nationalist discourse. Subjects of the nation are expected to die for the nation; however, doing so is no ordinary thing, but something solemnly acknowledged by the producers of nationalism. Death and suffering have a special meaning in this context. To be killed in action proves one’s ultimate commitment to the nation: On the great path toward this commitment [to liberate the land and the people], the blood of martyred leaders in various positions and battles mixed with the blood of the strugglers, men and women, from the sons of these great sacrificing people during the march of the people with their leadership, cadres, and bases. This march was


conducted by waves of martyrs and blood streams on the road to liberation, victory, and return. (PLO Executive Committee Statement, Tunis, 7 March 1986; quoted in Lukacs 1992:375) The shaheed was a treasured symbol (as was the blood) both for the revolution outside and for the intifada in the West Bank and Gaza. During the intifada, leaflets declared: ‘In the spirit and in the blood we sacrifice our life for you, oh martyr. In the spirit and in the blood we sacrifice our life for you, oh Palestine’ (CNU02B, [UNLU] 10 January 1988, in Legrain 1991). Martyrs were always to be cherished and certain days were devoted to honour the martyrs and visit their families. Symbolic funeral processions were turned into large-scale nationalist demonstrations and manifestations. In the 1990s the martyr/shaheed concept was increasingly flavoured not only by Islamic religious values but by a political Islamist discourse. In 1994, and in the immediate aftermath of the Hebron massacre of February 1994, both Hamas and Islamic Jihad resorted to the use of suicide bombs against Israeli civilian targets. The suicide attacks executed at buses and in other public, civil institutions in Israel in the period 1994–610 (by Hamas and Islamic Jihad) were, however, vividly debated in Palestinian society Some thought it a legitimate means in a rightful struggle, while others thought it haram (a shameful, forbidden act) both to kill civilians and to take one’s own life. In the secular discourse, martyrdom is strongly connected to the land. It is only the shaheed who really reunites with the land. As in Darwish’s poem below, this represents the true Palestinian wedding: This is the wedding without end In an endless courtyard On an endless night. This is the Palestinian wedding: Never will lover reach lover Except as martyr or fugitive (Mahmoud Darwish, ‘Blessed Be That Which Has Not Come!’, in Elmessiri 1982:197–205) The same theme could be found in an intifada leaflet from 1988: Rejoice oh Palestine, for your knights who arrive in the sun, ten thousand heroes and others who dress you in a wedding dress. And


the bridegroom he is the martyr in Jabalyia and Nablus and Kfar Ni’ma in the legendary South. (CNU04A [UNLU], 21 January 1988, in Legrain 1991) Palestine the land is here a woman to be rescued by the Palestinian martyr who is the knight and the bridegroom. The land is the object, nurtured and cherished, while the active Palestinian, the feday and the shaheed, who sets out to rescue the land and who sacrifices his life for it, is a man. A marriage is to occur between the land/the woman/the object and the people/the man/the subject. The union between man and woman is used as a metaphor for the ideal union between land and people. An honorable man’s spirit has two aims: to die fighting, or to achieve victory. Otherwise, what is life? I want no life if we’re not respected in our land; if our response is not feared, if our words are not heard echoing in the world! … No greater wish than to die defending stolen rights and my country, My ears love the clashing of swords, my soul is proud of martyrs’ blood. Behold the martyr’s body sprawled on sands, attacked by vultures, his blood tinting the earth crimson, haunting northern breezes with its scent. (‘Abd el-Raheem Mahmud, 1913–48, ‘The Martyr’, trans. by Sharif Elmusa and Namoi Shihab Nye; in Jayyusi 1992: 209f.) Blood and earth are reunited. This poem tells us something about the meaning of the cult of the martyrs. From a marginalised position, respect is to come about through struggle and a readiness to sacrifice. It is preferable to die than to yield or to live under degrading circumstances. In the ‘new intifada’ which broke out in September/October 2000 much use was again made of the martyr. Everyone killed in confrontations with the Israelis or simply by Israeli fire was seen as a shaheed. A 12-yearold boy, Muhammad al-Durra, who was killed during the first days of the confrontations, in late September 2000, was ‘caught in the crossfire’ in Gaza. After 45 minutes of horror, the boy was shot dead in the arms of his


father, who desperately tried to shield his son. The whole episode was caught on camera for the world to watch and Muhammed al-Durra came unwillingly to symbolise the victim aspect of the al-Aqsa intifada. The boy did not die fighting, his death was not chosen, he simply died—yet he was a martyr (Zakariyya 2000). From refugees to returnees One particular side of the assertiveness of the struggler and the feday was the rejection of the term ‘refugees’ to designate the Palestinians as a category. The PLO early on decided to replace the word ‘refugees’ with ‘returnees’ (a’idoun). Camp residents in Lebanon expressed resistance by representing themselves as returnees rather than refugees (Peteet 1995: 177). To be a’idoun represented action, to go back to where one came from, as opposed to the term ‘refugee’, which implied being a passive victim of things that happened rather than an active producer of one’s own life. The term ‘returnees’ also implied that residence in host societies was only temporary The following is a song that was popular in camps: Who am I? Who are ye? I am the Returnee! I am the Returnee! (quoted in Turki 1974:9) For the younger generation, there was on the one hand a revolutionary employment of UNRWA and refugee symbols and on the other hand a complete rejection of those icons. Another song which was popular in the mid-1960s went thus: ‘Ignite fire in the tents, And throw the Ration Cards, No Peace and Surrender, Until we Liberate Palestine’ (quoted in Farah 1999:19). De-territorialised state-building The revolution required, however, not only patriotism and zeal, but a strong organisation. Institutionalisation became in itself a form of struggle, evidence of the determination of the Palestinians, and was part of the assertive strategy to take matters into Palestinian hands. PLO institutionbuilding reached substantial levels, and served as the foundation of stateformation. PLO’s exile structure, with a ‘parliament’ (the PNC), a ‘government’ (the Executive Committee), a military apparatus (the PLA)


and the various departments, could be equated with a ‘quasigovernmental’ apparatus (Cobban 1984:12). Civilian infrastructure such as health clinics, schools, factories, research institutes (cf. Brand 1988) also communicated a perception of the Palestinians as capable. The statist ambitions of the PLO are further evident in the ‘Charter’, resembling a constitution, the education system, the flag, the anthem, the economy with a certain taxation system, economic enterprises, foreign representation. The Palestinian case is therefore an example of state- as well as nationbuilding in and through the diaspora. Education Education has been of mighty importance in Palestinian self-perception as well as in real-life strategies. Education has been seen as both a form of and a preparation for the struggle. It has been the sole source of social mobility and an opportunity to save refugees from current degrading circumstances (B.Schiff 1995). Education was the avenue to improve the chances of finding jobs, especially when work opportunities opened up in the Gulf. Another motivation was to prepare for future life in Palestinian society. UNRWA teachers, themselves refugees, were convinced that education was the only way for the Palestinian refugees to recover their lost homeland. They believed that Palestine had been lost because Palestinian peasants were ignorant and uneducated, and it was therefore knowledge that would ultimately defeat Israel. Education has also been a motive in decisions to migrate to, for example, the USA from the West Bank, Amman or the Gulf. One Palestinian saying goes: ‘The children are our house’ (Hass 1996: 174). The lack of home and house meant that an investment in the future was made through children; children became ‘house’ stability. This sometimes meant a great burden on children, loaded with heavy expectations of rescuing their family from miserable conditions through education (Farah 1999:29). Palestinians have portrayed themselves as the most educated people of the Arab Middle East, ‘the Jews of the Arab world’. UNRWA has been an important actor in this context. Education has been the largest sector of the organisation. UNRWA schooling has not been free from the overall conflict with Israel, however, but UNRWA faced complaints that the material used in the education system would instil hatred and violence towards Israel in the children. UNRWA was therefore forced to remove certain themes from its textbooks (B.Schiff 1995). The UNRWA education system/curriculum is set by the Ministry of Education


in the states in question. In the West Bank and Gaza the curriculum was until the inception of the peace process the same as in Jordan and Egypt. Expanding the discourse of struggle The revolutionary zeal eventually faded with events in the 1970s. The 1974 decision implied a turn to a more pragmatic approach, although the liberation of all of Palestine was still a long-term goal of the main-stream PLO. It was also now that factionalism became an enigma, as support was increasingly pledged to the individual factions rather than to the resistance at large. Later, in 1978/9, the Camp David accords, which were strongly rejected by all PLO factions, nevertheless meant that PLO politics had to shift focus and the PLO in fact held a door open to participation in US-led negotiations. Also, the bureaucratisation of the PLO and its state-building efforts meant that it became less of a movement and a catalyst to galvanise people into action and more of a bureaucratic apparatus. In a way, the ideology of revolution also declined in importance, although as a legitimating principle and overarching discourse it continued to serve a core function. On the eve of the Camp David agreement, the leading Fateh/PLO figure Abu Iyad stated: Nevertheless, our people will bring forth a new revolution. They will engender a movement much more powerful than ours, better armed and thus more dangerous for the Zionists. There is no doubting the irrepressible will of the Palestinian people to pursue their struggle, come what may. It is in the nature of things. We are determined to survive as a nation. And one day, we will have a country (Iyad 1978:226) This revolutionary discourse and its deterministic features have been common to the various factions of the PLO. There is a constant repetition of the theme of struggle, which in one way communicates capability and tenaciousness, but in another way, and at the same time, has a desperate resonance. In the quotation above, reference is made to the revolution that once was. A defeat has occurred, but it is inevitable that a new revolution/ uprising will eventually occur. Palestinian revolutions come ‘naturally’ as responses to repression.


Intifada: the rise of inside, the decline of exile One way in which the struggle as discourse and identity-creator was both maintained and transformed was the intifada, the uprising which broke out in the West Bank and Gaza in December 1987. The uprising initially had a mass base and was founded on a combined strategy of ‘limited violence’, using stone-throwing and Molotov cocktails, large-scale confrontations with the IDF, mass demonstrations and civil disobedience, including strikes, closure of shops, non-cooperation, in some areas a refusal to pay taxes (most notably in the Christian West Bank town Beit Sahour), and an attempt to withdraw from the occupation structures. This was also combined with an emphasis on institution-building in the occupied territories.11 Although there had previously been occasional outbursts of unrest, this was the first uprising with staying power since 1936. The uprising was based in the social, economic and political processes that shaped Palestinian society in the wake of the 1967 war, in the growing force of Palestinian nationalism, and in increased number of local self-help organisations and grassroots movements (cf. Sahliyeh 1988). Just like the revolution some 20 years earlier, the uprising had farreaching consequences in raising Palestinian self-esteem and dignity. Psychologically and emotionally, the intifada meant a new pride among Palestinians in being Palestinians. In the bayanat and in PLO official documents epithets used in relation to the intifada were frequently our ‘honourable and glorious uprising’: The great uprising has revealed the gigantic energies of our valiant people in the occupied homeland as a glowing and sublime link in our people’s continuous national struggle under the PLO, their sole and legitimate representative. Our people are on the road to inevitable victory. They are struggling to liberate the Palestinian homeland from the racist Zionist occupation, to return to our homeland, to achieve our right to self-determination, and to establish our free independent Palestinian state. (Statement by the PLO Central Committee, 9 January 1988; quoted in Lukacs 1992:392) Intifada came to mean the ultimate struggle, in the same way as the revolution before had meant all-encompassing struggle (cf. Johnson 1982). The intifada was depicted as a magnificent, relentless struggle against injustice and occupation. In this discursive style, struggle was contingent


on the innate characteristics of heroism and boldness of the Palestinian people. The declaration of Palestinian independence in November 1988 affirmed: the natural climax of a daring and tenacious popular struggle that started more than seventy years ago and was baptized in the immense sacrifices offered by our people in our homeland, along its borders, and in the camps and other sites of our diaspora. (Palestine National Council, Political Communiqué, Algiers, 15 November 1988; quoted in Lukacs 1992:415) Although official PLO discourse went out of its way to accentuate the strategic as well as ‘natural’ linkage between the revolution outside and the uprising inside, that same discourse resulted in a decline in the importance of the refugee issue and the exile during the 1980s. Official PLO documents after the evacuation from Beirut in 1982 tended to focus increasingly on the ‘steadfastness of the inside’ or ‘the occupied homeland’. This tendency peaked during the intifada., when it was clear that struggle against the occupation had taken the upper hand over revolution and resistance to liberate the homeland. Not that liberation was taken off the agenda, but its weight declined. This development was due first and foremost to the ‘situation’ and the fact that the loss of a military presence in Lebanon meant that the PLO was forced further away from the battleground. New options were required. At the same time, mobilisation in the West Bank and Gaza was spontaneous. Therefore, although the actual outburst of the intifada actually suited the PLO leadership quite well, it also implied quite a serious challenge against the dominance of the outside leadership. The challenge from middle-rank inside leadership (cf. Y.Sayigh 1997; Robinson 1997; Litvak 1997; Frisch 1998) was one of the reasons behind the fact that the intifada was eventually ‘hijacked’ by the factions and by ‘outside’ involvement. Al-Aqsa intifada In late September 2000, Likud leader Ariel Sharon paid a controversial visit to the Temple Mount/Haram ash-Sharif, escorted by a heavy security presence. The visit occurred in the aftermath of the collapsed peace talks in Camp David (see further Chapter 6) and in the midst of internal Israeli turmoil. Mass demonstrations and confrontations with the IDF followed. Unrest was soon labelled the al-Aqsa intifada or the second intifada.


The flowing Palestinian blood, which has been shed and is being shed unceasingly in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in 1948-Palestine, must not go in vain. The Intifada of al-Aqsa must not be allowed to become the subject of cheap and futile political haggling here and there, whether at the hands of our murderers and grave-diggers (the Zionists), or by our ultimate tormentor (the Americans), or, indeed, at the hands of our so-called ‘Arab brethren’ or, first and foremost, at the hands of the Palestinian leadership of Yasser Arafat. (Amayreh 2000) The ‘new intifada’ was seen as a natural response to the faltering peace process. As before, there were proud declarations of the cathartic role of the struggle as well as a desperate clinging to fighting as the sole option left: We’re back to where we were, fighting, standing up, and making our voices heard. Perhaps this will be our last battle and our last war. It is either our death or our liberation. There is no third way. We don’t want a third way (Hamzeh 2001:45) The al-Aqsa intifada was the only way to achieve results and the only way to actually influence Israeli politics. This strategy was reinforced by Israel’s withdrawal from south Lebanon in May 2000, which was seen as a direct consequence of the fighting between the Shi’a Hizbollah militia and the IDF. In the unprecedented Israeli onslaught in March 2002 (see further Chapter 6), the Palestinian leadership came out with a statement stating that ‘our people’s steadfastness and faith is stronger than all weapons of the occupation army’. The Palestinian people was ‘heroic and resistant’ (www.pna.net). ‘Struggle’ therefore represents a worldview, a general attitude, as Palestinian modern history is read, narrated and analysed as a constant struggle for national independence (cf. Swedenburg 1991). Gender and struggle ‘Struggle’ is a gendered concept. To participate in the military struggle is a male obligation and an act of masculinity. Gender relations are largely determined by family structure and by the honour code, valuing men who control their dependants. Honour is not the characteristic of an individual, but is assigned to a whole family or even a clan. If one female family


member brings shame upon herself the whole family is deprived of honour (Ata 1986; Warnock 1990; Rubenberg 2001). According to Warnock, honour was an ingredient in the exodus as fear and concern to save women from being raped was a reason for flight. Honour is very much situated in society and community and what others say about family honour. It is a male duty to rescue land and honour lost. During the revolution women were largely assigned traditionally female roles and tasks, such as distributing food, nursing, etc., although women were also participants in military struggle. The PFLP and the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP)12 formed (short-lived) units of women guerrillas in the late 1960s. Militancy has also, however, been a way in which Palestinian women have defined themselves (Peteet 1991:76) as well as tasks defined in female terms. The Palestinian woman giving birth to children, and ultimately to fedayyen, is a representation of a culture of resistance (Slycomovics 1998). As demography is politicised in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, women’s reproductive capacity has become an asset in itself. Although reproductive behaviour is not actually directed by a willingness to produce sons for the revolution, the discourse provides meaning to the fact of having children (Peteet 1991:185). A number of activities are given the meaning of struggle, such as for example domestic chores: ‘just to survive and maintain the family in the face of attacks that penetrate domestic space is perceived as a form of participation in the national struggle’ (ibid.: 183). When camps were under attack, it was the task of women to shelter children and old people, to try to secure food and water, and to see to everyone’s needs amidst constant worry over the fate of husbands and sons. The following passage from Peteet’s work is worth quoting at length: Um Muhammad, a survivor of Tal al-Za’ter, mother of several martyrs, and friends of the Resistance, said: ‘We Palestinian women, we have a batin ‘askari. [literally: military womb; figuratively: we give birth to fighters].’ One woman, who lost her husband and four sons in Tal al-Za’ter, explained with a hint of resignation, ‘We Palestinian women, we give birth to them, we bring them up, and we bury them for the Revolution.’ A middle-aged woman, complaining about the rationing of cooking gas in Shatila and how all women were contributing to the national struggle, stood up defiantly at a nadwi and declared, ‘I’m giving the Israelis a hit, too— my four sons and my husband are guerrillas!’ All these women have


had their homes violated and lives disrupted by war and perceive themselves as involved in the national struggle…. Although the ‘mother of the martyr’ may never have been politically active in the sense of belonging to an organization, her maternal sacrifice is extolled as a supreme political act. Women, givers and sustainers of life, whose status in the household traditionally rested on the number of sons they bore, are now expected to willingly sacrifice their children. (Peteet 1991:185) Although the image of women as guerrilla fighters was a widely held ideal, women were mostly portrayed as ‘sisters of men’ or ‘mothers of martyrs’ (Jawwad 1990:72)—women were something only in relation to men. Being a ‘mother of martyr’, however, became a specific assignment, representing both pride in the sacrifice for the cause and the symbol of Palestinian suffering. Women were symbols in paintings and in posters; a Palestinian woman in traditional dress carrying a gun has been a frequent symbol of nationalism (R.Sayigh 1994a: 103). An even more common picture, however, is a poster of the map of Palestine in the shape of a woman in chains. The nation that was to be protected, i.e. the nation as the land, as the ‘object’, was gendered; the nation was a woman to be liberated and defended by the active fraternity of fedayeen. In a highly generalised way, men ‘struggled’ and women ‘suffered’. The very symbols of Palestinian-ness are thus the active (male) struggler, the guerrilla, the intifada fighter and the suffering woman, representing the loss, the traumas and the pain. In women’s organisations,13 too, the revolution and struggle were of such overwhelming importance that everything else, including issues of women’s rights and positions, was secondary. The pervasiveness of the national(ist) cause meant that only after the liberation could gender issues realistically be addressed. The intifada in the late 1980s redefined societal structures and roles. Gender roles were, for example, changed as women became more articulate and politicised and increasingly evident in demonstrations and political events (Strum 1998). Women’s movements become articulated on gender issues for the first time, and a new and more dynamic image of women was fostered (Jawwad 1990:69). The kind of activism remained, however, by and large the same that had been nurtured by the revolution, i.e. a traditional gender role, meaning hiding activists, bringing food to camps, teaching, etc. (Hiltermann 1998). Thus, although women became more


visible in the political/national struggle, they became so in much the same manner as during the revolution. They were the suffering mothers who wept for martyred sons and detained husbands. Gender relations were also affected by the assertiveness of Hamas, capitalising on the appearance of women. The veil became a symbol, not only of increased religiousness and of the augmented role of Hamas, but of a serious and strict disciplined form of nationalism. The veil symbolised that women were following the modest way of life of the uprising, i.e. there was to be no gaiety, no social gatherings, no celebrations. The secularist movements were slow in responding to Hamas capitalising on women’s appearance as a symbol of their version of Palestinianism, leading to criticism from Palestinian women’s movements. Martyrs shed their blood, while mothers shed their tears: The masses of this precious Muslim people have paid for this with their blood and their sons…the homeland grass has sprouted with an aroma like the blood of the martyrs and like the tears of the patient mothers who are concerned for their children who behave like men. (Hamas Leaflet, No. 33, in Mishal and Aharoni 1994:253f.) The role of women is therefore not only to give birth to sons, but to mourn them. Losing husbands, sons and brothers was an act of heroism and steadfastness: Praise to the suffering wives and to the sisters who took leave of their loved ones heroically and steadfastly, and who uphold the pledge to raise a generation imbued with faith and with the spirit of jihad, in order to continue the mission. (Hamas Leaflet, No. 74, in Mishal and Aharoni 1994:285) The national struggle requires—rhetorically—women to bid farewell to one generation of sons, in order to raise a new one as righteous as the last. Women are depicted as watching, national mothers, protecting and sustaining the life of the nation. Women thus reproduce the nation both biologically and culturally In January 2002 the first woman ever to take her life and the lives of Israeli civilians in a suicide attack was Wafa’ Idris, a 26-year-old woman who grew up in al-Am’ari refugee camp in Ramallah.

6 RIGHT OF RETURN, THE REFUGEES AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE PEACE PROCESS

International diplomacy attempting to deal with the refugee issue has since the 1950s focused on resettlement somewhere else, as Israel would not admit any process of return, due to the sensitive demographic nature of Israel. Throughout its history, ‘return’ of Palestinian refugees has to Israel been tantamount to an existential threat. To the Palestinians, the refugee question is the very core of the conflict with Israel, and it has, according to the Palestinian position, not been conceivable to reach a solution without the implementation of UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 194 from 1948. Article 11 of Resolution 194 states that it: Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the governments or authorities responsible. (UNGA Resolution 194, 11 December 1948) Part and parcel of Resolution 194 is thus the right to return and the right to compensation for those choosing not to return and for lost property. Resolution 194 is therefore based on the principle of individual choice. The General Assembly has regularly reiterated the resolution. Although it is difficult to pinpoint the value of property lost through the exodus,1 Palestinians lost not only land, but property such as houses, buildings, factories, institutions, banks, bank assets, machinery, agricultural tools, cattle, animals (cf. Karmi 1999b; Kubursi 2001). Property was lost because it was taken over by the state of Israel as ‘abandoned property’, looted or destroyed.

140 RIGHT OF RETURN AND THE PEACE PROCESS

Despite numerous efforts over the years to bring the parties to nego tiate a solution to their conflict, it was not until the 1990s that real progress was made. Apart from official declarations and negotiations, the refugee issue has been discussed in a number of semi-official and academic circles, and suggestions made by Palestinian academics and officials have varied from Salman Abu Sitta’s (1999, 2001) insistence on the feasibility of return to Sari Nusseibeh’s statement in 2001 that the individual right of return should be exchanged for a collective right of return to a Palestinian state rather than to lost homes in Israel. The trend during the 1990s was to acknowledge the principle of the right of return while aspiring for more ‘pragmatic’ or ‘realistic’ goals. Right of return as politics The ‘right of return’ (al-haq al-awda) has served as a bedrock of PLO ideology and strategy. It has been one of the ultimate and uncompromising baselines of PLO politics and it has served as a cornerstone of individual life-strategies. In its early years, the PLO viewed the ‘return’ issue as a logical and natural outcome of the completion of ‘liberation’. When land was liberated, return would follow. From 1968 onwards, ‘return’ became more focused. The real turning point was, however, the 12th PNC in 1974 when the PLO doctrine was changed in several regards. Not only did the PLO change its goals from ones formulated in terms solely of ‘liberation’ to now refer to the interim goal of establishing an authority on ‘every part of Palestinian land to be liberated’ (Palestine National Council, ‘Political Program’, 8 June 1974, in Lukacs 1992:309), but the ‘right of return’ gained primary status. The right to return was here defined as the ‘foremost of Palestinian rights’ (ibid.: 308). Since then the right of return has been the first component in the PLO’s political-ideological ‘“trinity” of “rational rights” or “inalienable rights”: the rights of return, of self-determination and of establishing an independent state’ (Klein 1998:3f.). In the 1980s, however, the importance of the ‘right of return’ declined in PLO discourse. According to Klein, this was due to the PLO’s attempts to navigate in Realpolitik and to gain a seat in the peace initiatives that were taken primarily by the Americans at the time. Also, the intifada moved attention away from the exile and the ‘outside’ to the West Bank and Gaza. The 1988 Declaration of Independence and the shift in focus to a twostate solution rather than liberation2 meant that ‘return’ diminished in prominence in official discourse. Here, the rights of the refugees were

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mentioned only in passing. It was also at this time that the PLO for the first time based the right of return on UNGA resolution 194. Until then, ‘return’ had not been a principle legitimised by UN resolutions, but an inherent right. With acceptance of 194, the PLO also sanctioned the idea of substituting the right of return for compensation (cf. R. Khalidi 1992; Massad 2001:106f.). One outcome of the negotiation process in the 1990s was the accommodation and gradual compromise by the PLO on the right of return. At the PLO Central Council meeting in April 1999, the focus was on the West Bank and Gaza, statehood and self-determination. The statement closing the session spoke of the ‘resolution of the case of refugees, on the basis of resolution 194 and of international law’, but did not go further than that. Resolution 194 was mentioned only once, while 242 and 338 were mentioned three times (PLO Central Council 1999). As regards the refugees, 242 calls for a ‘just settlement of the refugee question’ (UNSC 1967), without mentioning 194 or going into details. The peace process The peace process was initiated at the Madrid conference set up in 1991. Here, Arab states, the Palestinians and Israel met in order to frame future negotiations. Several bilateral and multilateral negotiation tracks were established. Although the Palestinian delegation received instructions from the PLO, the actual negotiators were not members of the PLO but ‘prominent political personalities’ from the West Bank (excluding Jerusalem) and Gaza. It was at the time forbidden by Israeli law to have any contact with the PLO. Negotiations were surrounded by media hype and rarely touched on substantial issues. It was only in Oslo, through direct and secret negotiations, that progress occurred.3 The negotiations, initially thought of as a back channel to feed into the official Washington talks, led to the Declaration of Principles (DOP), signed in September 1993. The DOP was not a peace agreement, but an agreement that the parties were ready to work for a peaceful and processual solution to their longtime conflict. The first step in the staged process was selfgovernment for Gaza and Jericho—implemented in May 1994 (Agreement on the Gaza Strip and the Jericho Area 1994). Permanent status negotiations were to be based on UN resolutions 242 and 338, the West Bank and Gaza were to be seen as an integral unit, and the thorniest issues (Jerusalem, refugees, settlers, borders, security) were left for permanent-status negotiations. An agreement on permanent-status negotiations was to be reached no later


than five years after the initiation of self-rule, i.e. in May 1999. Negotiations on final-status issues were to begin as soon as possible after the implementation of the first step, but no longer than three years afterwards. Details of self-government were hammered out in the Cairo accords of 4 May 1994 (ibid.). Administrative functions such as education, health, social affairs, culture, tourism and taxation were handed over to the PNA in the first phase. The Interim Agreement of September 1995 expanded Palestinian selfrule to the West Bank, beginning with the six major cities, Hebron excluded. A separate deal on Hebron was reached in January 1997. The Interim Agreement bisected the territory of the West Bank in different zones. The Palestinian authority extended in a full sense (which in turn meant severely restricted autonomy) only over the A-area, i.e. the six major towns, comprising 3 per cent of the total West Bank. The B-area comprised approximately 450 villages, where Israelis and Palestinians had a divided security responsibility. The bulk of the West Bank was constituted as C-area in the sole control of Israel, implying a fragmentation of territory opening up an oppositional critique that a Bantustanisation of Palestine was occurring (see Said 1995; Bishara 1995, 1998; Butenschøn 1998). Further administrative functions were transferred, such as agriculture, labour, electricity, the postal service, local government, etc. Through further redeployments— the last one occurring in March 2000—the A and B areas together made up 42 per cent of the territory of the West Bank and Gaza. Autonomy was restricted in several regards. Israel still controlled border and external security; economic relations were subject to Israeli regulations; and legislation must be presented to Israel in order to be regarded as valid (cf. Interim Agreement 1995). The Oslo Agreement was based on an understanding between the PLO and the Israeli Labour Party that a Palestinian state of some sort was the only realistic outcome of the process, although this would be dependent on the performance of the Palestinian Authority in safe-guarding Israeli security (Kimmerling 1997:236). According to many observers, there was a similar but slower and more reluctant shift in Likud discourse in the process of coming to terms with the concept of a Palestinian state. Likud used the notions ‘state-minus’ or ‘autonomy-plus’ to indicate the restrictions that according to this point of view must necessarily be imposed on such an entity (Heller 1997:10f.). At a meeting in the USA in early 2002, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon also stated that a Palestinian state was the probable outcome of the process.


The process was opposed by groups on both side. On the Palestinian side, an opposition coalition (based in Damascus) was formed between the radical leftists and the radical Islamists. Hamas and Islamic Jihad soon took the lead in pursuing violence against Israel through terror attacks. In Israel, right-wing extremism was radically opposed to the peace process. The assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995 by Yigal Amir was a serious blow to the peace process as such. Yigal Amir was a religious student, inspired by extremist rightwing groups, who supported the settlement movements and admired Baruch Goldstein.4 Also the Likud bloc was critical against the process. One of the Palestinian opposition’s arguments was that both the agreement and the process effectively bypassed the refugees. The peace process and the refugees The peace process and its absolute focus on the West Bank and Gaza left the refugee issue pending and served to fragment the ‘outside’ from the occupied/autonomous areas. Refugees from 1948 were to be discussed only in the permanent-status negotiations, while the ‘1967-displaced persons’ were to be discussed in the quadripartite negotiations. Resolution 194 no longer served as a cornerstone of PLO politics. In principle the PLO maintained the right to return. The official position was that UN Resolutions 194 and 237 should be applied to the full extent, and the PLO expressed ‘refusal of all plans of permanent resettlement, deferment and forced emigration that lead to the liquidation of the refugees issue’ (‘Report of the Committee of Refugees’ 1996). Israel maintained an unwillingness to admit responsibility for the exodus in 1948, although eventually an acknowledgement of Israel’s shared responsibility was voiced. In practice, the peace process meant a certain adjustment by the two sides. One such alteration was a Palestinian shift from speaking of the individual’s right to return to one’s home to referring to a collective right of return to a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza through a ‘Law of Return’. However, this did not resonate with the hopes and memories of millions of refugee Palestinians. In the Beilin—Abu Mazen Agreement (1995), on a framework for finalstatus negotiations, it was agreed that Israel would financially assist the absorption of refugees outside Israel. ‘Right of return’ would apply to the future state of Palestine in line with a reinterpretation of the right of return. Israel would allow unification of families. During the course of the peace process and until final-status negotiations, however, the refugee issue


was largely discussed within two fora: the multilaterals and the quadripartite committee. The multilaterals The focus in the multilateral working group on refugees5 was functional matters and living conditions, such as human resources development, job creation, vocational training, public health, child welfare and economic and social infrastructure. A large number of these undertakings were channelled via UNRWA (Peters 1997:328). Canada was the chair of the working group and had a hard time in obtaining agreement between the parties. From the Palestinian side, there were fears that attempts to create ‘normality’ for the refugees would undermine their political rights. In the vision paper produced by Canada, some ideas were to conduct a census of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as well as the neighbouring states, an assessment of the absorptive capacity of the West Bank and Gaza and the potential implications of transfer of UNRWA activities to the PNA. Despite the criticism voiced against the multilaterals, it could be argued that the low-key, unambitious nature of the multilateral talks succeeded in establishing a forum for a constructive dialogue (ibid.: 333). The multilateral working groups were put on hold during the ‘cold years’ of the peace process, i.e. between 1996 and 1999. Although multilateral negotiations were supposed to be resumed in 2000, this did not occur. The quadripartite committee Another forum for discussing the refugee question was the quadripartite committee, which was set up as part of the bilateral talks between Israelis and Palestinians. Members of the committee were Israel, the PNA, Jordan and Egypt. Discussions in the quadripartite committee were obstructed by the dispute over numbers, i.e. how many were actually to be counted as displaced persons of 1967. According to the Palestinian position, there would be approximately 1 million people eligible for the definition (‘Palestinians Displaced of 1967 and the Peace Process’, al-Shaml Newsletter 1996, no. 2, March). The Palestinians included the family of persons displaced or banned from coming home, whereas Israel perceived only those who actually left during the period of military activities as ‘displaced’. Thus, in Israel’s definition those who lost their residency rights


were not to be seen as displaced. One agreement in the quadripartite committee was to examine data on displaced persons. Resentment and bitterness The peace process implied a cementation of the fragmentation between the diaspora and the ‘inside’. Faruq al-Qaddumi, one of the leading Fateh/ PLO figures who opposed the Oslo Agreement, declared: The danger now is that: 1 There will be a separation between Palestinians in the territories and those outside. Indications of this can be seen in the proposal to consider the [proposed self-rule Palestinian] Council the representative of the Palestinian people, which would be tantamount to destroying the PLO and abandoning the Palestinian refugees. (PLO ‘Foreign Minister’ Faruq al-Qaddumi 1995:148) The peace process was in its early phase supported by most Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Polls of popular opinion continuously showed a rather high level of support, although there was of course also criticism.6 Leading outside PLO figures, however, came out against it and the national poet Mahmoud Darwish resigned from the PLO Executive Committee on 20 August 1993 as news of the accord was breaking. The PLO representative in Lebanon, Shafiq al-Hut, also resigned from the Executive Committee. There was also strong opposition to the process among intellectuals in the diaspora, such as Edward Said (see Said 1995), Hisham Sharabi and other Palestinian-American intellectuals (Sharabi 2001). Among the refugees there was from the very beginning a great deal of resentment, especially among the Lebanese refugees. On the very day that the DOP was signed, six people were shot dead by Lebanese troops as Palestinian oppositional groups demonstrated against the accords. As indicated in Chapter 3, a severe polarisation occurred in the Lebanese arena. There was a rapid decrease in support for Arafat, in Fateh circles too. The focus on the West Bank and Gaza was seen as deeply unfair and as yielding an inherent right. To Palestinian refugees, it was still 1948 Palestine that was the real Palestine, which is why a two-state solution was still rejected in principle. Repatriation to Gaza or the West Bank would mean settlement somewhere other than one’s original village or home. The ‘1948 people’ would be refugees there instead:


All of Palestine is ours and I want to go to my particular village in Palestine. If I go to Gaza, that is not my home, it would be the same as I live here, as a stranger and refugee, exactly like here. No, we would not accept that. (Amina, Ein el-Hilweh, 13 August 2001) To many refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza and Syria, the PLO leadership had simply betrayed the refugees, those who had harboured the authenticity of Palestinian experience, those who had really suffered and struggled. The West Bank and Gaza were to be saved at the expense of the ‘1948 people’. The Palestinians in Lebanon carried the revolution while our brothers in the Occupied Territories slept. We sacrificed everything and now Abu Ammar used our blood to make himself an autonomous kingdom. We did not know that when the PLO was evacuated from Lebanon in 1982, it meant that they were also abandoning us here as well. (Shatila camp resident; in Sosebee 1996:22) One interviewee, Nabil, called the Oslo Agreement ‘the biggest misery that has befallen the Palestinians since the nakba’ (Nabil, Beirut, 31 July 2001). Informing resentment and resistance to the peace process was a strong sense of injustice. In both official and informal discourses of history and conflict, injustice is a theme of great importance. A ‘peace’ that did not bring some kind of fairness or at least acknowledge the grave injustice done to the Palestinians was simply unacceptable. Refugees in various places felt abandoned and neglected. Such sentiments were reinforced by UNRWA’s financial constraints, leading to a deterioration of services and a strain on educational and health programmes. In 1975 the expenditure per refugee was US$200. In 2000 that figure had declined to US$75 (UNRWA 2000:11). UNRWA’s income remained basically the same throughout the 1990s, despite a growth in the refugee population of more than 3.5 per cent on a yearly basis. In real terms, UNRWA’s budget per refugee decreased. UNRWA has been forced to introduce a number of austerity measures, and the quality of its services has deteriorated. In 1996 UNRWA’s deficit amounted to $50 million (ibid.). In 2000 the deficit had increased to $66 million (UNGA 2001). International support to the Palestinians was directed toward the West Bank and Gaza and the presumed need to construct an economic base for the peace process. UNRWA’s budget was changed in favour of the West


Bank and Gaza, increasing the feeling among outside refugees of being deserted and forgotten. In 1992–3 Lebanon received 11.8 per cent of UNRWA expenditure, compared to 31.8 per cent for Gaza and 22.4 per cent for the West Bank, a per-capita distribution of $298 for the Gaza Strip, $264 for the West Bank and $204 for Lebanon. This tendency was increased in 1994–5 (R.Sayigh 1995:38). In 2001 Gaza and the West Bank received 49.1 per cent of budgeted expenditure (UNGA 2001). By 2000/1 per-capita distribution had declined considerably. Among Palestinians, UNRWA’s financial problems were seen as a sign of international neglect of the refugee problem. Protests and demonstrations followed suit. Other observers pointed to the continuous generous contributions to Palestinian refugees compared with other refugee populations (see Brynen 2000). In 1997 the Lebanon Appeal was launched by UNRWA. The appeal intended to alleviate the socioeconomic conditions of the refugee community in Lebanon. In relation to the escalation of violence in 2000–3, UNRWA was forced to renew emergency appeals for the West Bank and Gaza. All of this caused enormous disappointment, leading to mistrust of the leadership and infighting at the political level. The financial priorities of the PLO had changed after the Gulf war, with a decline in support for Lebanon. For many individuals, the peace process led to apathy or to them seeking options to migrate elsewhere. The peace process thus sparked a new phase of ‘suffering’ in Palestinian identity creation. Victim identity again became more prevalent than resistance. It might be argued that Palestinian self-perception and storytelling oscillate between the ideas of victim and struggler (Lindholm Schulz 1999). To Palestinians in Lebanon, there has been a long chain of events since the PLO setback in 1982 which add up to an embedding of their suffering self. Sabra and Shatila, the Battle of the Camps and the peace process all contributed to reinforcing this part of their identity. Mobilisation for the refugees Mobilisation on the refugee issue was initiated in 1995 and 1996 as a series of popular conferences were held in the West Bank and inside Israel. The conferences in refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza aimed to establish alternative paths to issues of representation, and thus called for the election of refugee leaders. This was never implemented, but the conferences led to a campaign on the rights of refugees (Badil 2001), including the establishment of research fora and NGOs such as Badil.7 A worldwide network called al-Awda was subsequently formed. The network


was based in Washington, DC, but had extensions in several parts of the world. Organisations were formed in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria as well as Western European countries. Activities of the Lebanon al-Awda group included the organisation of a meeting between children from Shatila and from Deheishe camp in the Bethlehem area when Israel withdrew from Lebanon—‘when the south was liberated’. As Israel blocked the border, a physical meeting was not possible, apart from holding hands or embracing each other across the barbed wire. A return meeting was organised in Cyprus in July 2001 instead (al-Majdal, issue no. 11, September 2001). In 2000, mobilisation around the refugee issue was fuelled by permanentstatus negotiations coming closer to substantialisation. One example of this campaign was a conference in Boston in April 2000, which aimed to elaborate an international action plan in support of the right of return. The National Committee for the Defence of the Rights of the Internally Displaced held a rally in Nazareth, and some 100 prominent diaspora figures issued a statement on the need for the refugee issue to be brought into focus in negotiations: We absolutely do not accept or recognize any outcome of negotiations that may lead to an agreement that forfeits any part of the Right of the Return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from where they were expelled in 1948 or their due compensation—and we do not accept compensation as a substitute for return. (Palestinian Petitions on the Right of Return, February and March 2000:156) In 2000, joint rallies were held in Washington, DC, London, Lebanon, Jordan and the West Bank. This was an entirely new form of mobilisation, focusing solely on the return issue, and it involved people who had been alienated from traditional political processes. The initiative was not related to the PLO and was therefore a unique type of activism. This new activism indicated the divergences between the leadership and the refugees on relinquishing the right of return.


Peace process derailed The Netanyahu years 1996–9 After the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir, a young religious student inspired by the ultra-right religio-nationalist movements in Israel, Simon Peres led an interim Israeli government. Final-status negotiations were initiated. New elections were called, to be held in May 1996. In the sombre mood in Israel, Peres was ahead in opinion polls all through the spring. Hamas suicide attacks in February/March and Israeli retaliation raids against Hizbollah in Lebanon contributed to a change in the scene. Anxiety among Israeli Jews made Benyamin Netanyahu’s call for ‘peace with security’ sound reasonable to many. Israeli Palestinians for their part refused to go the polling stations, in contempt of Israeli military attacks against Lebanon. Netanyahu won by a miniscule marginal over Simon Peres.8 In mid-1996 the Likud government decided to resume the controversial construction on Har Homa—or Jabal Abu Ghneim in Arabic— situated precisely on the border between what Israel sees as ‘Greater Jerusalem’ and Bethlehem and what to the Palestinians is occupied land. Another incident which caused positions to harden was the Israeli government’s decision in September 1996 to open up another exit from the archaeological Hasmoean tunnel that runs parallel to the Wailing Wall. The exit is situated at Via Dolorosa in the Muslim quarter of the Old City This decision, together with the increased support for settlements, provoked the Palestinians and an eruption of violent protest ensued. Nearly 60 Palestinians were killed in the turbulence. Settlement activities continued throughout the peace process, by all Israeli governments. In 2000 there were 200,000 settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, compared to 120,000 prior to the signing of the Oslo Agreement (www.peace-now.org).9 Bypass roads, cutting the West Bank asunder, as well as expansion of settlements meant the isolation of West Bank towns and villages into enclaves. Early elections were held in 1999 as Netanyahu, ridden by internal scandals, was unable to hold his government coalition together. Labour back in power, 1999–2000 The interim period of Palestinian self-rule ended on 4 May 1999, but was prolonged due to the delay in the process and because of early elections in Israel in May that year. When Israel returned to a government led by the


Labour Party, under Ehud Barak, much of the hard-won trust between the parties established by the Oslo process had already evaporated. As bilateral Palestinian—Israeli negotiations were resumed at the highest level in September 1999, the parties, however, agreed to the ambitious programme of allowing the peace process another year, and final-status negotiations were thus resumed. In the memorandum that was signed in Sharm el-Sheikh in September 1999, the Israeli government and the PLO/PNA consented that an agreement on the permanent status of the West Bank and Gaza, including the ‘difficult’ issues, was to be signed no later than 13 September 2000, exactly seven years after the historical signing of the Oslo Agreement. The PLO declared that no peace agreement could ever be realised unless agreement was reached on a just solution to the refugee issue. A just solution would imply Israeli acceptance of the Palestinian refugees’ right to return and to receive compensation. As time passed and no real break-throughs occurred, the Palestinian leadership stated that a Palestinian state might be unilaterally declared on 13 September in the absence of an agreement. Under heavy American pressure, the parties decided to give it a ‘final try’ at Camp David. Barak was under domestic pressure, as his coalition had cracked in the early Summer.10 Camp David: ending the conflict or ending the process? The atmosphere surrounding the negotiations in Camp David was a sort of ‘now or never’. Both Barak and Clinton were under heavy time pressure —albeit for different reasons. Barak faced increased internal opposition and feared for his political life. Clinton was about to end his term as US President and saw his chance of going down in history as the President who brokered peace between the Israelis and Palestinians slipping between his fingers. On 25 July, after two weeks of intense discussions, Clinton announced that the parties were unable to reach an agreement ‘at this time’ (New York Times on the web, 26 July 2000). The proposals made by Israel’s Ehud Barak implied Palestinian sovereignty over the totality of the Gaza Strip and more than 90 per cent of the West Bank. On Jerusalem, accounts reveal that the proposal implied that Israel would annex the main settlements in and around East Jerusalem and expand Greater Jerusalem. Palestinian suburbs would constitute an ‘outer ring’ with full Palestinian sovereignty, while Palestinian neighbourhoods in the vicinity of the Old City—such as Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan and Wadil al-Joz—would make up an ‘inner ring’, which would have an extended form of autonomy while Israel had overall sovereignty Metropolitan Jerusalem would be divided into an


Arab and an Israeli municipality, i.e. Israel would have sovereignty over a city with two municipalities (Hammami and Hilal 2001:8). According to the Palestinian version, it was never formally declared that a Palestinian state was the goal of the process. The West Bank was further divided into three separate areas, fragmenting sovereignty and implying overall Israeli control (Palestinian Negotiation Team 2001). Concerning the Old City, there was to be Palestinian sovereignty over Muslim and Christian quarters, while Haram al-Sharif would be underPalestinian ‘permanent custodianship’. The proposal would, according to the Palestinians, cement the fragmentation of Palestinian-controlled territory and lead to split sovereignty. Jerusalem would be separated from its hinterland. In an interview conducted by Benny Morris, Ehud Barak calls those Palestinian allegations a ‘lie’ (Morris 2002). In Israel the proposal was extremely radical, breaking a number of taboos. In the Israeli version, Barak had offered Arafat nearly everything he had asked for without any Palestinian counterproposals. According to the Palestinian position, the proposals implied an important step forward, but failed to constitute a framework for an agreement. The refugee issue Although in public discourse Jerusalem has been presented as the main hurdle, the refugee issue was, according to some observers, another stumbling block (Hammami and Hilal 2001:9; Hanieh 2001). Participants in the negotiations report that the refugee issue was barely discussed at Camp David (Agha and Malley 2002). On the refugees, what was discussed at Camp David was the return of a few thousand refugee families from Lebanon through the family reunification scheme. Further, an international fund for compensation and resettlement in host countries would be established. Israel required that the fund also compensate Jews who came to Israel from Arab states during the 1950s. Palestinians requested that Israel take moral responsibility for the refugee crisis, something that Israel continued to refuse to do, although some minor openings were made. One such step had earlier been taken when Labour Member of the Knesset Yossi Katz stated that Israel must admit responsibility and allow 100,000 refugees to return (al-Shaml Newsletter, no. 18, October 1999). An even earlier indication of such preparedness was in 1992, when Shlomo Ben Ami, then chairman of the Israeli delegation to the Refugee Working Group, said: ‘The Palestinian refugee problem was born and the land was bisected by the sword, not by design, Jewish or Arab. It was largely the inevitable by-product of Arab and


Jewish fears, and of bitter and protracted fighting’ (quoted in Zureik 1996: 47f.). This statement implied a certain (Labour) readiness to admit at least partial responsibility. Official PNA speeches after Camp David revealed some optimism: The figures forwarded by the Israeli side on the issue of refugee return under family reunion schemes are so ridiculous that they cannot even be taken as symbols or promises. But here again, an Israeli taboo has been broken. In fact, one may say that under the guise of rejecting the principle, the Israelis are already discussing numbers. (PNA 2000b) However, although the Palestinian leadership might have been prepared to relinquish the right of return, the vociferous galvanisation of the return issue made it clear that this was not something that could be easily sold to the Palestinian grass roots. The collapse of the peace process in 2000 should be seen in light of this gulf in opinions and of the fact that the refugee question had not been brought any closer to a resolution during the years of the peace process. In August 2001 the joint Israeli-Palestinian think-tank, the Israeli Palestinian Center for Research and Information, conducted an opinion poll with refugees residing in the West Bank and Gaza. The poll revealed almost total support for the view that the right of return to original homes and villages was a pillar of any future peaceful settlement (IPCRI 2001).11 The fact of ‘no agreement’ at Camp David was depicted as the loss of a historical opportunity. Ehud Barak further claimed that any concessions presented during the summit were no longer valid. US President Bill Clinton entered into the Israeli discourse, applauded the efforts made by Ehud Barak and expressed ‘surprise’ as well as ‘frustration’ over the fact that Arafat did not accept the deal (New York Times on the web, 26 July 2000), despite Palestinian cautions beforehand that the time was too short and the preparations insufficient. A peculiar feature of the negotiations was the Israeli demand that a final-status agreement should include a clause announcing that the conflict had now ‘ended’ and no further claims could be made. In January 2001, after three months of intense violence (see pp. 161–7), the outgoing President Bill Clinton again reached for some kind of agreement. In a speech to the Israel Policy Forum in January 2001, Clinton described the American proposal. On the refugees, Clinton said:


a solution will have to be found for the Palestinian refugees who have suffered a great deal—particularly some of them. A solution that allows them to return to a Palestinian state that will provide all Palestinians with a place they can safely and proudly call home. All Palestinian refugees who wish to live in this homeland should have the right to do so. All others who want to find new homes, whether in their current locations or in third countries, should be able to do so, consistent with those countries’ sovereign decisions. And that includes Israel. All refugees should receive compensation from the international community for their losses, and assistance in building new lives. (Transcript of Clinton Remarks 2001) Clearly, the refugees were to be repatriated to a Palestinian state. The marathon negotiations in Taba and Eilat in late January meant a substantial closing of the gap between the parties. Reportedly, the Israelis agreed in principle to a return to the 1967 ‘borders’, while the Palestinian side agreed to the continuous existence of settlement blocs under Israeli sovereignty (Sontag 2001:84). The Israeli side further proposed a text to serve as a ‘joint narrative’ of the refugee disaster. Progress was made, but there was no agreement on a particular text. The principle of a land swap was discussed in further detail, although the parties did not agree on the percentages (Moratinos Nonpaper 2002).12 According to Clinton’s formula which formed the basis of negotiations, the right of return would be acknowledged, but at the same time the proposal emphasised that return to present Israel in any large numbers would not be feasible. Each refugee would be presented with five options (Moratinos Nonpaper 2002): rehabilitation in one’s current place of residence, including citizenship; absorption in the new state of Palestine; resettlement in territory acquired through a land swap; immigration to a country outside the region; return to Israeli territory. The options would be shaped in a manner that would channel immigration as much as possible to options other than a return to Israel. In order to achieve this, an accelerated rehabilitation programme and generous economic aid would be offered to Palestinians who forwent the option of immigration to Israel. Immigration quotas for Israel would be lower than those set for other destinations. Israel would have the sovereign right to decide who would enter Israel (Le Monde Diplomatique, Special Focus 2001, www.Monde.Diplo.com). Taken together, these options would be considered implementation of Resolution 194. Israel further suggested an absorption programme of 15 years (Moratinos Nonpaper 2002).


Against the backdrop of escalating violence negotiations were difficult, and neither Palestinian nor Israeli public opinion was inclined to compromise. Moreover, the Barak government itself was on the verge of collapse. In December 2000 Barak resigned from his post as prime minister and called new prime ministerial elections. In the February elections Likud leader Ariel Sharon won a landslide victory. Eventually, Israelis and Palestinians were engulfed even more deeply in the bitter cycle of violence. Statements were still made by officials on both sides on the necessary steps for a compromise. In October 2001 Sari Nusseibeh, newly appointed Minister of Jerusalem Affairs,13 stated that the acceptance of the establishment of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, i.e. in the West Bank and Gaza, meant that the refugee issue must be settled within the borders of this state. This suggested that the refugee issue should be settled through claims of collective or national rights rather than individual rights of return. Although this was what the peace process had actually offered the refugees, the explicit recognition by a Palestinian official of this was highly controversial and ignited an intense debate.14 Refugee organisations such as Al-awda demanded that Nusseibeh be dismissed from his position (http://www.al-awda.org/). Fawaz Turki wrote in the polemics that followed: Enough toying with our history, our rights and our identity. It is bad enough that diaspora Palestinians have had to endure unspeakable suffering for well over half-a-century as they waited for their right of return to be implemented…. And it was bad enough that, as they waited, the frenzied packs descended on them at Tal Za’atar in 1976, at Sabra and Shatilla in 1982 and during that dreadful time in 1983 known as the ‘war of the camps’…. But it is worse than bad when they were told, by an influential Palestinian, no less, that all that waiting and all that suffering had been in vain. (Turki 2002) Sari Nusseibeh was ‘naive’, ‘disloyal’ and ‘out of line’. His privileged Jerusalem lifestyle rendered him—in Turki’s eyes—incapable of understanding the reality of exile and the truth of waiting: Not only did he not experience the hunger, the cold and the destitution that were the lot of Palestinians expelled from home and homeland in 1948, but he did not know behind the blackened walls of that encapsulated word we call a ‘refugee camp’, a whole


generation of Palestinians grew up to whom the notion of Palestine had immediacy and concreteness. Its memory sustained them, its idiom defined them, and its reality was as real to them as the wince of their own muscles. (Turki 2002) In early February 2002, following further deterioration of relations between Israelis and Palestinians, Yasser Arafat, in a New York Times article, stated that the refugee issue had the potential to cause further turmoil if it was not dealt with in appropriate terms. He wrote: ‘How is a Palestinian refugee to understand that his or her right of return will not be honored but those of Kosovar Albanians, Afghans and East Timorese have been?’ However, he also underlined that the right of return must be implemented in such a way that Israel’s demographic concerns would be taken into consideration (Arafat 2002). There was immediate mobilisation of organisations such as al-Awda, Badil and others working on refugee issues: Any attempt to abrogate the rights of Palestinian refugees would set a disastrous precedent in international human rights law. It will send a clear signal that, with enough military power and US support, ethnic cleansers who expel civilians from their homes, steal their property, and prevent them returning for long enough can expect to have their illegal territorial conquests blessed with international legitimacy and signed agreements. (Al-Awda 2002) Territorialisation of leadership/the PLO, 1994–2000 The most substantial result of the peace process between 1994 and 1999 was the establishment of the PNA. Diaspora state- and nation-building was territorialised. However, collective memory as well as the overall political project had for decades been geared towards larger goals. Self-rule and the step-by-step approach remained a far cry from what had been struggled for. The focus on statehood and self-determination implied a shift of focus also in identity and nationalism. The official discourse was now geared toward ‘building the state’ (Lindholm Schulz 1999), as state gained precedence over land (Farah 1999). As large parts of the PLO moved to the West Bank and Gaza with Yasser Arafat, opponents of the process remained outside. The PLO was now to represent the larger Palestinian cause and the diaspora, while the PNA was to represent the West Bank/Gaza


Palestinians. The PLO and the PNA were soon blurred, and in many regards the PNA took over the functions of the PLO. This transformation of official nationalism resulted in a radical change of representations among refugees. Rather than viewing the PLO as representing the essence of the Palestinian problem, the refugees became the sole true signifiers of national identity (Farah 1999:37). State-building The self-government extended to the Palestinians was limited indeed (cf. Butenschøn 1998), given its distinction between ‘people’ and ‘territory’ (cf. de Jong 1998). Nevertheless, the agreements created a de facto if not de jure allowance for intensified Palestinian state-making, given that the PNA now gained control over population, territory (however limited and divided), presence at international borders, and control over internal functions usually in the hands of a state bureaucracy—such as education, administration, taxation, social welfare, etc. The Palestinian political structure was also provided with a presidency, a police force and passports,15 both material and symbolic aspects of statehood. However, this project has been characterised by ‘authoritarianism in decision-making, the anti-institutional personalisation of power, and the pervasiveness of violence in the system’ (Robinson 1997:175; cf. also Frisch 1997a, 1997b; Hilal 1998), involving a personalised political system circling around a charismatic neo-patriarchal leader (Frisch 1997a, 1997b), plagued by economic mismanagement, personalised law-making by presidential decrees, a crippled parliamentary assembly, militarisation and severe human rights abuses. The system thwarted all political initiatives and participation through co-option, control and coercion. Also, this had its legacy in PLO statism in the diaspora. However, this project also provided a new debate on democracy, governance, human rights, accountability and the rule of law. The establishment of the PA and thus the PLO on Palestinian ground also meant a restructuring of the outside-inside relationship, so that the exterior leadership again gained the upper hand (Litvak 1997; Robinson 1997). Institution-building and political structure The elections to the Legislative Council and of the President in January 1996 introduced an entirely novel phenomenon and institution into Palestinian political life, as they were based on the legitimacy of popular


franchise, rather than a revolutionist logic in which decisions were made in consensus because the ideology and requirements of struggle for liberation were seen as demanding a centralist-style leadership. Following the elections of January 1996 there was a formal division of the interim government into three branches: the executive, headed by the President, the legislature and the judiciary. The early cabinet (1994–6) was primarily composed of a combination of representatives of families from the traditional elite and urban notables and PLO bureaucrats, together with a few representing the West Bank/Gaza professionals and civil intelligentsia. According to Robinson (1997), personalisation of politics was a means in the strategy of undermining the intifada elite. However, patronage politics is a more enduring feature of PLO-style state-building and needs also to be seen from the perspective of lack of statehood, lack of territorial bases and the quest for legitimacy There was a real discord of interests between the executive and the legislature, concerning legislation, government accountability, corruption and mismanagement. The executive held back from ratifying laws and resolutions that had been passed by the Council. Most seriously, the Basic Law was not passed by the Authority, despite three readings in the Council.16 According to many, the executive was deliberately trying to marginalise the legislature (interviews with PLC members in autumn 1997; JMCC 1998).17 In the initial phase, the Council meant a lively input into Palestinian political debate, providing courage and seriousness. However, with time the Council was weakened and fragmented, as indicated by the low number of delegates showing up for sessions.18 Within the context of the agreements, the PNA was to be responsible for internal security, external or Israeli security being one of the trickiest issues in the negotiations. The result was a militarisation of Palestinian politics and society (Frisch 1997b; Usher 1998). Former guerrillas and activists were to protect Israel from attacks by the Palestinian opposition. The PNA was thus caught between a rock and a hard place, being pressured by both Israel, its partner in the negotiations, and its own opposition. PA repression—in particular in 1996 following the series of suicide attacks in February/March and after the signing of the Wye River Agreement in 1998—against the Islamists involved mass arrests, closure of universities, civil infrastructure and charity organisations, physical abuse, torture and restrictions of basic rights and freedoms. In 1998 the signing of the Wye River Agreement required even firmer security measures from the PA. The al-Aqsa intifada is the clearest indication that the PNA has


not been able to cope with the simultaneous pressure from Israel and its own opposition as well as from within the ruling elite. Elite collisions of interest The peace process not only laid bare the rift between the opposition and mainstream Fateh, but manifested and intensified conflicts within the Fateh movement. This conflict was largely formulated around issues of governance, political system and democracy. Many Fateh representatives19 delivered a harsh critique of the personalisation of politics, lack of democracy and human rights abuses. In August 1998, Arafat faced a threat of no confidence in the Legislative Council because of the accumulated frustration concerning the neglect of Council recommendations following the ‘corruption report’20 issued by the Council in the summer of 1997. Arafat therefore announced a change in the government. Much to the dismay of large parts of the Council, all ministers remained in office, including Nabil Sha’ath (Minister of Planning and International Cooperation) and Jamil Tarifi (Minister of Civil Affairs), who had been accused of corruption in the Council report. The main change was the enlargement of the cabinet through an addition of some 10 ministers. Some of the new ministers, such as Sa’id el-Krunz and Yousef Abu Safiyeh from Gaza, belonged to the category of previously critical Fateh PLC members. Others were more loyal PLC members, such as Fateh member Ziad Abu Zayyad. The balance of the cabinet was nevertheless altered by the inclusion of more PLC members and more ‘insiders’ in the cabinet. Still, top ministerial positions were kept by returning PLO cadres and influential families. The inclusion of critical Fateh members was seen by many as cooption. Independent figures such as Hanan Ashrawi (previously Minister of Higher Education) and Saleh Abdel Jawwad Saleh (previously Minister of Agriculture) declined office because of a reduction in their influence. The conflict within Fateh was further evident in the drive for Fateh elections,21 pushed by Marwan Barghouti, General Secretary of Fateh in the West Bank and elected to the PLC in 1996, which were stalled by Arafat due to concern over an inside challenge. In the wake of the peace process, there was a decline of legitimacy of the political system as such. Not only did Yasser Arafat lose support and legitimacy, but all of the political factions suffered from decreased political mobilisation and support. Because it was territorialising and acquiring new responsibilities in terms of governance without formally achieving the longstanding goals of the Palestinian movement, the legitimacy which the PLO had been based on was waning.


A decline in legitimacy was indicated in opinion polls. In an October 1999 poll, 53 per cent of the respondents evaluated the performance of the President’s office as ‘very good’ or ‘good’ (CPRS, Opinion Poll # 44, 14– 16 October 1999), compared with 71 per cent in June 1998 (CPRS, Opinion Poll # 33, 3–6 June 1998). Corresponding figures for the Legislative Council were 37 per cent in October 1999 and 44.6 per cent in June 1998. The cabinet was evaluated positively by 43 per cent of respondents in October 1999, compared with 53 per cent in June 1998. If presidential elections had been held in April 2000, 39 per cent of the respondents answered that they would have voted for Yasser Arafat (CPRS, Opinion Poll # 48, 30 March-1 April 2000), compared with 62 per cent in November 1997 (CPRS, Opinion Poll # 30, 27–29 November 1997) and 88 per cent in the elections of 1996.22 In December 2001, after 15 months of uprising, 24.5 per cent of the Palestinian population claimed support for Arafat (JMCC 2001). This remained, however, the highest figure for any political personality. These figures then indicated a loss of political legitimacy on behalf of Yasser Arafat and the political system which he has incarnated. There was a corresponding decline in support for the political factions, including Fateh. In March/April 2000, 36.7 per cent of the population stated that they supported none of the political factions or groupings indicated in the survey (CPRS, Opinion Poll # 48, 30 March-1 April 2000). As of late 2001, the factions appeared to be unable to capitalise on the Al-Aqsa intifada, and 26.1 per cent claimed support for Fateh, while Hamas and Islamic Jihad together received support from 26.6 per cent. The latter figure was a definitive increase in support since the low point of Hamas support in 1996. But 30.4 per cent of the Palestinian public did not trust any political or religious faction JMCC 2001). As Arafat fell from international grace during the spring of 2002, demands were made by the USA and the EU for a process of reform of the PA. In May 2002 Arafat called in a speech for political reform and for elections to be held. The parliament endorsed the position and an international taskforce was formed, with the mission of assisting the reform process. A new cabinet was introduced, slimming down the executive and bringing the number of ministers down from 30 to 21. In September 2002 a new PLC session was held. Now, Arafat faced heavy opposition, in particular from Fateh members of the Council. When it was clear that a no-confidence vote would be lost, the cabinet announced its collective resignation; Arafat approved the resignation. Elections were scheduled for the beginning of 2003.


UNRWA In line with historical Palestinian fear of ‘resettlement’, rather than improving living conditions in the camps, PNA efforts to alleviate the predicament of Gaza refugees, in particular, implied—to a limited extent—housing projects. However, very few refugees were able to afford the expensive apartments that were built in Gaza. In addition, many projects were directed towards solving the housing shortage caused by the returnees rather than alleviating the housing situation of refugees, because of political sensitivity. Since the start of the peace process, the question of UNRWA’s future role has been increasingly in focus. UNRWA’s headquarters were moved from Vienna to Gaza. In 1994 UNRWA launched an initiative called the Peace Implementation Programme, which focused on job creation and on improving living conditions in the camps. The programme was launched in cooperation with the PA, and for the first time there was an official, formal agreement with a Palestinian authority. The meeting between UNRWA and the PNA has not been free of friction. In a sense, the peace process has come to mean that UNRWA is the sole actor still representing the refugees (Farah 1999:13). The ‘al-Aqsa intifada’ In the vacuum left behind by Camp David, simmering frustration among the Palestinians over the protracted peace process reached a climax with Ariel Sharon’s visit, with heavy security, to the Temple Mount on 28 September 2000, which was interpreted as a direct challenge and a statement that Likud would never compromise on Jerusalem. Immediately following the incident, large-scale violence broke out in the West Bank and Gaza. In the beginning, the Palestinian uprising was to an extent spontaneous, based in large-scale demonstrations and soon funerals that were turned into confrontations mainly against checkpoints, but also settlements. Individual acts of terror against Israeli civilians occurred, similar to the suicide bombs of 1994–6. The Jewish settlement Gilo, on the outskirts of Bethlehem, came under attack several times from groups using the Palestinian town Beit Jala as their base. Palestinian tactics also included mortar attacks, the throwing of hand grenades, roadside bombs and explosives. Street fighting and demonstrations were soon joined by gunfire against settlements, ambushes and drive-by shootings, to which Israel responded by using heavy artillery. Soon, the uprising was militarised to an extent quite dissimilar from the first intifada, which broke out in


1987. The al-Aqsa intifada was not a mass-based popular uprising, although there were high levels of support.23 Israel reacted to the unrest by sealing off the West Bank and Gaza, putting parts of the West Bank under internal closure, helicopter attacks, rubber bullets against demonstrators and attacks against PNA infrastructure. UN Security Council Resolution 1322 of 7 October 2000 condemned acts of violence, especially excessive use of force by Israel against Palestinians, resulting in injury and loss of human life. International concern resulted in the report by the US-led Mitchell Commission which was made public in late May 2001. The report called for ceasefire arrangements, confidence-building measures and a resumption of negotiations with an emphasis on halting Israeli settlements and PA commitment to halting violence (Mitchell Report 2001). In June, the Tenet Plan called for a ceasefire. Israel demanded, however, that there be seven days without violence before a ceasefire could be implemented. The leading role on the Palestinian side was adopted by the Fateh tanzim (Usher 2000). The precise nature of the tanzim is debated. Literally, tanzim means organisation in Arabic. Graham Usher (2000) is of the opinion that the tanzim is a loosely organised structure of militias associated with Fateh. Israeli observers and security information claim that the tanzim was established in 199624 and that it is a military organisation within the Fateh hierarchy. Whatever the organisational command, the activities of the militia spelled a marginalisation of the PNA. The Fatah tanzim, the shabiba,25 the secular opposition and the Islamist factions formed a coalition of 14 political factions, the National and Islamic Higher Committee for the Follow-Up of the Intifada, although operations occurred independently of each other. Hence, the ‘inside’ middle command was in charge, as opposed to the higher echelons of outside/returning Fateh leaders. Marwan Barghouti, Secretary-General of the Fateh movement in the West Bank and member of the Legislative Council, played a leading role in galvanising people on the street, but was not necessarily in command of the fighting. Initially the uprising enabled Yasser Arafat to capitalise on the dramatic turn of events; he could be seen as not yielding to impossible Israeli demands and as close to the sentiments of the Palestinian grass roots without being directly involved himself. In 2002 the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, linked to the tanzim, claimed responsibility for a number of spectacular attacks. In the course of the uprising the continued existence of the PA was increasingly questioned. In summer 2002 reports stated that approximately 1,900 Palestinians had been killed and 575 Israelis. The Israeli blockade and heavy attacks against infrastructure caused immense destruction (cf. Roy 2001).


The economic situation deteriorated considerably. The economic recovery of 1998 and 1999 was turned into a disaster. In the last quarter of 2000, economic activity in the West Bank and Gaza fell by 51 per cent (UNSCO 2001:8). In the third quarter of 2000, 52,000 work permits were issued on a daily basis; in the fourth, this number had plummeted to 4,000 (ibid.: 8). Employment, which had grown by 8.4 per cent until September 2000, fell by 27.6 per cent between the third and the fourth quarters. Unemployment, which was 10 per cent in the first three quarters, was 28.3 in late 2000 (ibid.: 9). The World Bank estimated that 45 per cent of the population was living in poverty by the end of 2001 (World Bank Group 2001). According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, this figure was 64 per cent (quoted in ‘Targeting the Poor in the West Bank and Gaza’ 2001:88). As UNSCO noted, ‘the depth and severity of the current crisis is unprecedented’ (UNSCO 2001:10). The economy was transformed dramatically and there was an informalisation of the Palestinian economy as savings dried up and assets were sold. Mechanisms of coping/survival included borrowing, reducing consumption, and seeking relief from formal and informal assistance. UNRWA was forced to resort to emergency appeals, calling for additional funding in order to be able to provide a safety net for the refugee community in the West Bank and Gaza, who were suffering the economic consequences of the escalating violence. In relation to suicide bombs,26 mainly carried out by the Islamists, the pressure increased. During the summer and autumn of 2001, violence escalated further with a number of suicide attacks. Israeli retaliation consisted of heavy bombardment including bombs dropped by American F-16s, attack helicopters, tanks and partial reoccupation of Aareas. In October 2001 Muna Hamzeh wrote from Deheishe refugee camp: Nobody in Dhaysha is able to go to work except the ones with jobs in Bethlehem. Life has come to a standstill. All the zone A areas [under full control of the PA] are sealed off with tanks. We can’t get from Bethlehem to Hebron in the south or to Jerusalem in the north. All we can do is follow the news— everyone is glued to the TV every waking hour of the day, nothing else. (Hamzeh 2001) Part of the Israeli strategy was extra-judicial assassination of specific individuals. In July 2001 IDF helicopters shelled the Hamas press office in Nablus, killing not only the intended targets, Hamas leaders, but two Palestinian journalists and two children. On 27 August 2001, PFLP General Secretary Abu Ali Mustapha27 was assassinated. In October


the PFLP took revenge for the assassination by murdering Israel’s Minister of Tourism, Rahavam Ze’evi, who was from the ultra-right Moledet. Israel partially and temporarily reoccupied A-areas in response.28 In general, refugee communities in the West Bank and Gaza were particularly hard hit by both the economic and security aspects of the Israeli response to the uprising (Badil 2001). The situation was also affected by the ‘terror overlay’ which defined world politics in the Autumn of 2001 and throughout 2002, after the ghastly attacks against World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001. The change of President in the USA had meant a new policy on the Middle East and George W.Bush was not as eager as his predecessors to broker peace between the parties. However, the US administration showed concern over the course of events, and it spoke in favour of a Palestinian state and urged Israeli constraint. Ariel Sharon, however, exploited the situation, as he called his struggle a ‘war against terrorism’, marrying the Israeli position against the Palestinians with the American global ‘war against terrorism’. Sharon even went as far as accusing Arafat and the PA of being the architects of the ‘terror strategy’. The murder by Israel of the leader of Hamas’s military wing, Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, and two of his associates on 23 November 2001 caused a furious wave of revenge attacks, in the form of suicide bombs. The Likudled Israeli government came down heavily on the PA, causing severe destruction. Ariel Sharon’s government held Arafat responsible for the terror attacks and the world turned against Yasser Arafat, although Yasser Arafat condemned the suicide attacks and called for a ceasefire. Militants connected to the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Hamas and Islamic Jihad were arrested, and in early December an order was issued declaring all movements, organisations and gatherings that did not abide by the ceasefire illegal. A state of emergency was declared (‘Quarterly Update on Conflict and Diplomacy: 16 November 2001–15 February 2002’:118). Sharon eventually declared Arafat ‘irrelevant’. In the ultimate act of humiliation, Arafat was refused permission to go to Bethlehem for Christmas celebrations. In January 2002 the Karine A affair was revealed. Karine A was a ship loaded with weapons which was captured by Israel just before it reached the Suez Canal. According to Israel, the ship was purchased in Lebanon with PA funds and the weapons had been bought in Iran. The ship’s captain was a PA officer. The affair affected US involvement in the region. Later in January, the US administration declared that evidence pointed towards PA involvement in the affair but that there was no evidence of direct involvement by Yasser Arafat. In a letter to US Minister of Foreign Affairs Colin Powell, Arafat stated that


although he was not personally involved he was to be held responsible as the head of the PA. Israeli destruction implied further heavy attacks on infrastructure. Under the pretext that Rafah in southern Gaza was a bastion of Hamas mobilisation, in January 2002 the IDF demolished 54 homes, leaving 510 people utterly destitute according to UNRWA (2002). During 2001, 200 homes had already been levelled in Rafah. The politics of dislocation and dispossession thus took on unparalleled proportions. Also, the PNA airport, earned with a great deal of effort and inaugurated in 1998 in the presence of US President Bill Clinton, was partly destroyed by Israel. The PA was in turn forced to resort to crisis management. Some observers went as far as saying that it ceased to function (Roy 2001:17). The destruction of infrastructure became a heavy burden. The Al-Aqsa intifada is perhaps the ultimate evidence that the PNA has not been able to come out resolutely from its scramble between a revolutionary political culture and state-building. During self-rule, the PA represented this transformative step in Palestinian politics without having achieved formal statehood. With the intifada it was again struggle that bestowed legitimacy, but the Authority was not able to use this to its advantage. It sought to balance between those positions, incapable of functioning as a state or administrative apparatus, but equally incapacitated in furnishing proficient leadership of the intifada (Hammami and Hilal 2001). The legacy of the struggle was instead inherited by the Fateh movement and the tanzim, underscoring the contradictory aspects within the Fateh movement of constituting at the same time the main basis for state-building and staunch opposition toward the elite. With aggravated Israeli pressure, in February 2002 the PNA appeared to take a more dogged stance in the violent phase of the Palestinian—Israeli conflict. The hardened Israeli position (temporarily) increased internal support and sympathy for Arafat. In February 2002 a peace initiative was revealed by the Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, suggesting full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders in exchange for full normalisation by all Arab countries. The refugees were not mentioned in the original proposal, but subsequently a clause was added calling for the right of refugees to choose between return and compensation. March and April 2002 became particularly violent, with a number of suicide bombs against civilian Israeli targets and hard Israeli retaliation involving heavy clampdowns and partial reoccupation of Palestinian areas. Eventually the American administration condemned Sharon’s unabated warfare, calling it ‘not helpful’. The Special Envoy for


Middle East Affairs, Anthony Zinni, was sent to the region, and in a historical step on 12 March the UN Security Council almost unanimously29 endorsed an American-authored resolution explicitly recognising a Palestinian state as an aim (UNSC 1397 2002). The refugees were not mentioned. On 14 March the USA called for a full Israeli withdrawal from occupied areas. At the Arab Summit in Beirut on 27–28 March 2002, the Arab states endorsed the Saudi peace initiative. The only statement in the declaration that referred to the refugees was a clause calling for a just solution in accordance with Resolution 194 (‘Beirut Declaration’ 2002). On the eve of the first day of the summit, as well as of the celebrations of Jewish Passover (27 March), a suicide attack was launched against Netanya, killing 27 people. Other attacks followed, and on Good Friday (30 March) the Israeli army again invaded the West Bank. The first move was to literally besiege Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah, eventually leaving Yasser Arafat isolated in a few rooms of the compound, without electricity or water, communicating by mobile telephone. After a few days Ariel Sharon ‘offered’ Yasser Arafat the possibility of going into exile on a ‘oneway ticket’ (Sullivan 2002). Thus, the Israeli move in one blow illustrated the Palestinian search for homeland, their insecurity and vulnerability, their imprisonment and confinement and their refusal to surrender. Arafat declared that he would rather be a martyr than yield to Israeli pressure. Ramallah was the first city to be partially and temporarily reoccupied. Bethlehem followed suit and the cities were declared ‘closed military zones’, with entry barred even to journalists. Israeli soldiers went on houseto-house searches, allegedly searching for ‘terrorists’. Although we will refrain here from giving any clear indication of what really happened during this time—since we cannot at this time really know—demolition was widespread. Several independent organisations (such as UNRWA and the Red Cross) reported that the humanitarian situation was a disaster. In several areas the police force and the civil infrastructure of the PNA were completely devastated. The Security Council met twice within a few days. A resolution was passed on 30 March demanding Israeli withdrawal, endorsed by the USA. However, the following day George Bush expressed ‘understanding’ for Sharon’s moves. In a fairly confused US policy, on 4 April President George Bush called for immediate Israeli withdrawal. Secretary of State Colin Powell was eventually sent to the region. After a summer of harsh conditions but relative quiet, new suicide attacks occurred in September. Israeli retaliation involved renewed assaults on Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah.


This is not the place to analyse in depth the causes of the collapse of the peace process and the resort to violence. However, it should be emphasised that the neglect of the refugee question for the eight years that the Oslo process lasted (1992–2000) must be assumed to be one contributing factor. Palestinian opposition and critique, in particular from refugees and the diaspora, was founded in the absence of treatment of the refugee issue. The mobilisation that preceded the Camp David negotiations further underlines this issue. One particularly intriguing aspect of the violent period of time 2000–3, was the re-emergence of a discourse on ‘transfer’ in Israeli right-wing circles.

7 NEW HOMES AND IDENTITIES IN MOTION

If ‘diaspora’ in itself is a somewhat problematic notion in relation to the Palestinian experiences of exile, terms that are currently used to signify the diaspora condition such as ‘transnationalism’, not to say ‘hybridity’, are even more troublesome. As we have seen, exile has been the bedrock of nationalism and homeland politics and does not seem to lend much support to contemporary deliberations on a transnational existence. Lavie and Swedenburg (1996) have claimed convincingly that essentialism, the Palestinian way, is simply a superior strategic option to hybridity. Simultaneously many Palestinians in exile and, in particular, refugees in camps know nothing about ‘life as travel’, but experience exile as a confined space, a prison or a waiting room. Refugees are, as Hyndman (1997) has stated, largely ‘immobile’. Often…essentialism is a political necessity, particularly when the group or culture is threatened with radical effacement. Hybridity therefore does not appear to be a viable strategy for Palestine—a case of an exilic identity demanding to return to its historic territory (Lavie and Swedenburg 1996:12) Nevertheless, the very fact of a half-century old, sometimes longer, diaspora doubtless implies transnational facets of life and composes a core Palestinian refugee and exile reality. Identification as well as perceptions of home are accommodated, adjusted and transformed. Of course, all of this is related to class and context. Travelling is an experience for those who can afford it—or for those who are forced. However, camp refugees in poverty have also been moving; some for work in the Gulf, others displaced or resettled. Also, it must be emphasised that a travelling condition is not necessarily glamorous or even voluntary, but is determined by the fact that Palestinians are excluded and shut out from a great many


places, as accounted for in Chapter 4. Although refugees are often barred from movement, they often form part of transnational networks. Someone giving voice to a transnational existence (in a number of ways) is Edward Said. Although Said definitely acknowledges the kind of nationalism that is brought about by exile, he is also one of the few who have used the term ‘hybrid’ as a representation of Palestinian-ness: I believe that essentially unconventional, hybrid and fragmentary forms of expression should be used to represent us. (Said 1986:6) Hybridity is, then, not less true as an articulation of what it means to be a Palestinian than essentialist assumptions of rootedness. One side of Palestinian-ness is mobility, and despite the coercive nature of this mobility it is not conceivable to be mobile without somehow being affected in the process. Thus, not only when missing home, remembering Palestine or struggling to get there and to reverse the injustice, but also while moving between different destinations and when attempting to live as decent lives as possible elsewhere, Palestinian identity is acquired. It is thus, with Edward Said, very ‘Palestinian’ to gradually acquire new and additional ways of identifying: in fact our truest reality is expressed in the way we cross over from one place to another. We are migrants and perhaps hybrids in, but not of, any situation in which we find ourselves. This is the deepest continuity of our lives as a nation in exile and constantly on the move. We cannot always see this quality in ourselves, nor have we always wanted to. (Edward Said, ‘From Past and Future’, in Jayyusi 1992:728) Said puts it aptly: movement is ‘our truest reality’, i.e. the most ‘essentialist’ claim to be made about the Palestinians is their incessant mobility. Said also insists that hybridity has not been recognised by Palestinians themselves, i.e. their ‘truest reality’ has never been internalised as a genuine self-representation. Again, however, this mobility is not equally distributed throughout exile. There is a vast gulf between experiences. Yet the sheer fact of a refugee condition, of living outside homeland, is often depicted as travel.

NEW HOMES AND IDENTITIES IN MOTION 169

The transnational through class and economy How exile is lived and experienced is deeply affected by class and social position. A ‘true’ transnational existence has mostly (although by no means exclusively) been possible for the relatively affluent. ‘Class’ as an analytical term is in our case a problematic notion, as it intersects with nasab (social status) and traditional loyalty. Belonging to or descending from a prominent, historically landowning family ensures social status even though wealth may have vanished. At the same time, a refugee family which has accumulated wealth will continue to be a refugee family, with all the social designations that go with it (Rubenberg 2001:56). The catastrophe transformed class structures in deep ways. The most profound change was of course that land alienation removed the bases of production. A landless class of peasants on the move was created and turned into menial labour in agriculture and construction. In Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and other parts of the Arab world, Palestinians were prohibited from buying arable land (Smith 1984:158). Peasant refugees found work in agriculture, the building trades, industry or through further migration to the Gulf states. Some engaged in small shops and business. Women often supplemented family income by working in sewing and laundry (Smith 1986:99). Transnational business capital has also been established, influencing economic structures in several parts of the Arab world. Wealth that had been built up in Palestine was transformed into truly transnational, diasporic capital, investing in business, banking, contracting (ibid.: 130). Palestinian business capital composes an international network, operating from city hubs such as London, Athens, Cyprus, Riyadh, Qatar, Amman, Brooklyn, Detroit and Boston. Personal wealth in the older generation stems mostly from petrodollar and construction as well as property development in Europe and the USA. The most widespread activity has been trade, due to the fact that it requires fairly little start-up capital and can depend on networks of diaspora. In Latin America, business makes use of a triangular relationship between Palestine, Latin America and the USA. The USA as a market was important from early on, as products that were sold by peddlers frequently originated in the USA (González 1992:76). Bowman claims that the ‘bourgeoisie of the ghurba has always been socially and economically assimilationist’ (Bowman 1993:87), something which is supported by González’s studies on Palestinians in Honduras, suggesting that for them, the diaspora has not been as traumatic or politically as substantial. In a sense, however, the bourgeoisie has been more dispersed and shattered than lower social strata. The upper class never endured the


refugee camps, but made their living in well-to-do residential areas. ‘Here the connections between wider networks of Palestinian families and friends are not constantly rehearsed in daily life but instead run sporadically along telephone lines or scheduled air flights’ (ibid.: 87). Displacement meant individualisation and further isolation, unlike the situation for camp residents, who lived in a community defined by Palestinianism. To the PNA, ‘diaspora’ has come to signify the prospects of capital willing to invest in the West Bank and Gaza. To this end, a conference of expatriates was held in 1994. A particular Department of Expatriate Affairs has been established at the Ministry of Planning & International Cooperation and it has called for Palestinian diaspora capital to assist in the development of the Palestinian economy (Department of Expatriate Affairs, Ministry of Planning & International Cooperation 2000). Investment was, however, hindered by the uncertainties of the peace process, unfavourable and unclear regulations, the fact that products must be submitted to the Israeli Center of Measures and Standards, and lack of infrastructure. Investments have particularly been made in the construction sector (UNSCO 1998). Few have been made in productive enterprises. Stockholding companies involving diaspora as well as local capital have also been formed. The largest such undertaking is the Palestinian Development and Investment Corporation (PADICO), founded by 140 local and diaspora businessmen. Diaspora business activities are often family oriented. A typical pattern is that one part of the family remains in the old homeland, perhaps providing products, such as handicraft, while the other is abroad. Family networks One of the central aspects of transnational activities is family contacts. Simply keeping in touch with family members requires cross-border activities, and family relationships are maintained despite often vast distances. As Åkesson notes in a study of Cap Verdean diaspora/homeland relations: ‘Transnationalism as a social morphology is…first and foremost constituted through kinship ties’ (Åkesson forthcoming). Paying visits, spending vacations, sending letters, receiving phone calls, attending weddings and funerals, helping to facilitate migration, sending remittances are all more or less routinised ways of maintaining contact, of keeping the family together despite wide dispersal. Bassem, who came to the USA in 1963 and lives in Washington, DC, says that ‘there hasn’t been a Saturday’ when he has not called his family in Ramallah. He has visited Palestine at least once a year since then (Bassem, Washington, 9 May 2001).


It is a task of sorts to keep family webs together, as members of a family may be dispersed in several countries and continents of the world. Given the social fragmentation and the alienation that resulted from the catastrophe, and the destruction of social and economic institutions and infrastructure, the family has been the major remaining institution to which to turn for some kind of stability and security. A fundamental structure in sociopolitical organisation continues to be the hamayel (clan) system.1 The nuclear family is the ‘ailah, the primary source of loyalty and identity. The salience of the family as a social-security net underlines even further the need to maintain contacts. Family and kin function as a social network/ institution which assists in cushioning transformative experiences, facilitating migration, settling in new societies, assisting in bureaucratic encounters, giving credit, finding jobs and pooling resources. To many who migrated to, for example, the Gulf, it was kin and family members who assisted in finding housing and employment. Familism became of even greater salience than prior to the exodus (Migdal 1980:38; R.Sayigh 1994a:105). Economic matters were collective tasks, meaning that providing for a nephew’s education might take precedence over priorities of the nuclear family The family has, furthermore, had an important task to fulfil in constituting the primary source of storytelling and thus reproducing the implications of the nakba as well as the image of the homeland. The family has been a weighty institution in creating a Palestinian identity in exile and in restoring a Palestinian community (R.Sayigh 1977b:24f.). The task of telling the history of the catastrophe and of life as it used to be in Palestine has belonged, first and foremost, to mothers and women. Palestinians growing up in refugee camps recast how their mothers and grandmothers and ‘other elder people’ were the ones telling them and educating them about events relating to the flight, while their fathers were involved in the struggle (Mahmoud, Göteborg, 24 January 2001). The creation of a collective memory was therefore very much a family business. Younger generations became part of the narrative produced by their parents. This not only meant the reproduction of family history, but became a form of national(ist) political education (Ghabra 1987:110) in a gendered division of labour. Storytelling has, however, changed through time, as those who actually left are growing older and dying off. The parental generations of today do not hold any memories of their own related to the homeland. The restoration of a collective memory is growing increasingly difficult. One project with that purpose is that of the Arab Resource Center for Popular


Arts in Beirut,2 where children started to ask their grandparents and write down their stories in order to archive a memory (I Wish I were a Bird 2001). Holidays/traditions /family matters Important occasions on which to gather the family are two of the most significant events of life: weddings and funerals. Family members from all over meet and networks are strengthened as well as recreated. Members of families often meet for the first time in years. Those who cannot attend a wedding or a funeral telephone and speak to everyone who is present at the time. Mourning is respected throughout family networks in diaspora (Ghabra 1987:95ff.). Marriages are often transnational, in the sense that men in the American or Gulf diaspora frequently return to the West Bank to find a bride from their home town. Also, to younger generations growing up in the USA it is to some extent important to find a Palestinian spouse. Ardi, a young Palestinian living in Washington who was born and grew up in Toronto, met his wife at Birzeit and recounts how difficult it is to find a partner for life in a North American context: We met in Birzeit in the summer of 1994 where I was studying at the international studies program, and that was really good. Sort of a very romantic meeting for us. It is hard to find, it has been very difficult in the Canadian context, as I am sure it is in the American context for a lot of American-born Palestinians to find exactly what you want in a future mate. (Ardi, Washington, DC, 20 February 1999) Alqudsi-Ghabra states that the conditions of exile have changed Palestinian marriage patterns considerably, as Palestinians from rural and urban backgrounds increasingly intermarry and young men and women meet through work and school rather than by traditional matchmaking (Alqudsi-Ghabra 1990:40). Another important aspect of Palestinian marriage patterns is the increasing number of Palestinians marrying foreigners. This is again truer of Palestinian men marrying women from their respective host countries (Arab and non-Arab), because Islam and tradition do not permit a Muslim woman to marry a non-Muslim man. Over the decades these intermarriages have introduced an additional aspect of hybrid or mixed identities, even though children of such couples frequently are considered and see themselves as Palestinians. In interviews, many young Palestinians in the USA pointed out to us that they consider it a better choice to marry a Palestinian, preferably of similar background


or from Palestine, in order to preserve Palestinian identity and existence. Such a choice is certainly favoured by most Palestinian parents. Mahmoud, who has resided in Sweden since 1989 and has been a Swedish citizen since 1991, has most of his family still living in Lebanon. He has eight sisters and brothers, of whom one sister and one brother are in Australia. He calls family members on holidays such as al-Eid and alFitr. The family assembles when something extraordinary happens, such as the wedding of a brother or an illness of their mother. Summer vacations are other instances when it is possible to meet. Mahmoud’s family gathers about every third summer. When the family gathers, socialising is rather intense. To many Palestinians in the diaspora (i.e. those who are allowed to visit Palestine at all), it is very important to bring their children to visit either Palestine, if possible (return visits), or, for example, Lebanon, to provide them with knowledge about that aspect of their identity For Palestinians in the USA as well as to Palestinians in the Gulf, summer visits have been frequent. For young American Palestinians, summer visits to Palestine are important childhood experiences. They are festive occasions when young people coming from the USA are spoiled by aunts, uncles and grandparents and when there is an opportunity to socialise with cousins of the same age. Many Palestinian families in the USA are fairly strict when it comes to their children and their encounters with the other sex, especially when it comes to girls. While in Palestine, however, the extent of surrounding social control in the form of family, kin and neighbours is greater. Parents do not feel the same need to supervise their youngsters, and therefore pursue a more liberal strategy, to the contentment of the young people (Hammer 2001). Economy/remittances Economy and remittances are also important aspects of keeping the family together. The family as a social-security system implies that the economic affairs of the extended family are collective duties. In 1998, remittances to Palestinian households in the West Bank adn Gaza equalled 16.4 percent of GNI. The money sent is spent on new housing, food and clothes for children, education, and helping parents, brothers and sisters. The importance of remittances lies in the collective orientation of Palestinian households. ‘It is a “duty” and often connected with heavy social pressure’ (Hovdenak 1997:64).


In economic affairs, I am always present in the sense that I contribute to the livelihood of my mother together with my brothers. We have an account, and everyone sends money there. This is a subject which brings us together. We meet and discuss, like: ‘I have sent 500 dollars now, that’s enough for now, call our brother, he said he would pay’ Or like now, one of my brothers has a daughter which needs to study at high school and that costs money Then he calls me, and I pay a certain amount. Particularly in Lebanon, everyone has to contribute, because the need is so large. (Mahmoud, Göteborg, 24 January 2001) Remittances may be problematic. Ibrahim came to Sweden from Syria in 1966 as a 16-year-old, as part of an UNRWA-sponsored project to provide refugees with education and vocational training. He was supposed to study technical subjects in Göteborg. However, the imbursement that he was provided with was small. One-quarter of this had to be sent to his family since there were still small children who had to be supported. Ibrahim could not afford to continue studying, but instead found a job in the (then) thriving shipyard of Göteborg (Ibrahim, Göteborg, 2 April 2001). The decline in the importance of the family No, just once a year they will pass through here or we will pass through there. And when we are together, we are very close, but we don’t really communicate regularly My parents do on occasions, like holidays and that. My mother used to write a lot. I don’t know if she still does. So it is more like when we are coming through we call and say, ‘Hey we are going to be there next week’ and then we spend a couple of weeks with them and then we return until we see each other again. (Sa’ad, Washington, DC, 20 August 1998) Despite the weight bestowed upon the family, the family as an institution is also undergoing dramatic changes as a result of the diaspora, social fragmentation and wars. Families have been shattered also in the sense that men migrating for labour have left families behind. Subsequently, and although the family maintains a prime importance in social affairs, there has been a trend away from the hamulah structure and a reinforcement of nuclear families (Ata 1986; Warnock 1990:55).


For many, the sheer difficulties involved in meeting at all make gatherings impossible. The forms of family linkages which are at all possible to maintain are bound to have strenuous effects. Especially from the perspective of those abroad, the family ‘shrinks’, since it is impossible to maintain contacts to the extent needed or wanted. Family relations cannot be reduced to phone calls, occasional letters and summer visits. Nabil3 explains how in a small area in Beirut there used to be about 40 households related to the extended family. In 2001 there were four left: Distance loosens relations between family members, not the feelings for each other. I only see my brother every five or six years and once I didn’t see him for ten years, but our love for each other did not become weaker. What I mean by weakening is that you lose touch with their daily lives and daily problems…. We talk on the phone. You make sure they are okay and that is it You can’t keep up relations over a long distance and long periods of time. They become strangers, different from if we were living in the same town or village. (Nabil, Beirut, 31 July 2001) Many interviewed for this book talk about the impediments to meeting. Mahmoud (Göteborg, 24 January 2001) speaks about the difficulties for his sister, who lives in Australia, to visit Lebanon, especially since she has seven children. For Hisham, with two brothers in Germany, one brother in Beirut, one sister in Syria and one in Saudi Arabia and his mother in Cyprus, family gatherings are rare, simply because they are expensive. It is expensive, it is more expensive to go home than to go on a regular holiday. Contacts decline over time. It is not the same as before; everyone leads their own lives and has their own worries. (Hisham, Göteborg, 14 February 2001) Dispersal affects everyday life and everyday concerns in the sense that family members are leading very different lives. Transnational studies tend to focus on the processes of maintaining relations as if it is possible to keep a Palestinian family together in a very ‘Palestinian’ way. But since all the members of a dispersed family are affected in different ways by their lives in host societies, time and energy simply go into processes of coping with present surroundings. Everyday life and concerns eventually (to an extent) replace both the dream place of Palestine and social relations defined by that place.


Dispersal and fragmentation are therefore not only physical; something happens to the very cement of the family Family gatherings mean short meetings, often on festive occasions when the frictions of daily life and routine are not present. At the same time, it is precisely short meetings which are strained. There are many things to be told and sorted out. A space is opened up for varied interpretations and negotiations of socialisation, of upbringing, of social and moral codes, of behaviour, of cultural reproduction, of housing and of property (cf. Appadurai 1997: 43f.). The impact upon individual family members of various host settings leads to disappointment from all sides for family members. Distance might mean a constant sorrow for missed ones, as it does for a woman in Ein al-Hilweh camp whose son lived in Germany. She had not seen her son for 21 years. He did not have residence rights in Lebanon and could not even come to his sister’s funeral when she died in childbirth. The woman spent her days just waiting for him to come home. The distance might also mean that other social networks might replace the family as the most important form of social nexus. Fadwa takes this point further: I can’t travel so much. I can’t afford it. I don’t know how long it has been since we met all sisters and brothers together. My brother in Germany was here twice or three times. I visited my sisters in Jordan four years ago. All of us, we haven’t seen each other maybe in 15 years. When my mother got a Swedish passport it became easier for her to meet her children. No one has the energy to write letters. It happens sometimes, but mostly we talk on the telephone. But it costs so much. It means a lot to me, I have to call someone when I am sad. I have to talk to someone, and everyone that I would like to talk to is abroad. I can’t handle it, I know that it costs a lot, but it helps. I call fairly often to my friends, those who were with me in Cyprus, they mean more than family to me. I am depressed, and they understand immediately. (Fadwa, Göteborg, 26 February 2001) Fadwa used to work for the PLO in Beirut and left in 1982 for Cyprus, where she worked on the PLO newspaper. In Cyprus she went through a transformative phase of her life with comrades in the PLO which meant that their shared experience and knowledge brought them even closer together than the family. In 1991 she came to Sweden. Although the family is still the most important institution when it comes to providing assistance for both migration and homecoming, this pattern is


definitely under strain. When returning, it is often not relatives who help out, but assistance has increasingly been received from friends met in Kuwait (Le Troquer and Hommery 1999:50) or from PLO comrades and associates. Recreating Palestine from afar Palestine is recreated in exile in numerous ways, and to a significant extent Palestine is the centre of life also in exile, as is evident from the restoration of memory outlined in Chapter 4. In Western countries it is important for many to have Palestinian or Arab friends. Speaking Arabic and cooking Arabic food are other ways of sustaining close links with Palestine. Many Palestinian households in the diaspora also recreate Palestinian homes in the way they decorate their houses. For example, with pictures and models of the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque, posters of Yasser Arafat, embroidery, pillows, plates with mother-of-pearl, Palestinian flags and other cultural and national ‘icons’, people build little Palestines in their homes. In other ways too, Palestine remains a central feature of life. To one Palestinian, who feels well integrated in Swedish society and has many Swedish friends, it was nevertheless the case that Palestine was still the hub of his social universe in Sweden: I have many Swedish friends whom I met in Lebanon. Still, most of the Swedes I meet privately, I knew most of them in Lebanon…. Palestine is the centre of my social relations. (Mahmoud, Göteborg, 24 January 2001) For many, although certainly not for all, socialising with Swedes has come about through politics. Friends have been met in organisations and activities that have taken a political stand and they sympathise with the Palestinian cause. Socialising often occurs around activities that are intended to strengthen links with Palestine. During recent decades, there has been a strong mobilisation of Palestinians in the diaspora, not only in the refugee camps or Arab countries. There are a multitude of Palestinian associations in a variety of host societies. Often these are linked to the PLO, but also to organisations in the countries in which they exist. Support for the PLO and PLO-related activities are living aspects of the diaspora. Given the politicisation of the Palestinian cause, the PLO has been a cornerstone of people’s lives. People have sympathised with different PLO factions, even though they live far away from the actual battleground. Mobilising activities are, for example,


to meet on days of commemoration or of importance to the national discourse, such as Land Day Sabra and Shateela, demonstrations, etc. Until the time of the Oslo accords, organisation was for the most part political and linked to PLO organisations. In the USA Palestinians have mostly worked from within ArabAmerican organisations to fight anti-Arab discrimination, to promote an understanding of Arab culture, to lobby, etc. The larger, more embracing Arab-American associations, however, tend to focus on Palestine as the most important political issue. One particular feature of Palestinian experience in the USA is the close-knit Ramallah community (Christison 2001:106). Ramallah communities focus on cultural and social issues. Their annual conventions deal with assistance for family reunions and also function as a spatial context for finding a spouse for sons and daughters (Hammer 2000). Other examples might be charitable organisations, the organising of embroidery sales, and sending money to Lebanon or the West Bank. The aim of organisations in Western countries has been to put political focus on the Palestine question and to create counter-images in the West, to sculpt alternatives to dominant media representations, which are experienced as highly ‘unfair’ and ‘untrue’. Socially, the purpose has been to foster closer links between Palestinians and provide a setting for promoting communal solidarity Islamic associations and mosques have also (and increasingly so) played a central part of this. Muslim identity, as well as Islamic organisations, has gained in credence in the USA since the early 1990s. Conducive factors have been political developments in the Middle East. Political activism related to the PLO and the factions decreased during the 1990s as the answers seemed no longer to be found within the Palestinian political organisations. The peace process left Palestinians in the USA with a growing sense of political frustration and an identity crisis (ibid.). Also, identifying as a Muslim community implies that Palestinians belong to a larger community, with potential advantages. The growing assertiveness of Islamism in the USA is another contributing factor. Examples of Muslim organisations are American Muslims for Jerusalem and the Islamic Association for Palestine. Their focus on issues of weight for the Palestinian community means that there is a potential reconciliation between American, Muslim and Palestinian identities (ibid.). Since the mid-1990s Islamic associations and identities in Sweden have also become more assertive:


The religious associations are more organised. They have points of congregation, mosques and so forth. There are associations to drink tea and teach the children Arabic. But it isn’t the revolutionary culture that is communicated today. It is much more the traditional culture, religion, Islam, festivities, playing cards. (Mahmoud, Göteborg, 24 January 2001) It is difficult to know whether the increased assertiveness of Muslim associations in Sweden is a trend or not, and, if so, what the reasons for it are. According to Mahmoud, it all had to do with the peace process, its failure to deliver, as well as the delegitimisation of the PLO and the political factions. Another reason might be that the mosques and religious associations offer a source of shelter and stability to migrants, who otherwise become fairly isolated in the new society. In Sweden, the Palestine Labour Union (Arbetarförbundet) was a major political organisation until the early 1990s. The union retained strong links with the PLO, but also with the Swedish Social Democratic Party, which has served as a vehicle for Palestinian organisations in Sweden. This remains true to some extent, through various projects and initiatives. The pattern has changed, however. The influence of the factions has diminished considerably. There has, in fact, been a decline of the role of the PLO worldwide, as well as of the factions as vehicles of mobilisation. AlAwda networks (discussed in Chapter 6) have become a new channel for political mobilisation as the PLO has lost ground. In Jordan and Lebanon there are—apart from the various PLO organisations—a variety of NGOs working with a multitude of issues ranging from human rights, health, education, women’s issues to culture and debke dance groups. Specific refugee camps have had their own organisations caring for social and cultural needs. In Kuwait, the leftist PLO factions have been subdued and political work has in general been rather docile. Of greater importance have been social gatherings, commemorative events, cultural festivals, embroidery groups and other events intended to preserve a supposedly genuine Palestinian culture. The al-Aqsa intifada has created a wave of sympathy and solidarity among Palestinians in the diaspora. One indication is the celebration of Land Day in Göteborg in 2001, which became a manifestation of solidarity with the current uprising rather than a commemorative event related to Land Day. The same is true of demonstrations organised by alAwda groups elsewhere. Demonstrations have aimed at promoting the refugee question but have ended up in trying to muster support in Western countries for the plight of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza


during the uprising. The devastating turn of events in the West Bank and Gaza in early 2002 left Palestinians in the diaspora exceedingly anxious about what was going on, getting in touch with family members on a daily basis. Politically, Palestinians all over the world protested against Israel’s behaviour and demanded world action, underlining the potential global political dynamics of dispersed populations. Demonstrations were held in most European capitals and an intense polarisation occurred between members of the Jewish and Palestinian diasporas. In some cases, for example in France, protest against Israel was accompanied by antiSemitism (Taylor 2002). Palestine by satellite and in cyberspace One (new) way of linking up with Palestine is through the global reach of information technology. On the Internet one can find everything from official PNA sites, through various organisations in the West Bank and Gaza and in the diaspora, to personal home pages. Transnational communication technology facilitates the maintenance of relationships throughout the diaspora as well as the maintenance of a national(ist) discourse. Information technology brings Palestinians closer together and therefore reduces geographical distance. Of course, it must be stressed that access is quite limited. However, in many refugee camps, too, there are computer centres or Internet cafés. One project, the Across Borders Project, was initiated in 1999 by the Information Technology Unit at Birzeit University. Its intention was to create a ‘virtual space’ for refugees to communicate without the restrictions of borders and checkpoints (see www.acrossborders.org). Part of this project was the establishment of email and letter communication between refugee children from Shatila and Deheishe in order to link their experiences. The two groups, linked to the Sumud centre in Shatila and Ibdaa in Deheishe, decided to meet at the Lebanese-Israeli border when Israel withdrew from south Lebanon in May 2000. The events in 2000 are depicted in May Masri’s film Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (2001). She accompanied two of the girls in the project, one from Shatila and one from Dheishe, from when they started communicating, through their dramatic meeting at the border fence and into the first weeks of the second intifada. One story born on the Internet reveals, with a great deal of pain, how Palestinians live both in a globalised situation and behind barbed wire. Maher, is a young Palestinian refugee in Lebanon who met his girlfriend on the Internet. They met once in real life, in May 2000, at the border, through the barbed wire. Maher took a picture of his friend through the


fence and this picture captures in a nutshell the situation of Palestinians in Lebanon, barred from where and with whom they want to be. The ‘new intifada’ in 2000–3 was intensely covered not only in the global media but also on local television. Now, Palestinians had access to their own official media as well as a number of local radio and TV stations covering the events. The media played a mobilising role, playing nationalist music and broadcasting endless live coverage. By Israel, this was seen as incitement, and it led to military assaults against the official broadcasting institute in October 2000. A few days after the first Israeli attack against the public Palestinian broadcasting company, Israel was exposed to a flooding on the Internet which wiped the Israeli Foreign Department and Knesset off the web. A war in cyberspace developed. In turn, Arabic websites were overwhelmed with derogatory messages. Later, in January 2002, after the killing of six people at a wedding in Israel, IDF bombed the Voice of Palestine station in Ramallah. What is more, Arab satellite stations helped spread support throughout the Arab world (Hammami and Tamari 2000:11). Talking about the ‘new intifada’ breaking out, global satellite TV made possible a new form of solidarity in the Arab world and in the diaspora. In Göteborg Hisham watched al-Jazeera broadcasting from Qatar, a channel broadcasting from London, another one from Abu Dhabi, and el-Manar, which is the station of Hizbollah (Hisham, Göteborg, 14 February 2001). Watching the intifada became a routine, particularly in the West Bank and Gaza, but also in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan, as well as in Göteborg and Washington, DC. Following events through live coverage and satellite TV became a way of connecting with what was happening. Following alJazeera meant access to completely different news coverage than was available on Swedish channels. Those who were not able to watch satellite TV themselves heard the latest news from neighbours and friends. In more general terms, satellite TV has created a new possibility of linking with the homeland, since the landscape in fact gets much closer through the presentation of actual pictures from the homeland. Home away from home, moving homes, new homes and homes in your head Transnational existence and life in exile pave the way for possibly different and inventive conceptualisations of home. Palestine as an entity has for many faded away into abstraction, while new relation-ships with new places have been moulded. Also, however, in metaphorical terms the exile as a condition has become a new homeland.


Fawaz Turki has described the phenomenon of looking at ‘exile itself as our homeland’, and the ways in which the jil-al-thawra and generations to follow did not necessarily sense the same kind of closeness to the homeland as the jil-al-nakba (Turki 1994:vi; Farah 1997:274). Mureed Barghouti, upon returning, elaborates the dilemma of an alienation which is magnified by generational fissures: The occupation has created generations of Palestinians who are strangers to Palestine, generations who are familiar with every alleyway of their places of exile, but who are ignorant of their homeland. These generations never have seen their grandmothers squatting in front of the tabun (clay oven) baking bread for them to dip into olive oil. They never spied the village imam, with his turban and Azhar-style piety, lurking near the monastery spring hoping to glimpse the young women bathing. These generations are condemned to love an unseen lover, a distant, difficult lover separated from them by guards and fences and sleek terror. The occupation has transformed us from the sons of Palestine into the sons of the Idea of Palestine. (Barghouti 1998a:60f.) The homeland is simply no more. Such stories illuminate the quandary sensed in losing concrete connections with the homeland, although a nationalist discourse where this place is so intensely worshipped has been fostered. Being deprived of specific, direct connections means that the homeland is transformed into a symbol. However, homeland has in a sense been lost also in terms of its figurative meanings. Turki (1994) describes how the homeland no longer speaks to him. Rosemary Sayigh’s accounts of identity among camp Palestinians reveal that national identity was more of a problem for the younger generation, who had never known the homeland. For them, uprooted-ness was even more bitter: ‘All they had ever known was the camps’ (R, Sayigh 1979: 166). And, as Sayigh describes, this bitterness and disorientation served as important catalysts for action, for casting the resistance. However, eventually the gradual emptiness of a homeland discourse may prove a dilemma. As time passes and as new generations lose the urge to return, the potential for mobilisation might eventually decline. Now there is a new generation without memories of either the homeland or the resistance. For these young people in Lebanon, identity is to some extent defined by default: there are no other choices. Hope has vanished. To this generation ‘return’ becomes an abstract principle, the miracle solution to all


problems. In a project4 involving the writings of refugee children, two children of Shatila stated: We know nothing about Palestine, the place, except the stories we were told by our parents who never even lived there. Palestine has become a place we escape to every time we face a problem in our place of residence, Shatila, or every time we think about our tragedy as refugees. But what’s the use of having a Palestinian identity if Palestine the place is not ours? … So we don’t carry the identity of the place we live in, and the identity we carry has no place. Who are we? (‘Through Children’s Eyes’ 1999:53) For refugees, current places of residence are not capable of rendering meaning. Turki, however, recognises that it is the lack of homeland rather than the homeland itself which has shaped Palestinian identification: So it was in the land of others, in the place where it was not, that Palestinians found their peoplehood. For the Palestinians did not truly become Palestinian until their country was dismembered and its population scattered to that state of having escaped. Our name was born in exile, not the home-ground. (Turki 1994:160) Placelessness here constitutes the new homeland. It is not only ‘roots’, but to an equal extent ‘routes’, which generate the basis for meaning. Furthermore: After twenty-five years of living in the ghourba, of growing up perpetually reminded of my status as an exile, the diaspora for me, for a whole generation of Palestinians, becomes the homeland. (Turki 1972:175f.) Being Palestinian is thus an ambiguity in a sense a paradox—which, however, does not, of course, say anything about the authenticity of its representations. Palestinian-ness is brought about because of a loss. This constitutive deprivation is constantly recreated and re-narrated, providing one of the ‘essences’ of Palestinianism. There is both a desperate and a hopeful clinging to the past and the homeland. Yet the homeland becomes increasingly symbolic and distant, which is why it is in the context of being


without a homeland that Palestinian-ness is created. Therefore, there is no homeland but exile. A peculiar feature of this dilemma is again caught by Turki: For once Palestinians in the homeground build their state, there will be nothing ‘Palestinian’ about them. They will be just another people with a state, now cut off from all that the name Palestinian has historically conferred on Palestinians everywhere. (Turki 1994:272) That is, Palestinian identity and belonging are constituted in a deterritorialised, stateless ground. However, Turki’s point is that when achieving the goal, when realising the struggle, the ‘essence’ of Palestinianism will have faded away Palestinianism is therefore a nationalism of paradoxes. It is created out of exile and expulsion; its focal point is certainly a territory, but a territory which is out of reach. If it is territorialised, that nationalism may well lose its ultimate foci of mobilisation. Home is wherever you are/where your family is Another contrast to the place-bound imaginings of the literature and narratives in Chapter 4 is how home is constructed not as something removed, far away, or confined to a particular place, but as something which you can carry within you. Home is therefore wherever you are. Home is within me. I carry everyone and everything I am with me wherever I go. (Hammad 1996a:ix) Our homeland flows in our blood. We carry it with us in this world, wherever we go, no matter how far. (Yusuf Abu Lauz, ‘Trees of Words’, translated by Sharif Elmusa and Namoi Shihab Nye; in Jayyusi 1992:93f.) Certainly, one aspect of such definitions is the tenaciousness with which Palestinians cling to Palestine, the land. The image of the homeland is always there; it does not go away. In a way, this can be seen as reinforcing nostalgic nationalism. At the same time, such accounts imply (to an extent) that homeland, or the image of it, is portable. They suggest a


possibility of not staying rooted. You might then feel at home, without being there. Another, related, concept of home common among Palestinians is ‘[h] ome is where my family is’ (Hammer 2001). Therefore, despite the placenostalgia which the Palestinians have fostered, there is also a notion of home as embedded in social relations rather than in a certain place. One young Palestinian in Juliane Hammer’s dissertation said: Home is, I think, there are two places where should be home, your home is where your family is. The home is where your background is, where your ancestors are from. But, see, that definition splits where home is for me. My family, everyone I grew up with, even my brothers and two of my sisters they live in the States, so that is home for me. And also over here [Palestine] is a home for me, because this is me, this is my family, it is where my dad was born, my dad’s dad and everybody. (Hammer 2001:244) Since family remains the sole secure structure, family becomes what can be called ‘home’, again underlining the prominent role of the family. Home is where the family currently resides as well as where family members originated from. Many Palestinians solve the predicament of compelling ‘homelessness’ by defining ‘home’ in plural terms. Palestinians who have lived in the Gulf, for example, have held allegiance to Jordan, the country providing them with citizenship, to Kuwait and the life they led there, and to Palestine as their place of origin (Van Hear 1998:200). For others, there is no place that could be home except Palestine: The friendship level with the Kuwaitis was really high, much stronger than ever in Lebanon. But I didn’t feel at home, it couldn’t be home for anybody. We had a good life there, a good income, good friends…. Now, I don’t feel that any country is my home. The only way I can think of to feel at home is if I returned to Palestine, I am sure about that. (Nabil, Beirut, 31 July 2001) For Mahmoud, who was born in Lebanon and grew up in Nahr el-Bared camp in northern Lebanon, it is definitely possible to call several places home. When asked where his home is, he replies:


Of course, Nahr el-Bared, it is where I am born and have grown up. (Mahmoud, Göteborg, 24 January 2001) The refugee camp is therefore one kind of ‘home’; it is the place of childhood and of individual, self-experienced memories. It is also ‘little Palestine’; it is in the camp where Palestinian-ness has been produced. The camp in Lebanon as home, however, requires a Palestinian presence, i.e. it is the refugee camp (cf. Chapter 4) and not Lebanon which is home. For Mahmoud, ‘his land’ is Palestine: I always feel that Palestine is my country, because I grew up in little Palestine, Nahr el-Bared. I have been there because of Israel. I was there because I am a refugee. My identity is always Palestinian; there was no other alternative. To always be seen as a refugee, stateless and without future. Therefore I built a dream, Palestine. But if I go there, I will probably feel as a stranger. (Mahmoud, Göteborg, 24 January 2001) This homeland is an abstract place, a ‘dream place’. It is not a place to which Mahmoud could attach any memories of his own; the memories were always of the generation before. Although ‘my mother is from Tiberias’ and ‘my father from Safed’, Mahmoud himself is ‘from Nar elBared’. Mahmoud lacks a ‘time’ and Palestine becomes a ‘dream’ and a ‘mental thing’. However, Mahmoud and his generation also cling to political notions of Palestine: When I talk to my children, the homeland is not a house and it is not trees, the homeland is also a mental thing, and mentally I always feel that I am in Palestine. (Mahmoud, Göteborg, 24 January 2001) In contrast to the earlier generation, who had in fact lost specific homes and houses, the generation(s) brought up in refugee camps and in exile carry Palestine with them ‘only’ as a ‘mental production’. Palestine as home is surely a birthright in this narrative, but at the same time Mahmoud admits that he would probably feel as stranger ‘at home’. There is also a third kind of ‘home’ in the new country of exile: Palestine is my country which I can identify with, but in practice, where I feel security today, that’s in Sweden. It is Sweden which gives me security. I can’t identify as Swedish, but I feel more security


in the Swedish society Swedish citizenship gives me security and confidence. I have a passport and a country which I think helps me if I need it. The passport provides me with a strong sense of selfconfidence; it makes it easier for me to move. If they need to throw me somewhere, then there is a country to which I can be thrown back. When they deported me from Ben-Gurion5—it was so terrible —they took me with a police car and they took my passport and gave it to the pilot. I flied with SAS6 and then he said to me, the pilot, ‘welcome’ in Swedish. And it felt as though I could be welcomed somewhere. (Mahmoud, Göteborg, 24 January 2001) What appears significant to Palestinians living in Western countries is the sense of security provided by the passport and by the political system. The passport means that ‘you don’t feel that you are a foreigner’ (cf. Christison 2001:89). Therefore, in people’s strategies there is no absolute contradiction between fostering an image of Palestine as the ‘home’ from where one originates and coming ‘home’ to somewhere else. For second and third generations, life in the new society is ‘home’. For Rick, born in the USA, Palestine is an ‘acquaintance’ and part of identity, but not home (Rick, Washington, DC, 3 May 2001). Life in exile is not necessarily always a transit. It is conceivable to find comfort and security in other places in the world. This is not to reduce Palestinian homesickness or the political aspects of their nostalgia. However, in people’s lives and strategies, the distinctions between ‘native’/‘migrant’, ‘rooted’/‘stranger’, ‘here’/‘there’ are not impossible to cope with. This does not mean that one adopts, adjusts or assimilates. Neither does it mean that people’s sentiments and experiences of exclusion are not ‘real’ or that it is a simple process. The distinctions between apparently mutually exclusive categories are not, however, as sharp as one might initially believe. The co-existence of different aspects is part of the necessary coping strategies. To create a home even though you are far away from your original home is about finding security/safety, about coping with life. However, there are also those who completely reject the idea of another passport: When I was in Canada, they offered me to get an immigrant visa and I refused it. I wanted to be part of the revolution, what was I supposed to do with Canadian citizenship, I didn’t want it. I didn’t care and I didn’t need it at the time. And when I was in America, I


didn’t want it either, because I hate America, a lot. After six months I could have gotten a green card and residency and I didn’t apply, and two of my children, the younger ones were born there and could have gotten citizenship. I refused to do any of that and people told me that I should. I didn’t want it. How am I supposed to talk to my children about imperialism and that we are against America and Israel and I walk around with their citizenship? I didn’t want to live there anyway, I wanted to be in the Arab world. And I wanted my children to live like other Palestinians. They could have made their lives in America, but I didn’t want that. They were supposed to become Palestinian revolutionaries, that is what we are and we are Arabs. (Nabil, Beirut, 31 July 2001) In the statement above, American citizenship is particularly problematic because of US policy on the Middle East and because of the American role in world politics. Finding a secure place/adding and subtracting Experiences of security and safety in Western countries become a potential source of feeling at home. Many Palestinians in Sweden express a wish to participate in Swedish society. There is gratitude towards Sweden, and what is most appreciated is the political system, democracy and social security, although segregation and exclusion are very much part of the everyday life of ‘immigrants’ in Sweden.7 Unemployment is a considerable problem for Palestinians in Sweden, and there is a great deal of isolation, apathy and alienation, as shown in a study by Abdul Ghani (forthcoming). The welfare state is nevertheless seen as the most important asset of Swedish society: I try to pay my way, I work and pay taxes, listen what is going on, get involved. But it is difficult to become a part of Swedish society. But it is not only Sweden that has a responsibility. I also have a responsibility. The first years, I wasn’t interested in becoming part of society. I was always thinking of going back to Beirut. But it is also the case that one is judged from Swedish authorities, without even opening one’s mouth. Sweden means a lot to me, because it has come far when it comes to rights of citizens and women. It has given


me a job. Sweden will always be a part of me, even if I return to Palestine. (Hisham, Göteborg, 14 February 2001) In Palestinian poetry and literature, there has—apart from the works of Said and Turki—been relatively little focus on the ‘trans’ in the transnational or the kind of processes that have been reflected upon throughout this chapter. Not very much has been said about attachment to the new places where Palestinians reside. As Salma Khadra Jayyusi notes: there is very little attachment to the new places where the Palestinian has been territorialized. There does not seem to be any hope, in this literature, that Palestinians will be truly reter-ritorialized anywhere outside their own country (Jayyusi 1992:46) This is surely a feature to take seriously, and it seems to strengthen Lavie and Swedenburg’s (1996) argument that hybridity and globalism are not options. Yet there are examples of this, and perhaps this is something which is about to be changed by younger generations. Suheir Hammad8 is one example. Her Born Palestinian, Born Black (1996a) and Drops of This Story (1996b) certainly speak about Palestinian experience and many of her poems are as nationalist (although phrased in a new style) as those of her earlier compatriots. However, her writings also reveal a very Brooklyn experience. She is not only a Palestinian, but a New Yorker, yet a New Yorker at the margins. Her Palestinian-ness is not manifested in exclusive terms, but is associated with an identification with blacks, with other nonwhites, with women; and what is most important is her speaking from a marginal position, although that marginality is defined in Palestinian terms. Another example is Rawia Morra,9 a Palestinian woman living in Sweden. The meeting between her Palestinian experience and the Swedish language became enriching in a particular way: I am as crazy as ever but I have learnt to love pine-cones grey clouds and a cat and when I am cold


I dream of a wine-red velvet-scarf. (Morra 1996:58 trans. from Swedish by the author) The olive tree has not been replaced by the pine, but there is a possibility of love and of some kind of attachment. Sweden can never be a substitute or replacement for ‘Palestine’, but it is possible to love and to respect it, to be part of it and to feel secure. Surely, the affection is learned and acquired; it has not been earned easily, but it is nonetheless possible. Love for Palestine is not an exclusive kind of affection. Suheir Hammad has a similar description: ‘The want of my feet for Palestinian soil and Brooklyn concrete’ (Hammad 1996a:88). Palestine in the body Yet Palestine remains a focal point of longing. Kader is the son of an early migrant to the USA who has lived there all his life. When asked if he would live in a Palestinian state, Kader replies: Hell no. There isn’t any greater country in the world than America. Why would I give that up? When asked about his Palestinian identity he replied: It’s just wonderful because there’s just something about breathing in from every pore the history, the feeling that this is where you belong because your roots are here. (quoted in Christison 2001:98f.) While the USA in this case represents a system at ease, a system in which it is easy for individual choices to be realised, Palestine represents a bodily, sensual experience. America/the USA is a ‘great country’, while Palestine is about roots, landscape and history. Manar’s account is similar. In Sweden it is possible to ‘take part’ in the system, politics and society, but not to ‘be part of’ them: I will never become Swedish. After I turned 35, I am 45 now, the urge to go back has become stronger. I am accepted here, but it is not the same. I am not at home. In Jerusalem, I am part of


everything, incorporated. Here, I may take part, but I am not incorporated. (Manar, Göteborg, 2 April 2001) In Palestine, Manar feels incorporated; she needs only to be, while taking part in Sweden requires action. Staying in Sweden (or somewhere else) therefore means that important aspects of at-homeness are forever subdued. To some, exile means the loss not only of feelings of at-homeness but also of aspects of identity Fawaz Turki describes how he has lost ‘Palestinian’ ways and worldviews and how people he meets think he is American or even Jewish. Turki even questions his Palestinian-ness: I don’t look Palestinian. I don’t talk or walk or carry myself like a Palestinian. Maybe I’m not Palestinian anymore. There is a way you have when you’re a Palestinian, even one who grew up in Western exile, that gives testimony to what you have thought in the dark, that other Palestinians can sense. I don’t have that anymore. (Turki 1994:18) Processes of identification: hybridity? Transnational lives and attachment to new places also affect processes of identification. If ‘transnational’ is about activities and linkages that are cross-border, then ‘hybridity’ in contemporary literature has come to refer to the ways in which processes of identification are affected by meetings and by cross-border activities. Although these processes are interrelated, there is a need to differentiate between them. The memories of Edward Said and Fawaz Turki set out in this section, which will then turn to perceptions of identity among Palestinians in the USA and Sweden. Hybridity the Edward Said way In the Western world, Edward Said has come to epitomise the Palestinian exile experience. In a way, Edward Said personifies transna-tionality the Palestinian way, and, even more so, hybridity. However, Edward Said’s experience is untypical and has been extraordinarily ‘transnational’, cosmopolitan and hybrid from his early childhood. His father (Wadie) was born in Jerusalem, his family originating from Nazareth. His mother was also from Nazareth. As a young girl she attended the American School for Girls in Beirut and also spent time in Cairo.


Wadie Said left Palestine for Liverpool in 1911 and went from there to New York. Eventually he set up a paint company in Cleveland. Wadie Said spent almost 10 years in the USA, after which he returned to Palestine, but now with American citizenship. The Americanisation of Wadie was one of the powerful influences in young Edward’s life. Others were the presence of British colonialism and the cosmopolitan lifestyle of an ethnic/religious minority (Palestinian Christian) in Cairo. Tellingly, Said recasts how his very name has been a source of ambivalence in his life. He was named ‘Edward’ after the Prince of Wales, which also indicates how strong a force colonialism has been in identity formation. ‘Edward’ remains a conspicuously non-Arabic name, while ‘Said’ sounds very Arabic indeed: Our lessons and books were mystifyingly English: we read about meadows, castles, and Kings John, Alfred, and Canute with the reverence that our teachers kept reminding us they deserved. Their world made little sense to me, except that I admired their creation of the language they used, which I, a little Arab boy, was learning something about. (Said 1999:39) Many observers therefore point out the unique exclusivity of Said’s experience and his upper-class upbringing. Although that is certainly true, it is also the case that there is something highly familiar to many Palestinians in Said’s experience of exile and in his way of telling it. Later, from 1946 onwards, he went to the Cairo School for American Children and strove desperately to be as American as possible. Arab-ness was not a source of strength, ‘only embarrassment and discomfort’ (ibid.: 90), and was therefore something to refute. Edward became absorbed with differences in eating habits and clothing, and he incessantly compared everything Arab with things American. Palestinian identity was not important. Edward Said felt Arab perhaps, Christian perhaps, but he was more part of a cosmopolitan, upper-class lifestyle in an urban milieu which did not lend itself to easy categorisations. He led a privileged life, yet was constantly reminded of not being Egyptian, not really belonging (ibid.: 268). Until 1947, the family spent a lot of time in Jerusalem. From 1943, summer vacations were spent in a mountain village in Lebanon. The Said family left Jerusalem for the last time in December 1947, and did not return again. The exodus as such seems to have escaped the Said family, who left with relative ease. There was no trauma, but simply an end of part of life, Jerusalem life; Cairo was already ‘home’. However, being


deprived of Jerusalem meant that the family shrank, since the extended family could no longer be visited.

All of us seemed to have given up on Palestine as a place, never to be returned to, barely mentioned, missed silently and pathetically (Said 1999:115) The Americanisation that Edward Said dreamt of as a schoolboy came about in his early youth, but not as a simple or clear-cut process. In the 1950s he went to preparatory school in the USA and then to Princeton. Outsidedness persisted as a dominant feature of his life. Palestine and its political salience did not really hit Edward Said until 1967. The awakening was abrupt: And 1967 brought more dislocations, whereas for me it seemed to embody the dislocation that subsumed all the other losses, the disappeared worlds of my youth and upbringing, the unpolitical years of my education, the assumption of disengaged teaching and scholarship at Columbia, and so on. I was no longer the same person after 1967; the shock of that war drove me back to where it had all started, the struggle over Palestine. (Said 1999:293) Also, from the position of exile in the USA, 1967, the war and the ensuing occupation, and the wave of feverish Palestinian nationalism and revolutionary zeal constituted a transformative event. And, in many ways, exile is as painful for Edward Said as for any camp refugee. Yet the exile of Edward Said is also to an extent chosen. Fawaz Turki The story of Fawaz Turki—another Palestinian-American intellectual— is also a narrative of travelling and of hybridity When Edward Said grew up in the upper-class quarters of Cairo, attending English and American schools, Fawaz Turki was a poor Burj el-Barajneh camp boy. While Edward Said played the piano and listened to classical music on the radio, Turki sold chewing gum and shoelaces on the beaches of Beirut. Both have described the predicament of homelessness the Palestinian way in strikingly similar terms. Both ended up in the USA. Both engaged in the political struggle of the PLO. They have also both described the inexorable


trauma of seeing the homeland again and realising that they are no longer part of it. These two different experiences reveal something about the ways in which homelessness actually gives rise to identity and does not, as is often assumed, shatter it. The loss of the homeland and the significance of place thus exceed class and religious differences and other potential dividing lines. Outsidedness is shared. Turki grew up in a refugee camp in Beirut, then left for England, where he studied for three and a half years. After a short sojourn back in Lebanon, he left for Saudi Arabia, where he worked for Aramco. Returning again to Beirut, he found life increasingly distorted, restricted and restrained. He subsequently travelled to Australia, where he stayed for several years, working and acquiring an Australian passport. He worked hard in the bush and encountered discrimination against Arabs’ and ‘immigrants’. From Australia, he went to Nepal and then India (Goa), joining the ‘hippie generation’ and becoming a citizen of the ‘Woodstock nation’. Drugs were an essential part of this journey, and he points out the very un-Palestinian features of his lifestyle. Eventually Turki travelled to France and from there he went to Washington. For a period of time, Turki was homeless. His autobiography, Exile’s Return (1994), encapsulates the dilemma of being ‘neither-nor’; neither fully Palestinian nor fully American. An existential consciousness at the threshold between nationalism and transnationalism is manifested. Complementary identities Is there, then, an argument to be made for hybridity as a defining reality? How do people identify themselves within new host societies? Palestinians in Sweden tend to see Swedish society as well organised; it is easy to cope with the authorities and it is easy to live there, as an individual. Swedish society is seen as open and honest. The education system and its relative accessibility provide an individual with many possibilities, although higher education in Sweden is highly segregated and many ‘immigrants’ effectively remain outside the realm of higher education. To many parents, it is of the utmost importance that their children are integrated into Swedish society For Fadwa, it was very important to provide her daughter with a legal identity: ‘I never had a country or a passport, I really wanted my daughter to have that’ (Fadwa, Göteborg, 5 March 2002). Morally, my children feel as Palestinians, but they don’t identify as Palestinians. But they can identify with me as a Palestinian. It is an identification with me as a Palestinian but not with my country.


They say that ‘Dad is a Palestinian’ or ‘Dad is from Palestine, but we are Swedish.’ And they are Swedish in the sense that their mother is Swedish and we live a rather well-integrated life in Sweden. (Mahmoud, Göteborg, 24 January 2001) Mahmoud describes the Palestinian-ness of his children as related more to him as their father than to Palestine as a country It was important for me that they are not isolated from Swedish society, they live very much like Swedes. But at the same time, they are Palestinian to a large extent and they are very much aware of the situation. It is important for me that they know about Palestine and why I came here. I don’t want my children to go through what I have been through, to feel as strangers. I refuse to see my children as strangers in Sweden, or strangers in Palestine. I want them to identify with Swedish society. We celebrate midsummer and Christmas, but at the same time I want them to know why they have dark skin and why I came here, their daddy’s history. I try to push them into Swedish society. But I also have a responsibility to let them know why they are different. Sometimes they go with us in demonstrations, not always, I don’t force them. But most of the time they want to participate. (Hisham, Göteborg, 14 February 2001) Important features of strategies of participation in Swedish society are proficiency in the Swedish language, integration into school life and leisure activities. There is a great deal of sensitivity towards the different influences on children’s lives. Parents make conscious decisions to make it possible for their children and young people to appreciate both sides of a potentially dual form of identity Migrant parents live in a constant tension: what language to speak at home, where to draw the borders when it comes to moral codes, dress patterns, music taste, education, dating, traditions, leisure activities, etc. It is also important to socialise children born in mixed marriages into Palestinian identity, politics and culture. ‘Making’ children Palestinian certainly involves language, food and culture, but what is more important is political expression and participating in demonstrations, knowing the history and expressing an opinion. For Rami, who lives in Seattle, Washington, but grew up in Nuseirat camp in the Gaza Strip, it was important to teach his children Arabic. For him, it was problematic that his daughters might not be able to master the language, since he considered


that as potentially alienating from Palestinian identity and culture (Rami, e-mail interview, May 1998). For Fadwa, Sweden/Göteborg is a problematic home. For her daughter, however, Sweden as home is unambiguous: I live here, I have lived in several countries. My daughter has a home here, maybe she will live here. She has a home here, but I don’t. I like it here somehow, but it is so complicated here in Sweden. I miss it when I go somewhere else. But one can’t say home. It isn’t easy to explain. Sometimes, only for a moment, maybe I am standing on a marketplace and then I feel that I am a stranger. I don’t think about it all the time. But it comes to me suddenly, brief, brief moments. Where I am. The climate, the weather, the houses, everything. My daughter, she says that definitely she shall live in Sweden. For her, everything is clear. She is half—half. For her, that is okay (Fadwa, Göteborg, 26 February 2001) A year later Fadwa had found a work as project leader for a project on ‘immigrant’ elders and was more at ease. She now said: ‘I am here to stay’ (Fadwa, Göteborg, 5 March 2002). Children’s integration and increasing hybridity have become strong reasons behind decisions on whether or not to remain in host societies. For many, it would be difficult to uproot their children and try to re-root them in the West Bank or Gaza or another Arab country. Although, for example, Manar identifies herself solely as Palestinian and although she would like to resettle in Jerusalem, there are still things that are easier for her in Sweden than in Palestine. Manar came to Sweden in 1975 with her husband, who had studied in Sweden. In 1977 they separated and Manar’s husband went back to Jerusalem. Manar, however, chose to stay in Sweden with her son, since she was afraid that her son might be taken from her to live with his father: It would have been difficult to move back to Jerusalem. I was alone. And I was worried for the boy. Then the years passed, and he went to school, and it was difficult to move back. (Manar, Göteborg, 2 April 2001) Staying in Sweden is thus not always an active choice. Neither does it always come about as the result of outright necessity or restrictions on coming back. In some cases it is, instead, something that just happens. For many, having family and the fact of their children being rooted through


schooling means new bonds to a new place. For Fadwa, Sweden as a future ‘home’ was also important, since she defined herself as a feminist and she found the options for her daughter greater in Sweden than in any Arab country (Fadwa, Göteborg, 5 March 2002). Rather than ‘assimilation’, ‘integration’ or ‘hybridity’, what comes to the fore in all of the above strategies is creative ambivalence. Palestinians in the diaspora do not remain exclusively Palestinian; nor do they become fully American or Swedish. Nor is there an easy addition of identities. Instead, bits and pieces of traditions and customs are changed. People negotiate different sides of their identities. Palestinian identity is not yielded, nor is it simply ‘conserved’; it is complemented with new experiences, meetings and activities. The content of Palestinian-ness shifts. In Sweden, Palestinians celebrate midsummer and Christmas and enjoy it. They cook Arabic as well as Swedish food. They appreciate the social-security system, the opportunities for education and the political stability. Norms of upbringing are changed and accommodated. The Palestinian diaspora thus represents a fluid use of cultural styles and forms. This is (in general) especially true of youth cultures (Vertovec and Cohen 1999), which consciously pick and mix. One such story of cultural openness and the capacity to adapt is Dunia, who with gracious ease moves between the positions of assessing proposals by unseen hopeful spouses-to-be from her parents’ home town in Palestine and of her passion for heavy metal. Sliman tells how he was almost a ‘fundamentalist’ while on a return trip to the West Bank and now works for the American government. Another story is the following: I think I am coming to terms with it in understanding that I am really both, I am really both Palestinian Arab and American. I am both and it is possible to have this whole hybrid identity I don’t have to feel that I am strange because I don’t fit in one hundred per cent there and I can’t fit in one hundred per cent here. It is possible to be both. (Zuheir, Washington, DC, 13 August 1998) For others, American identity is more important, as is the case with Samer, who is more American than Arab. He would identify himself as an American of Palestinian descent rather than anything else. It is necessary to underline how this varies between different experiences. Palestinians who live in Arab countries have not become Lebanese, Syrian or Tunisian (although a not insignificant portion of Palestinians in Jordan identify as Jordanian citizens). For second and third generations in


Western countries, on the other hand, being Palestinian is one aspect of identity but not an absolute category How Palestinian-ness is defined is therefore very much influenced by contexts. Also, it is contingent on being a 1948 or 1967 refugee, on class and generational fissures. In addition, acquiring other identities does not imply forfeiting pride in Palestinian identity. On the contrary, Palestinian-ness comes across as part of an intersticed identity In the USA, the trend towards pride in particular ethnicities has made Palestinians more assertive about Palestinian-ness (Christison 2001). Rick (Washington, DC, 3 May 2001) was born and brought up in Ohio. The Arab-ness of his identity was sometimes experienced as a source of embarrassment during his childhood. He believes that being different has become much easier for his children’s generation, because American society is more defined by diversity today. It is not a question of whether one feels more Palestinian or more American, but those sides of identity come together as complementary forms. Since the USA is made up of difference, being an ‘other’ is a common experience. In Sweden, on the other hand, there is an official rhetoric celebrating ‘integration’ as a mutual process and multiculturalism as an enriching fact of society, which collides with unofficial but central norms and values about a Swedish citizen ‘self’ and an immigrant ‘other’. The ‘immigrant’ as a category is heavily loaded in Swedish debate. The authorities lump migrants of highly varied backgrounds and experiences together in the designation ‘immigrant’. In the election campaign of 2002,10 the integration of migrants to Sweden became an issue and the political parties debated whether or not Swedish citizenship was to be connected with certain language skills, pointing towards a hardening of the position of Sweden’s political establishment.11 A few days prior to the elections a TV programme was shown in which election workers, mostly from the Conservatives, revealed quite pejorative attitudes towards ‘immigrants’ and ‘foreigners’. This became part of the election campaign as well as the debate after the elections. Ambivalence/estrangement/discrimination Said has explained that exile is always to some extent a process of estrangement. It is not (for the most part) possible to become fully integrated in new societies: The pattern that sets the course for the intellectual as outsider is best exemplified by the condition of exile, the state of never being fully adjusted, always feeling outside the chatty, familiar world inhabited


by natives…. Exile for the intellectual in this metaphysical sense is restlessness, movement, constantly being unsettled, and unsettling others. You cannot go back to some earlier and perhaps more stable condition of being at home; and alas, you can never fully arrive, be at one in your new home or situation. (Said 1994:39) To yield to new cultural processes in new ‘homelands’ is only partly possible, and alienation, exclusion and outsidedness are as important as the possibilities of somehow accepting where one is: Sweden wasn’t easy for me. Everything was so difficult. All my life I have been very independent. I have worked all my life. I have been through so much before coming to Sweden. I am not poor, I didn’t come to get economic support. When I came to Sweden, I had to live in a hotel, or refugee camp,12 I had to stand in line to eat and wait to get 200–300 Swedish crowns in order to be able to buy something. It was so difficult. I cried so much, I have never cried as much as I did here in Sweden. I had left everything, I was 34, I wasn’t 20, I was already me. It took three years until I was granted a residence permit. I couldn’t do anything. The only thing that you do is to wait for the mail if there is a letter [from the Board of Migration]. It was three lost years. (Fadwa, Göteborg, 26 February 2001) Despite its advantages, the social-security system to some extent means a humiliating encounter with Swedish society in the form of labelling and categorisation. Becoming an ‘immigrant’ implies new labels and requires new skills in coping with the authorities. For Fadwa, a woman involved in the political struggle in Beirut, her encounter with the Swedish authorities was degrading. To wait for a residence permit or asylum is often a highly emotionally disturbing experience. The ideas of a genuine and homogeneous way of being ‘Swedish’ which everyone was supposed to learn irritated her. One example of this is in relation to the tragic killing of a young Kurdish woman in early 2002. The woman, Fadime, had earlier cut ties with her family, since she rejected family norms of dating and marriage patterns. Her father was charged with murdering her, leading to a debate on ‘honour killings’. One suggestion from the Swedish minister responsible for issues relating to immigration and integration, Mona Sahlin, was that new arrivals would be required to take a ‘driver’s licence’ in Swedish values and traditions.


Although many Palestinians in Sweden are unwilling to speak so much about outsidedness, it is clear that there are such sentiments. Hisham, who is a taxi driver by profession, is often asked ‘Where are you from?’ by passengers, with the implication that because of his looks he must be from somewhere else: But I don’t feel Swedish. People ask where I come from and then they say, indirectly, that ‘you don’t belong here’. So I will never belong one hundred per cent. A Swede is supposed to have blue eyes and another colour of one’s hair. Simply, I am not from here and I will not be from here. (Hisham, Göteborg, 14 February 2001) I can’t be from here, he says, pointing towards the restrictions on ‘taking part’. There is also a multitude of stories of outright discrimination against Arabs. Negative stereotypes are reflected not least in popular American culture, for example in films and the like. Many assert that during the Gulf War this increased. Amira, in Washington, DC, recalled how difficult it was to go to school during this time, and how difficult is was to realise that the general American attitude towards what occurred in the Gulf was so immensely different from her own. Another example of this is in relation to the terror attacks against the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es-Salaam in 1998: First thing you think is ‘Oh my God, I hope no Palestinian, Muslim or Arab, was involved’, why, because then we are again taken ten steps back. Even though it is only one individual, or ten or a hundred, we are all condemned. (Nizar, Washington, DC, 25 August 1998) After the terror attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, Muslims all over Western countries found themselves scape-goats. Although US President George W. Bush took care to say that the ‘war against terrorism’ was not a war against Muslims, in the immediate aftermath of the attacks against the USA he used the word ‘crusade’ to designate what sort of undertaking he was thinking about. Incidents of offensive behaviour, tighter control of immigration and immigrant communities, and human rights violations by the authorities became commonplace, and suspicion and prejudice became widespread in the USA as well as in Europe. Macropolitical global events thus contribute to restricting options for identification.


Another problem relates to difficulties in, for example, different perceptions of moral and cultural values. Ibrahim is a Muslim Palestinian married to a Swedish woman. Together they have four children. He thinks that, especially for the girls, Swedish morality is too loose and liberal. Dating is certainly acceptable, but there have to be limits. Bringing up children implies teaching respect for elders and keeping tight control of an adolescent’s dating patterns and potential sexual behaviour. Christison notes the same kind of ambivalence in Palestinians in the USA. For many Palestinians, American morals are too loose when it comes to youth culture, sexuality, divorce, alcohol, drugs, etc., and they try to build their own defence systems against that. Young Palestinians, and especially girls, are often quite tightly controlled by their parents (Christison 2001:89). Many send their children to the West Bank during the ‘dangerous age’, 12– 16, in order to keep them away from potentially risky influences. Cultural alienation is rather widespread. A study on Palestinian women in Chicago conducted by Louise Cainkar lends credibility to this argument: ‘Many Palestinian men and women fear that the entire familial foundation of the society will collapse if women focus their energies elsewhere than the family’ (Cainkar 1988:135f.). There is a strong fear that tradition and culture are threatened by exposure to American society. Women are the protectors of culture and nation in the sense that they are given the role of guarding against the intrusion of negative social values, of corruption, of moral degradation, and against Western cultural invasion (cf. Yuval-Davies 1997). Some young Palestinians become increasingly ‘Islamised’ when they reach a certain age. Nadir, who works as a financial adviseor in Washington, DC, was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents, lived in Jordan for a number of years and now lives in the USA. He talks about the difficulties of acquiring an American lifestyle: While I may assimilate here and all that stuff and I drink Diet Coke, I told you deep inside I am a component of Hamas and Hizbollah, Arab nationalism, hummus, tabbouleh, I am very Arabic…. My wife, she always laughs at me every time I go to an ice cream place. I stay and I look and look and look and then I get chocolate, or chocolate and strawberry, that is as much as I am going to deviate. While as the Americans they have rocket this and fudge, oriole and caramel and pecan as if 39 flavours are not enough. You could take me to a place that sells juice, I will look look, look and then get mango. Okay, I am a typical Arab in that sense, but Americans want


kiwi strawberry fruit combo. I don’t have that desire, so I can’t be friends with them I am alien in that sense. (Nadir, Washington, DC, 21 August 1998) The difficulties inherent in being ‘different’ in the gaze of others are eloquently expressed by Suheir Hammad: It lives on the back of my tongue. Where the taste of falafel and hummus mingles with the bite of plantain and curry. Pounded the garlic and peppers for my father’s faca beans every Sunday morning. Why couldn’t we just eat pancakes and bacon like everybody else? We had to have olives at every meal and pita bread with everything. I know now that I always loved that food. It’s just hard to be different all the time. (Hammad 1996a:51) Some completely reject the USA as an imperialist country with a materialistic, consumer-oriented, hollow culture and values and may live there for a while, but only in the transformative waiting period. Rami worried about his daughters growing up in a ‘materialistic, largely apathetic society like the US’ (Rami, e-mail interview, May 1998). Due to continuous feelings of, perhaps not outright exclusion, but a nagging sentiment of always being ‘on the sideline’ of things, not being seen as fully part of society and culture, many in Sweden as well as in the USA socialise more intensely with other Palestinians or Arabs than with Swedes or Americans: I get along much much better with people who aren’t like American, like totally American, I don’t get along with totally American people. I don’t know why. I have always felt alienated from the entire structure of what America is and what America means, I don’t really understand all this. (Randa, Washington, DC, 24 August 1998) ‘Hybridity’ is in fact a somewhat misplaced term. The same goes, however, for ‘integration’ or ‘assimilation’. What happens is not a simple addition of identities which are by themselves static and unproblematic. Instead, people’s identities form complementary structures of meaning and foci of belonging. There are constraints defined by official policies in host countries as well as by the politics of the diaspora leadership or home country, and structural restrictions in the form of socioeconomic factors,


etc., but individuals pick and choose rather creatively in determining their identities. Identities are defined by dualism, as are concepts of athomeness. Nevertheless, whatever we label this process it is clear that it does have political implications. Such a thinning out of identity and of attachment to the homeland runs the risk of diminishing the political strength of the Palestinian movement, which is why stories and experiences such as those told in this chapter are kept out of official deliberations on what it means to be a Palestinian. At the same time, the salience of the politics of Palestine is indeed a strong uniting factor throughout the diaspora.

8 COMING HOME?

We travel like other people, but we return to nowhere. (Mahmoud Darwish, ‘We Travel Like Other People’, in Darwish et al. 1984) Going back to the future The peace process thus did not bring the refugees any closer to return or to a resolution of the refugee issue. Return has not only been the gist of PLO politics, but has represented something larger than a demand or a political aim; it has served as a complete ideological system and a vision for the future. To the Palestinian refugees spending generations waiting for a life in dignity, return has been a chief purpose in life and a prime source of meaning-construction. It is assumed that ‘return’ is the only and ultimate solution to contemporary predicaments. Just like ‘loss’ and ‘struggle’, ‘return’ has become part of Palestinian identity. Fawaz Turki has said: He [a Palestinian] cannot say…that he does not believe in the Return. To reject the Return is to rip up the tree on which his history and raison d’être grow. The Return is the rock on which our nation in exile is founded and the social homeostatis that had cemented our people together in their encapsulated world. The passion for the Return is an expression of our identity, an ecstatic embodiment of its inward movement and preoccupations. It is as if the ultimate Palestinian question were: I want to Return, therefore I am…. [It is] pure and simply, Palestinian selfhood. (Turki 1977:68) ‘Return’ equals a doxa of Palestinian discourse, a hegemonic prin ciple to which there has been very little, if any, counter-argument. As outlined in

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Chapter 4, bereavement of both land and time suggests a loss of orientation in life, and therefore of meaning. Only a return can change present turmoil and non-existence. In a liminal condition, it is only the constant wish and hope of returning which is meaningful. Return implies harmony after turmoil, coming home after time in the wilderness. Return has been a central theme in literature and poetry: I will put on some of my old clothes, I will storm the rocks and thorns And this ugly wilderness To come to you. (Musa ‘Alush, in Elmessiri 1982:228) Through the struggle (storm), the ugly wilderness (exile) will be overcome and the writer will ‘come to you’, again a personalised Palestine. Yes, we’ll return and kiss the moist ground, love flowering on our lips. We’ll return some day while generations listen to the echoes of our feet. We’ll return with raging storms, holy lightning and fire winged hope and songs, sparing eagles, the dawn smiling on the deserts. Some morning we’ll return riding the crest of the tide, our bloodied banners fluttering above the glitter of the spears. (Abu Salma, ‘We Shall Return’, translated by Sharif Elmusa and Namoi Shihab Nye; in Jayyusi 1992:96f.) It is assumed that by returning, one can recapture home and time. One important symbol linking Palestinians with their past and their hoped-for future is the keys to their former homes. Many refugees have kept their keys as a symbol of the hope of return. Initially keys were kept because most believed they would return in a short period of time. The invitation to the right-to-return rally in Beirut in 2001 was written on a wooden key In addition, the symbol of al-Awda centre is a key. As time has passed and as exile has proved enduring, however, the hope and the dream have been transferred to the younger generation. Ceremonies have been held to hand over keys to the children. As the first generation came to realise that maybe they were not going back after all, then it was the children who would come home: ‘If we can’t go, then maybe our children will.’

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We lived all our lives thinking that ‘this time is coming’. But when is it coming? We don’t know. Or we said, ‘If we are not going there, our children may go there.’ I don’t know. We are waiting to see. (Um Sa’ad, in Lynd et al. 1994:55) If we don’t make it back, the next generation or my kids’ kids’ kids will make it. Don’t worry. (Um Ossama, in Lynd et al. 1994:106) Return has, however, become increasingly abstract, and has been placed in a distant, undefined tomorrow. It would and must happen, but when, no one could know. Hopes for the future combined with agonies of the present could be seen as analogous to the term ‘opsimism’, coined by the Palestinian author Emile Habibi (1985), implying a blend of pessimism in the short term and optimism in the long run. In a sense, and especially for younger generations, it is not Palestine in itself but facts of not being at home which are missed. The younger generations of the 1990s and 2000s do not have the memories of the older ones, neither of Palestine nor of the war and the conflicts around the camps in Lebanon. They cannot feel what their parents and grandparents felt, and their attachment to Palestine is in a sense built on myths and stories. Return represents the sole hope left in a hopeless situation. It is not based on knowledge or expectations, but the wish to return is a principle and in a way seems to be the miracle solution to all problems. Nevertheless, the hope of return is real also to large sections of this generation. Expressed differently: ‘Hope’ as part of Palestinian identity is another strategy to counter processes of victimisation and ‘feelings of powerlessness’ (Lønning 1998:163f; cf. Said 1994). In circumstances of the utmost misery, there is no alternative but to hope for better days to be re-established through homecoming. To endure—to cope with waiting you have to ‘hope’. Planning for return has also sometimes implied an absolute refusal of life in exile, as it did, for example, for the mother of Ghada Karmi: ‘I’ll put up with being here…, because I know it won’t be for long. And you children…don’t get too used to things here, we’re not staying!’ She put this philosophy into drastic effect. She refused to learn English, she had no English friends, she would reject any suggestion of decorating our shabby house or even of buying such a basic thing as a refrigerator. ‘I never had such a thing in Palestine, where it was

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hot. Why should I need it here, where it’s freezing?’ Meat and other perishables were put out at night on the window sill outside the scullery door, and she devised other means of preserving our food. Succumbing to the refrigerator would for her have symbolized her acceptance of the European way of life. (Karmi 1999a:56) Symbols of where one was situated had to be refuted and subverted. Ghada Karmi’s mother refused the idea of another home altogether and lived accordingly. To her, the ideologised imagination of Palestine and of returning there meant that life here and now must simply be an opposition to that. Life as it was and should/would be had simply been interrupted. Return in death Images of return sometimes build on a postponement and situate return not in this life, but in death. Different representations of this are exemplified below: Whenever I want to think of something I like, I remember Jerusalem. I hope to go and die there. (Um Sa’ad, in Lynd et al. 1994:47) Shall I live here and die in a foreign land? No! I will return to my beloved land, I will return, and there will I close the book of my life, Let the noble soil tenderly cover my remains. (Fadwa Tuqan, quoted in Siddiq 1995:90) Enough for me to die on her earth be buried in her to melt and vanish into her soil then sprout forth as a flower played with by a child from my country. (Fadwa Tuqan, ‘Enough for Me’, translated by Naomi Shihab Nye; in Jayyusi 1992:314) To at least die in the homeland implies that one cannot be forced to leave again (Siddiq 1995:91; cf. Malkki 1992:27). Dying and being buried in the home ground would mark the end of the story, a completion of the circle. To be buried there denotes the deep symbiosis between land and people. Once buried, the body would be forever reunited with the earth

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and brought back to the womb. The body actu ally becomes the earth. In Mahmoud Darwish’s ‘My father’, this theme is again brought forward: My father once said: He who has no homeland Has no grave on earth;… And forbade me to leave! (Mahmoud Darwish, ‘My Father’, in Elmessiri 1982:148f.) As Issa Boullata (1999:164) acknowledges, in this discourse ‘death’ does not represent an end to something, but rather a beginning—a beginning of reunion. Not only in literature, but also in the people’s dreams and aspirations, to die in Palestine would mean the fulfilment of a lifelong wish (Farah 1997:276f.). One example of this is the story of Nimr, whose father was diagnosed with cancer in 1994. The family were living as refugees in Lebanon. Nimr’s father became increasingly afraid that he would actually die in exile. Through connections to Yasser Arafat, he was able to get permission to travel to Palestine in 1995. Father and son went there together. Nimr’s father, although very ill, started to connect Nimr with the land. After 10 days together in the homeland, Nimr’s father died (Hammer 2001). The dream and the fear As described in Chapter 4, Palestinian refugees have been waiting to return. A great deal of hope and energy has been invested in the idea that the international community will bring justice at last. He lived all of his live attached to a small transistor radio listening to the news, believing that one day they’ll broadcast on the news that all refugees are now able to return to their villages. He died in a small mud house in the camp, at the age of 90, two feet away from his radio. That legacy of my grandfather lived in me; I am still attached to that olive orchard although it’s no longer there, and with as much tenacity I am still listening to the news. (Rami, e-mail interview, May 1998) In 2001, after 53 years in exile, Palestinians still dreamt of returning and thought of the places that their parents left as ‘home’. During the first decades, 1948 refugees often believed that there would one day be an announcement that the injustice had been undone and the refugees could

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go back. For many return was and is not negotiable; it was and is a principle and a right which no one can take away. It would be up to each individual whether he or she would like to employ that right. The question of a collective right of return to a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would, to many, mean that the refugees would be made refugees once again (cf. Farah 1997:292): For them the notion of a Palestinian state is not half as important as return to their villages and towns and houses, it is not a political achievement or a passport they are looking for, it is home. (Mahmoud M., Ein al-Hilweh, 13 August 2001) Hisham, born in Beirut and now living in Sweden, in a sense missed Beirut for its closeness to the Palestinian issue, but called Haifa, left by his father, ‘home’. If there was a solution to the refugee question involving an implementation of the right of return, Hisham says: I would definitely return to Haifa, although perhaps not permanently. I would arrange for a house to be able to return to. I would like to be able to say that I am going home on vacation. I have never been home for vacation. I want a kernel which is mine. I would like to have a home where the culture and the weather and everything fits with me. I think it would be like home. Maybe I wouldn’t settle permanently, the ways that we have lived—having children in other countries and work and houses and the children must go to school and everything—maybe make it difficult to move completely. But I would go back and forth. (Hisham, Göteborg, 14 February 2001) Return would imply an anchor, not a permanent homecoming, but a linkage to the land and a connection to an original homeland. For the younger generation, especially those in Lebanon, the wish to return did not necessarily stem from the actual longing for a homeland, but from feelings of liminality, nothingness, the vacuum of not having a home. When the children of Deheishe and Shatila eventually met at al-Awda camp in Cyprus in the summer of 2001, after a period of e-mail and letter communication, ‘return’ was a common theme: ‘It was there to escape the bad conditions of the camps, to dream about a better life and to enjoy life and to feel as humans with an identity’ For Shatila children, return was also connected to gaining rights and shunning their identity as refugees (alMajdal, issue no. 11, September 2001:7). To those children, return

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represented a negation of the present restrictions on life. To return would be tantamount to escaping the prison. However, it should be recalled that the high level of politicisation means that an unquestioned notion of return is also how people feel that they are expected to reply. Thinking of a return or a visit was also mixed with anxiety. Fadwa had planned for a return to Jaffa, to visit, but had never dared: I’ve been planning to go to Jaffa, but I am scared, very scared. I’m scared of everything, I don’t know if I can handle it. When I was in Amman, a friend of mine wanted to go to Ramallah because her husband works there, I wanted to go with her, but in the last moment I decided not to. I am so terribly frightened. How would it feel? I’ve been dreaming about Jaffa all my life, it is my country. To see them live there and I would be a stranger. I don’t know if I could handle it. (Fadwa, Göteborg, 26 February 2001) To feel like a stranger in what was felt as one’s home caused stress. Many were afraid of how to cope with inevitable changes. Could it be home any more if one was a stranger? Maybe that is what Fadwa’s fear was about, not being able to feel at home or as if she belonged even when she returned. Many acknowledged that return was not a concrete possibility, but it remained a goal to struggle for: No, I don’t think it is possible, I don’t think it is going to work. But it has to. Maybe not everyone can return. But I will never give up. (Fadwa, Göteborg, 26 February 2001) Return was not possible, yet it must be, and there was a gulf between what was realistic and what was believed to be just and right. For many Palestinians, there were several places to return to. For Fadwa, living in Sweden since 1991 and born in Shatila camp, one journey of return went to Beirut. Return was to camp and refugee life: Last summer, after 15 years, I was back in Lebanon. It was so difficult, it was so difficult. I couldn’t handle it. So many things had changed. I went to Shatila, I couldn’t recognise myself anywhere. I didn’t find my way. It had become much poorer. It didn’t use to be like that. It was so dirty And crowded, the houses were so close by. It hurts, that people can live like that. I was angry and sad. We are in Sweden, we don’t care any longer how people live. I care, I know

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that I care, I try, but still. When you are there. My sisters in Jordan, they are relatively well off, they don’t live in refugee camps. It used to be the playground of my childhood. I don’t remember that it was like that. It wasn’t like that. (Fadwa, Göteborg, 26 February 2001) Even to return to the camp, to refugee life, which was resented as part of identity, was combined with frustration and sadness. It is, however, of prominent importance to emphasise the fact that ‘return’ is not a monolithic discourse in identity production. Rather, the meanings attached to ‘return’ are varied and differentiated. For the first and second generation of refugees, the wish to return is connected to their very loss of individual homes and houses; for the third generation it has more to do with reconstructing a sense of normality in life (Muhammad 1997; Zaqtan 1997; Barghouti 1998b; Khadr 1998). Further, for stateless and destitute refugees in Lebanon, the dream of return is connected to their exclusion from Lebanese society. For American citizens, however, return is not so much a political aspiration as an on-and-off process of reconnecting with cultural origins (Hammer 2000, 2001). Christison has argued that Palestinians in the USA who are 1948 refugees or children of refugees generally do not envision or plan returning to old homes (Christison 2001:165). Palestinians residing in the USA who were born and raised there generally do not wish for return for a lifetime. Rick said: ‘to return to live, no. Maybe to stay there for a few years or so, if there was an opportunity’ (Rick, Washington, DC, 3 May 2001). The peace process During the years of the peace process (1994–2000) it was possible (for some) to actually ‘return’. However, it was not 1948 refugees, but persons displaced in 1967 or persons who had migrated for other reasons who were able to return, or rather resettle, in the West Bank or Gaza. The categories that could be repatriated were Palestinians working for the PLO who had come to work for the PA and their families, beneficiaries of family reunification programmes, returnees from Kuwait (Zureik 1997), many with Jordanian passports, and Palestinians with foreign passports (Hammer 2001). Many of the latter category held American passports. It was therefore not actual ‘return’ but some kind of resettlement or repatriation. The estimates for returnees between 1994 and 1999 vary from 40,000 to 100,000.1 Hammer (2001) calculates the number at 80,000–

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100,000. The process of return from the Gulf had already begun after the Gulf War, although most of those returnees ended up in Jordan. Israeli regulations stipulated that in order to return (except for PLOrelated return) you should be registered in the Israeli census in the West Bank and Gaza that was held in 1967, hold an Israeli ID card and have been visiting regularly, at least every six years. In popular discourse, ‘‘aideen’ was now applied to people who returned to work for PA. Returnees were concentrated in Gaza and Ramallah, where there were the most PA offices. The majority of the ‘returnees’ were employed in the public sector, in administration and in the police and security forces. Also, a significant proportion of the returnees had been active in business in the diaspora and were now investing in the Palestinian economy. In popular discourse it was thus not the ‘real returnees’ that had come back. Contemporary returnees were not refugees and therefore not those who were most worthy of coming home. The ‘amrikans’ were considered ‘real returnees’ to an even lesser extent. For them, returning was frequently not a very problematic or dramatic decision, but more related to coming for summer visits. Young people often attended summer courses and stayed on for a while. The younger generations often had a history of going as children with their parents to visit relatives, and decided to travel to Palestine by themselves at an older age. ‘While not officially repatriated, many Palestinian-Americans are attempting to re-integrate into Palestinian society and the economy by building houses and investing in businesses, particularly in the restaurant and tourist industry’ (Sayre and Olmsted 1999:9). Palestinian-American return migration declined with the intifada, but increased again with the peace process. Also, members of the Gulf community had been returning prior to the peace process. Since labour migrants saw their residence in the Gulf as temporary, they did not consider themselves ‘returnees’; they were simply coming home after working abroad. Some had saved all through their exile and bought land and a house as a safety net, in order to secure a base at home, or, alternatively in Jordan. Palestinians from the Gulf had also been pushed by ramifications of the Gulf War, increased discrimination and declining working opportunities and reduced income (Hovdenak 1997:68). Metaphorically, return was often symbolised by a ship or a boat. In the immediate wake of the Oslo accords and the beginning ofPalestinian selfrule, the intifada graffiti was replaced by large wall paintings portraying ships. Returnees were met at the Allenby Bridge, going ‘home’ in jubilant caravans. As some Palestinians returning to ‘Palestine’ in the trail of the

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peace process explained: ‘When I returned, it was as if I was born again’ (interviews 1994–5). Real return Yet the actual return was also replete with disappointments and frustrations in realising that the dreamt homeland was not there any more, if it ever had been. ‘Real Palestine’ was not an easy substitute for ‘Dream Palestine’. In addition, ‘returning home’ in practice betokened completely different processes than restoring a life that once was (cf. Hammond 1999). How were the dreams of a lifetime reconciled with reality and decades of change? Although I have written and lectured extensively on the question of Palestine, nothing in my earlier experience prepared me for the shocks I encountered upon my return. I quickly discovered how far removed from reality I had lived for so many years. (Moughrabi 1999:26) The actual return process is exceedingly complex (Muhammad 1997; Khadr 1998; Barghouti 1998a, 1998b). Despite the meanings intrinsic in the concept of ‘return’, and the political claims connected to the term notwithstanding, it is also doubtful whether that option would really by chosen by any considerable section of Palestinian refugees, if it did exist. As Fadwa said: ‘I don’t have any connections with that place any longer, but it is my right to decide whether I want to go’ (Fadwa, Göteborg, 6 March, 2002). Actual practices may well contradict the power of the narrative and discourse of ‘home’. However, the meanings vested in the notion are real and imply that there is a real wish to return to former homes. The very term ‘return’ is itself a misnomer, since it assumes associations with reunion, restitution, reclamation (Nixon 1994; Hammond 1999); as if it were possible to recreate what once was. Often, an actual ‘homecoming’ is not possible. Yet, as has been underlined, ‘homecoming’ might not be absolute in terms of reclaiming homes and property and resettlement in the land left, but might instead point to processes of regaining control over one’s life. It should be underlined that the narratives of returnees which follow are limited to Palestinians coming back from the USA or the Gulf countries, and we can draw no conclusions about how 1948 refugees residing in refugee camps would actually experience a homecoming.

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Is there a home left? I’m here to find out what dreams or nightmares are all about, to touch a country woven from memories, from songs, from stories of elders, from pictures, from old coins and stamps, from dreams that refuse to come to terms with an unfair reality. Never mind how and why, never mind justice and rights. Palestine is about to transform from the visionary to the concrete. Oh, if my father was with me. I have no memories to come back to, only his memories. No properties to look for, only his properties. But I have a homeland to find. There was nothing special in the smell. I always thought that a homeland smelled differently. Nor did I feel the landscape as part of my body, though I thought it would be. It is not like any other landscape, yet I do not feel at one with it. (N.Kanafani 1995:40) Coming home to the place one has longed for does not always (ever?) entail the triumphant return to and restoration of a ‘natural’ condition which has been imagined from the point of view of placelessness (Turki 1994; Barghouti 1998b). The actual return visit often implies seeing the house from which one fled or, alternatively, the house of one’s parents. To come back to visit is therefore to confront a childhood lost (Slycomovics 1998:14f.). One important story is Ghassan Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa, published in the late 1960s. The story is about a Palestinian couple who had left their infant son behind in the flight from Haifa in 1948. The couple settled in Ramallah. When the road to Haifa was opened in 1967, they decided to return and try to find out what might have happened to their son, Khaldun. In their home, a childless Jewish couple escaping the Nazi concentration camps had lived. They had raised Khaldun as their own son. Just as their home did not exist any more, their son did not exist as their son. The Arab Palestinian boy Khaldun had become the Israeli Jewish boy Dov, serving in the Israeli army, symbolising a complete loss of homeland and attachment. Not only had house, land and home been lost, but the son, the child, had been lost to the ‘other’ side and had become a representative of the enemy. The father, Said, asked himself, rather desperately: What is the homeland? Is it these two chairs which have been in this home for twenty years? The table? The peacock feathers? The picture

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of Jerusalem on the wall? The copper door bolt? The oak tree? The balcony? What is the homeland? Khaldun? Our dreams about him? Parents? Children? What is the homeland? (G.Kanafani 1984:137f.) Only seldom in the literature has there been a more critical discourse of coming home, or for that matter of Palestine as such. One such rare account is by Faruq Wadi, a novelist and short-story writer residing in Jordan, in the novel Road to the Sea (1980). Here, the son went to Jaffa with his father, having heard stories about the wonders of it: I could not feel my kinship to this land. Where were the threads of continuity that had shaped themselves so beautifully in my mind through many a winter’s tale? I wondered in my heart if we had not lost our way, then could not help saying, ‘This is it?!’ (Faruq Wadi, Road to the Sea, translated by May Jayyusi and Naomi Shihab Nye: in Jayyusi 1992:599) Here there is a crude acknowledgement that what was remembered is not there any longer. For those who have not had their own memory to rely upon, but who have trusted the storytelling of parents and other elders, tales told might turn into myths or even lies. In contrast to the poetry referred to in Chapter 4, the landscape has changed to the extent that it is doubtful whether it exists as a possible homeland. The pastoral, shimmering landscape has vanished. The father’s house in the quotation above was not even beautiful. ‘Haifa no longer speaks to me,’ says Fawaz Turki upon returning to his hometown. To younger generations, through acts of collective memory and narration, Palestine has become a fantasy, for which reality is a poor substitute. One interviewee, a young man (Majid), revealed deep frustration and disappointment with what he found upon returning (quoted in Hammer 2001:84ff.). He had expected the house of his grandfather to be beautiful, but found a place ‘full of sun, cold, dust and dirt’. He expressed his anger about the way people were treating each other, how mothers hit their children. He blamed his parents and their generation for telling lies about Palestine and raising their children with a false dream of Palestine. He did indeed feel like a stranger: ‘But when I came here I stopped loving it to be honest.’ Meeting the homeland, it becomes clear that generational cleavages were very much part of the discursive construction of homeland. How are you to relate at all to a place which is actually completely new to

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you, but about which you have all your life heard wonderful, glowing stories? Return visits have also involved encounters with the Israeli occupation and Israeli military structures which have been a shocking experience to many For many returnees from the USA, coming back is a disappointment of sorts. Sami said that he was ‘unimpressed’ by what he saw and experienced on visiting Palestine for the first time: There was not much there, the holy sites and things like that. It is not a scenic area, it is not a lush area, just like any other Arab country, basically. I mean there is some beauty in the bareness, but I like a lot of green and I like trees. So I was not that impressed, I didn’t have the ‘catching’ other people have. I was just depressed how dirty things are. I understand the reason for that, but just how undeveloped it is, how chaotic it is, it was depressing. Because there is nothing, there is nothing to do, no entertainment. You see we are sitting in a park right now and there is cricket and the air is clean and it is beautiful. There is probably no place in all of Palestine where you can do this. (Sami, Washington, DC, 20 August 1998) Being used to public parks, entertainment and the like, Sami could not like the landscape of the West Bank. Palestinians returning from Gulf and other Arab countries also revealed disappointment. Najma was born in Syria and lived in Syria and Lebanon until 1982, after which she lived in Yemen, Egypt and Iraq. Her family followed her father, who worked with the Palestine Liberation Army: So when we first came to Jericho and I saw the city and all that, honestly, I started crying…. I couldn’t stop crying…. When my dad came, I told him I don’t want to stay in this country I cried again and I told him I can’t stay in this place. I know my country is my heart and soul, but this is so different. I lived my whole life in countries like Lebanon and Syria, Egypt and Baghdad, all of them have big cities, capitals. So when we came to Jericho, it was just not like that. I didn’t expect that at all (Najma, quoted in Hammer 2001:138) Fawaz Turki also felt like a stranger when he came back to visit in 1990:

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I belong to neither world. Now I know it. I am not, or at least no longer am, part of the Palestinian world. Exile and the homeground speak to each other unintelligibly. I am a stranger to those I should know best. Palestinians here are in search of a homeland. I already have one. My search is for a sense of at-homeness, a connectedness to my roots. (Turki 1994:102) ‘Being at home’ and ‘having a homeland’ could therefore be two completely different things and have definitely been set apart by the nakba and its consequences. It need not be the case that restoring the homeland means moving there physically, but it has to do with reclaiming one’s past, providing individuals with historical background and roots (cf. Turki 1994; Abdel-Malek 1999:184). To ‘return’ is about a sense of coming from somewhere and having a right to it, while home in present terms might mean where you currently reside. This is also reflected in personal stories: I keep thinking right of return, it is not the return to Palestine, it is the return to normal circumstances of life, so even if you are in a camp, fine, you have a right to become a human being again, that is what it means to return to Palestine. There is nothing in Palestine to go to, as long as they don’t have a home, a family home that they can go back to and settle down. (Nizar, Washington, DC, 25 August 1998) In Nader’s story, to return is to reclaim normality Sami’s (born in Ohio) parents bought a condominium in al-Bireh, to which they travelled every now and then. Sami recounts how the ‘place has changed’ and ‘they have changed’, to the extent that they do not ‘fit in’ any more. Reema’s father worked in Nablus, while her mother did not want to settle there: I was there for three months and I was bored out of my mind, it was terrible, you don’t want to go. Okay, I understand the patriotic feelings for your homeland and everything, but what is going on with the peace process right now, I don’t see anything happening at all. Its just distant memories, in my opinion. And my father gets really irritated when I talk like this, because he has a real link to Nablus. (Randa, Washington, DC, 24 August 1998; in Hammer 2001:138)

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Generational cleavages prove strenuous and imply a real shift in the homeland discourse. Reema questions the very salience of the land. She acknowledges the betrayal in this misgiving (she even calls it blasphemy): the land is beautiful, it is a beautiful land, but I don’t know how important it is to actually have it. Maybe this is really like, I shouldn’t say this, it is almost blasphemy for me to say it, I mean I say it to a lot of people and they kind of look at me as if I am crazy But this is how I feel. (Randa, Washington, DC, 24 August 1998; in Hammer 2001:138) Tensions ‘Returnees’ were thus not necessarily experiencing a triumphant and welcoming march back to the land. Socially and politically, tensions between returnees and residents emerged. Although on a formal, official level there was a tendency—due to the overall discourse of Palestinian nationalism—to play down the prospects for complications between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, this became a mounting issue. In official discourse, what was occurring was simply an ingathering of exiles. New categories were, however, brought into play such as ‘aideen, Tunisians, amrikan and ajanib (meaning foreigner). These categories were used by both sides. Returnees from the USA called themselves amrikan and locals Arabs. Tunisians referred mostly to the PLO cadres who had lived in any of the Arab countries. One issue of contention was in relation to the PNA and positions in the public sphere. It was widely assumed that returnees received key posts in the PA, while West Bankers and Gazans received low- or middle-level positions. It is true that returnees dominated the executive branch, while insiders made up the majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council, which was one aspect of the tense relations between executive and legislature. Among ‘insiders’ there was a lot of talk about corruption and privileges, which were taken to be phenomena related to returnees (Sayre and Olmsted 1999). Many returnees from Gulf countries as well as PLO staff spent money on housing, leading to the price of land rocketing (Tuastad 1997). The entrance of diaspora capital, investments and new business, along with officials within the PNA, amounted to the formation of a new economic elite. There has also been an emerging conflict between local and expatriate capital. The proud term ‘aideen therefore acquired negative connotations (Hammer 2001) and came increasingly to be associated with corruption

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and privileges. Contrary to the ways in which returnees have been perceived historically and politically, the term now designated a privileged group in contrast to the refugees still living in camps. The fact that those who returned did not represent the authenticity, purity and essence of Palestinian identity caused rejection and resentment by the local population (ibid.). It is as though the contemporary return occurred almost at the expense of those who really deserved it. ‘Privilege’ was but one side of the coin, however. It was difficult for returnees, especially those coming from Gulf countries, to find jobs which matched their qualifications. And when work was found, the income was only about half of what was earned before they returned (Zureik 1997: 101). Only a few were really able to buy a house. Rocketing land prices made this option less realistic for the majority of those who had come back (Abdelhaqq 1997). The possibility of finding a job at all was often contingent on family connections, wasta (Zureik 1997:92). Sometimes, even to be allowed to return one needed to use family connections, although, as indicated in Chapter 7, there was a change in this pattern. Returnees were often discontent with the lack of services, the poor state of many buildings and increased rents (Hammer 2001). According to one study, 40 per cent of the returnees who worked for the PNA would have preferred to return to exile. A major concern was housing problems (alShaml Newsletter 1997, no. 7, July). There was also a disillusionment with ‘people’. Many had carried an ideal image of the ‘perfect people’ and the heroic Palestinian, ‘completely honest’ and ‘just’, struggling against overwhelming odds. Returnees, especially those from Western countries, sometimes expressed ‘shock’ when they met Palestinians and especially when they encountered the cultural mores of Gaza, which were seen by many as particularly traditionalist and conservative. Fawaz Turki felt like a stranger in the West Bank: I am a Palestinian by upbringing and an American leftist by choice. I am here to be one, if only for a moment, with the Palestinians who have never left Palestine. But I have to admit that to be Palestinian, like them, is not like a glove that an exile can slip on at will. (Turki 1994:33) ‘lnside’—‘outside’: ‘they have to change their mentality’ Among West Bankers and Gazans, many subscribed to the view that those who came from outside had a different mentality from those who had lived under and with the occupation since 1967. This dichotomisation also had

220 COMING HOME?

political consequences. PLO ‘returnees’ or ‘Tunisians’ were by definition seen as more undemocratic than insiders, since they had lived in the Arab world, under Arab regimes. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, on the other hand, had been exposed to Israel and internal Israeli democracy, which led to them being more democratic and more critical. This created a gap between the two experiences. Often this gap was related to internal politics and the system of governance: I think that the people who are coming from outside cannot understand the facts like us, like the people here. And there are some of them considering themselves that they are the only ones who were struggling and that they have the right to govern. And they ignore the people here. I think they are wrong. Because the people here suffered during 27 years in the prisons, in the jails, in the streets, in the economic situation, in everything, in education, and they were steadfast against the enemy They stood against the Israelis, and they were making the intifada, and through the intifada the people who were outside could return back. And the people who are coming from outside, they have to change their mentality. They have to understand the psychology of the people who were suffering under the occupation and the people who revolted against everything. It’s not easy to govern this people, like the Arab systems or regimes. This people believe in democracy, and exercised that in the jails, we were electing our leaders in the jails. (Interview with a Fateh leader, Ramallah, 23 October 1994) The revolutionary structure was built up in exile, whereas the ‘inside’ experience was more civic. There was a dispute between the ‘insiders’ and the ‘outsiders’ concerning who were the better strugglers, i.e. who were the better Palestinians. Moreover, ‘insiders’ often argued that it was through the intifada and the inside struggle that outsiders were able to return. The issue of suffering was even more pronounced when it came to amrikans, who were accused of ‘not having suffered and not being real Palestinians’ (Hammer 2001:178): I used to hear a lot of things in class. ‘Oh, yes, you used to live in Cyprus, you used to go swimming and you used to live a happy life, whereas we were living the most terrible days in our life. We were having war and our kids were dying and our brothers were in prisons, so we were living a really bad life, whereas you were living the most lovely life, so you are not Palestinians, we are the

COMING HOME? 221

Palestinians, the people who are living here in our country, we are the real Palestinians, you are not real Palestinians.’ (Basma, quoted in Hammer 2001:178) Palestinian identity was so profoundly embedded in the notions of suffering and struggle that the national identity of those who did not share that experience was questioned. Something else that was considered questionable was picking up other colloquial accents or lifestyles that were seen as ‘un-Palestinian’: No, we were separated for the last 45 years. Even you notice that in the attitudes, in their way of dress, or even the talk. People who are coming from Egypt, their accent is Egyptian. They lost the Palestinian accent. So what more can you fear? If you lose your accent, through which you will be recognised immediately Anyone that was defined as Palestinian was defined by his accent. So if you lose your accent, you lose certain important identification, national identification, and this is really happening. (Interview with a PFLP leader, Ramallah, 7 October 1994) Differences in background and experiences fostered a dangerous phenomenon. Acquiring other colloquial accents was seen as a reduction of Palestinian-ness. Some of the American youngsters did not speak Arabic, which underlines the language problem and the hesitation towards viewing ‘amrikans’ as real Palestinians. In addition, they sometimes lacked mastery of cultural and moral codes and were perceived as not knowing how to behave in terms of, for example, respect for elders. In daily social life and interaction, many returnees found the social control, especially of young girls and women, a strain. Young girls and women found people’s talk and looks exceedingly pressurising and hard to cope with. At the same time, more liberal forms of social interaction were introduced and partly altered the outlook of towns such as Ramallah, which after 1994 mushroomed with cafés, ice cream parlours, restaurants, and more liberal dress codes and dating patterns. In Cheryl Rubenberg’s work, women returning with their husbands from the Gulf or countries such as Iraq found it difficult to cope with what they considered to be more conservative social mores and gossip (Rubenberg 2001:75). Exiled movements and dispersed populations thus face specific problems in nationalist politics (Hanafi 2001). This is a general dilemma, not unique to the Palestinian movement. The exiled relationship with the

222 COMING HOME?

territory is one of longing, whereas the ‘inside’ has a relationship of being ‘steadfast’ and continued connection with the land. To an exiled leadership, there is some sort of paradoxical privilege in exile. While in exile, the leadership is questioned less than it is when in control of territory and constituency, bringing along their varied and different experiences that are to be merged with the inside. When territorialising, the returnees also moved from the situation of ‘strangers’ to ‘home-comers’ (Hannerz 1992:133). For both, taken-for-granted ideas and perspectives on social structures could no longer be taken for granted. There are also other stories, however. Salah Ta’amri describes how he was welcomed on his return: I was in the outside. From 1963 to 1994. They accepted me, they did more than that, they elected me.2 It’s not the issue of a returnee vis-à-vis someone who stayed here, an old member vis-à-vis the intifada people, no. It’s not that way. I think they evaluate these persons based on their own merits. And if it was not for what our generation did, the intifada would never have been there. (Salah Ta’amri, Bethlehem, 4 November 1997) Salah Ta’amri is, however, an extraordinary person, having been a PLO commander in Jordan and in Lebanon. He fought during the battle of Karameh and was stationed in Lebanon after 1971. He was a prison of war in the dreaded Israeli Ansar prison in south Lebanon in 1982. Othering Returning Palestinians experienced a new form of categorisation and labelling. The label ‘returnee’ was, for many, an unwanted categorisation: Then they say about us who came, we are the returnees [‘aideen], first of all they started calling us ‘returnees’. All our lives we lived as strangers in places, for example the Iraqis would say, ‘Aha you are Palestinian’, so you are all your life a stranger and different from them. And then I come to my country and I am a stranger again. I come here and they give me this name, the ‘returnee’. (Najma, quoted in Hammer 2001:138) Some who had returned really felt like strangers in the homeland. The effect of this was that, for example, ‘amrikans’ socialised mostly with other returnees from the USA. Young men started to dress in accordance with

COMING HOME? 223

American youth culture in order to be recognised as ‘amrikans’ and in order to fit the label, which was not something they did while in the USA. Identity-building was as American Palestinians, amrikans (Hammer 2001). For many, it was important, for example, to visit West Jerusalem, to be able to ‘be in the West’ again and ‘relax’ from being in the Middle East. Going out at night, watching movies and other activities were important. This was, however, also felt as some kind of betrayal (ibid.). Also, in the West Bank and Gaza, perhaps most obvious in Ramallah, an ‘escape Palestine business’ has developed. Coming home/back is therefore a process ripe with chagrin and confusion, but also replete with a more mellow acquiescence. Palestine was not what one expected, but it was possible to cope with that, to accept. This young woman said: And until now I don’t have the feeling that this is my country, my home, or what I expected it to be. But I am ready to live here in sweet and bitter days. (Najma, quoted in Hammer 2001:140) Remaining in diaspora The meaning of return has thus changed, and changed drastically, both in official PLO discourse and for individuals. There is no longer to be a proud revolutionary march, but a more mellow and melancholic individual journey: This national return is no longer envisioned as a joyous victory parade but as a slow, sad convoy of ‘returnees and dreamers,’ as Mahmoud Darwish wrote…. Darwish describes the ‘returnees’ of the late 1980s as people who, after ‘an absurd journey of exile,’ emerge ‘from the end of a long tunnel into the light…return from heroic stories to simple words, waving neither exultant hands nor flags to mark the miracle.’ They return wary from the sea and desert air, without specifying the borders, homes, and villages to which they are headed. ‘They return,’ Darwish writes in the plural about his people, ‘but I shall not return’. (Rubinstein 1991:132) For most Palestinians outside their homeland, the peace process meant that a future return was postponed even further into a distant future. However, the wish and hope of return remain a strong driving force in

224 COMING HOME?

people’s lives. There is a firm conviction that the right of return is the right of each individual to decide over his or her own destiny: Where are we to go back to when we return? My God what is left of the resistance of our souls? What directions are left … Nothing of our ancestors remain in us, but we want the country of our morning coffee we want the fragrance of primitive plants we want a special school we want a special cemetery… We wish to live for a time just to return to something anything anything to a beginning, an island, a ship, an ending a widow’s prayer, a cellar, a tent Our short visit has grown long and the sea died within us two years ago…the sea has died within us. (Mahmoud Darwish, ‘Guests on the Sea’translated by Lena Jayyusi and W.S.Merwin; in Jayyusi 1992:155ff.) There was no longer a specific Palestine with olive trees, orange groves and the scent of jasmine to return to, but a ‘somewhere’, a much sadder interrogation of home, a return to something/anything: In the past, we knew that in the end we would return to our country. Today, we know nothing. (Mahmud ‘Abbas, Palestinian refugee in Lebanon; interview by Abd al-Salam Aql, in Journal of Palestine Studies, vol. XXV, no. 1, autumn 1995:55) At the end of this book, it should be said that it is too early to know the implications of the al-Aqsa intifada and the reappearance of struggle for conceptions of the right of return. Suffice to say that the ‘right of return’ has been placed back on the agenda by the new intifada and the diasporic network al-Awda. In fact, the al-Aqsa intifada must be seen in the light of bitterness against the indifference towards the refugee question that marked the peace process.

9 NATIONALISM THROUGH TRANSNATIONALISM

The term ‘diaspora’ remains in a sense problematic when applied to the Palestinian case. Yet Palestinians in exile do constitute a diaspora community. Together with Palestinians remaining in the West Bank and Gaza or in Israel, there is a Palestinian transnational community/nation. Diaspora as a defining term should perhaps be saved to designate the Palestinian community in exile, where there are features of the term that are applicable also to those not in ‘exile’. Such diasporic aspects amount to land alienation, combined with strong sentiments of attachment to that land, the combination of forced and severely restricted mobility. There is an almost mock situation, where Palestinians are forced into a transnational existence yet at the same time excluded and kept out of a great many places. Barriers and borders have a specific significance for Palestinians. The Palestinian diaspora experience includes at the same time ultimate destitution in refugee camps in Lebanon and middle-class American lives— although not to an equal extent. The specific characteristics of the Palestinian diaspora amount to the juxtaposition of experiences of moving/ wandering and being stranded/imprisoned at the same time. Although both politically and individually the attachment to a glorified homeland remains exceedingly strong, there is also a tale to be told of transnationalism and globalism. One paradox here is that transnational activities are often ways of enhancing or maintaining/stabilising connections with family or with the homeland. Aspects of this are visits, to Palestine or the West Bank and Gaza for those who have the opportunity, or to various refugee camps in different parts of the Arab world for others. As has been consistently underlined, most refugees are barred from travelling, by either regulations or financial constraints, but then receive visits from family members residing elsewhere. When visiting is not possible, connection is preserved by telephone, via satellite TV or through Internet chats. There is a network


of relationships spanning the globe, although this web is not always accompanied by physical, individual journeys. Such transnational links strengthen or maintain family relationships, but also in profound ways serve to invigorate Palestinian nationalism and homeland politics. Put differently, transnational links and activities boost nationalism rather than make it redundant. Transnational activities do not, then, amount to a cosmopolitan worldview which could supersede nationalism, but there are only transnational ways of staying together, despite the coercive and violent nature of dispersal. Despite contemporary celebrations of transnational, borderless and unbounded activities, these occur precisely to restore borders and territorial anchorage. Although exile is defined as a non-place, the meanings applied to place/homeland have increased rather than diminished in importance. Nevertheless, these activities by themselves also foster new feelings of identity and possibilities of belonging to and affinities with more than one place. Attachment is not (always) exclusive, but many a Palestinian experience points towards feelings of belonging, security and stability in more than one place of the world. Also, processes of identification are affected. On the one hand, the dispersal and fragmentation have definitely bolstered a specific, homeland-bound Palestinian identity. On the other hand, there are alterations in the form of new and complementary way of identifying. For younger generations growing up in exile, too, even in the USA or Sweden, Palestine is important as a source of meaning and belonging. But, at the same time, young Palestinians have adopted new lifestyles, new cultural and social mores and traditions. Some even explicitly refer to their identity as ‘hybrid’ or ‘hyphenated’. Politically, there are, however, strong connections, staunch sentiments of sympathy and solidarity with the refugees as well as with the Palestinians living under occupation. However, political support is not the same thing as defining the struggle in terms relating to oneself or one’s immediate community The diaspora creates national identity, but also divides and separates families as well as the national community as such. Diaspora thus influences identification and belonging in several different ways, and there is no monolithic or simplified response supporting either the globalisation or the nationalisation argument. In people’s lives, those antagonistic perspectives do not appear to be impossible to resolve. For refugees, their relative exclusion in host societies, their sentiments of living ‘out of place’ mean that the meaning of Palestine as the sole possible homeland is amplified. Thus, for sections of the diaspora it is possible to find new homelands, whereas for the large majority host societies mean unreal,

NATIONALISM THROUGH TRANSNATIONALISM 227

surrealistic or unfriendly places incapable of bestowing meaning or belonging. Real people’s real lives are simply more complex than the term ‘hybridity’ would suggest. For the same diaspora population, nostalgia, homesickness and transnationalism come together. So, if the globalisation of culture and people’s mobility give rise to a questioning of the taken-for-granted categories of nationalism, the ways that this globalisation actually occurs must lead us to question the basic assumptions of the spacelessness, borderlessness and timelessness of globalisation/globalism. Altlhough ‘hybridity’, ‘mix’, ‘melange’ and ‘creol’ are prominent terms in contemporary debates on identity and globalisation, and although we have used such terms in this book, we advocate a certain hesitation regarding the validity of these terms. That which is supposed to ‘mix’ and mingle, to blend, is not static from the outset, but always changeable and changing. There is no preset Palestinian identity which is mixed with a preset American identity. Also, as some have argued, the contemporary celebration of travel and mobility, of ‘transient lives’ and ‘hybrid identities’, has a tendency to conceal power relations and repressive socioeconomic structures (Mitchell 1997; Hyndman 1997). For refugees crossing borders, or for stateless Palestinians attempting to pass Israeli checkpoints between the West Bank and Israel, or trying to enter another country at an airport (cf. R. Khalidi 1997), traversing borders is a humiliating and often terrorising experience (cf. hooks 1992). To a large extent, members of the Palestinian diaspora are simply restricted in their movements and constitute a category of immobility. Mobility is unequally distributed among various members of the diaspora and not all have the same access to border crossings. Hyndman (1997) therefore suggests that transnationalism should be studied as a ‘politics of mobility’. Attachment to homeland is both strengthened and weakened in new generations. There is a fragmentation among third-generation refugees of how to relate to the homeland. On the one hand, there is a thinning-out of homeland bonds as the homeland disappears in distant memories of earlier generations. On the other hand, severe alienation and a ghetto existence continuously reinforce links to the homeland. Return Official PLO discourse has contributed to confusion, as settlement in new places and feelings of at-homeness in new countries have been vigorously opposed or denied by the PLO. The thinning-out has not been


acknowledged. In a way PLO rhetoric has left individual refugees and migrants to their own destiny in pursuing a hegemonic discourse of return. Everything else being equal, return remains, however, a core principle of the Palestinian diaspora. In terms of policy relevance, we believe the international community has yet to correctly understand the prominence of the concept of ‘return’ in Palestinian collective memory ‘Return’ represents a collective wish passed on from one generation to the next. Return is not something to be viewed simply ‘realistically’. It has represented not only an aim and a purpose, but a worldview, the sole hope left for hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of people with no other opportunity Although in the real world, return to former homes and houses is indeed unattainable, this does not mean that the Palestinian claim to the right of return is invalid. On the contrary, in a world which goes out of its way to repatriate Kosovars and Bosnians (who often find it impossible to go back) the rights of the Palestinian refugees cannot be neglected. Exactly how such a formula should be worked out is, needless to say, beyond the scope of this book. The existential threat sensed in Israel must naturally be taken into account. In PLO politics there has been a tension between self-determination/ statehood and return since the 12th PNC in 1974. The peace process in the 1990s accentuated this tension, leading to an acute crisis in legitimacy and leadership. Refugee disappointment and bitterness informed mobilisation around the return issue. Although it might be the case that the Palestinian leadership was ready to sign away the right of return at Camp David, and although this may be what happens, the refugees will continuously demand that their right of return be acknowledged. In practice, refugees may accept other solutions to their own predicament, but since the nakba, the nidal and al-Awda are what have informed Palestinian identity for 50 years, to yield ‘return’ is to yield identity The failure to include the refugee issue in the peace process is, in fact, one of the reasons behind the al-Aqsa intifada and the phase of intensely renewed violence between Israelis and Palestinians. The predicament of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and in the diaspora in 2002–2003 underlined the argument of this book: Palestinians in the diaspora were on an unwanted pilgrimage, thrown all over the world, whereas Palestinians in the homeland were under a grim siege, barred from moving outside their homes.

NOTES

1 BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND GLOBALISM 1 Relph (1976) distinguishes between place and space in the sense that place is space or a segment of space which is imbued with meaning by a group of people. Augé calls a space devoid of relations or historical meaning a ‘nonplace’ (1995:78). 2 The most outstanding examples are R.Sayigh (1979, 1994a), Cossali and Robson (1986), Ghabra (1987), Brand (1988) and Peteet (1991, 1993). 3 Although works covering the Palestinian experience in general (such as Smith 1984; Kimmerling and Migdahl 1993; Farsoun with Zacharia 1997) also include important understandings of the diaspora. 4 The main exceptions to the lack of studies on the Palestinian diaspora from the point of view of nationalism and identity are R.Sayigh (1979, 1994a) and Peteet (1991). 5 One category of sources here is historical, i.e. sources covering the reasons for the flight in relation to the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (cf. Morris 1987, 1990) and the politics and ideology of Zionism (Masalha 1992, 1997a). Another category of sources of vital importance for our knowledge of the situations of Palestinian refugees deals with particular communities from different perspectives and methodological angles. R. Sayigh (1979, 1994a) provides path-breaking texts on the Palestinians in Lebanon from the point of view of identity- and meaning-construction. Peteet (1991) covers the identity-construction and life experiences of Palestinian refugee women in Lebanon, creating a narrative interweaving gender studies, politics of nationalism and refugee ordeals. Mishal (1978) and Plascov (1981) have studied the Palestinians in Jordan during certain time periods; Ghabra (1987) provides an account of the Palestinian community in Kuwait; González (1992) provides a rare contribution on the Palestinians in the Americas, namely in Honduras; and Van Hear (1993, 1995, 1998) has studied the mass exodus of Palestinians from the Gulf

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6

7

8

9

10

11 12 13

14

15

states and their repatriation in Jordan. There is a lack of more recent studies, although there is an important contribution in Randa Farah’s (1999) dissertation on refugees in Jordan. Secondary sources to be mentioned here are Gresh (1988), Cobban (1984), Brand (1988), Nassar (1991) and Y.Sayigh (1997). Y.Sayigh (1997), especially, provides an extraordinary contribution to our understanding of politics and state-building in exile. Brand (1988) gives a detailed account of PLO institution-building in the Arab world. Type of source used for this chapter are policy-oriented works (cf. Arzt 1997) of the ‘what needs to be done’-type, or legally oriented literature (Takkenberg 1998), as well as analysis of the refugee predicament in relation to the peace process (cf. Peretz 1993; Tamari 1996; Zureik 1996). Documents and agreements related to the peace process will be brought into play. It needs to be accentuated that the al-Aqsa intifada and Israeli military assaults were going on at the time of writing, and could not be scrutinised in the thorough detail needed. The conceptual pair ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ is structuring internal Palestinian relations in a very real sense. ‘Inside’ refers to those living in historical Palestine and ‘outside’ refers to the exile. ‘Outside’ often refers mainly to the exiled PLO leadership, but also to the Palestinian diaspora at large. ‘Inside’, ‘inner’ or ‘interior’ is dakhli in Arabic; and ‘outside’, ‘outer’ or ‘exterior’ is kharji. The case of Sweden perhaps requires an explanation. The inclusion of a seemingly odd and particular context of Palestinian diaspora will serve to represent one Western European framework. It is true that the Palestinian community in Sweden is marginal, but it represents one of many different Palestinian refugee experiences. In addition, taken together the Scandinavian countries represent an important host context for Palestinians in Europe. Interviews conducted for the author’s PhD project on Palestinian nationalism and national identity (cf. Lindholm Schulz 1999). Research for a project on democratisation and state-building (e.g. Lindholm Schulz 2002). 1998 interviews were carried out by Juliane Hammer as part of her PhD project dealing with the process of return to the West Bank and Gaza (cf. Hammer 2001). We have strived to achieve a sample which is as evenly distributed as possible, which means that there are about as many women as men, with a slight over-representation of men. The youngest person we spoke to was 18 years of age, whereas the oldest was 80. These interviews were conducted by Henrik Norberg, doctoral student at the Department of Peace and Development Research, Göteborg University. Most were carried out with the assistance of an interpreter.

NOTES 231

16 Washington, DC, encompasses a substantial Palestinian community, although arguably not the most typical one. It comprises economically more successful and/or politically active Palestinians and many students. 17 Both the Lebanese and the American interviews were carried out by PhD Juliane Hammer, who has worked as a research assistant for this project. Most interviews with Palestinians in Lebanon were conducted in Arabic, while all interviews in the USA were carried out in English. 18 An exception is the work. This was published by Ocean Tree Books in 2002 by Christison (2001). 19 Carried out by Helena Lindholm Schulz in Swedish. Almost all arrived in Sweden from Lebanon after 1982. Most are politically active and spend a considerable amount of time advocating the Palestinian cause in Sweden. 20 All interviews are kept anonymous through the use of pseudonyms. 21 On Westen representations of Palestinians, cf. Said (1986). 22 Admittedly, in the real world this distinction might not always be easy to maintain. Yet analytically the term ‘diaspora’ refers to an existence in several parts of the world, yet a continuous sense of having a ‘homeland’ somewhere else, as well as a strong sentiment of connection with comembers of the diaspora in other parts of the world. In addition, ‘ethnic minorities within nation-states’ still take the nation-state as postulated. The use of ‘diaspora’ means a different view, seeing communities as unbounded. 23 This is certainly true also of ‘migrant’/exile communities of other forms. 24 This might give a picture of too idyllic a landscape of home, also replete with oppression, terror and abuse. ‘Home’ need not be a place of security, belonging and warmth, but might just as well represent an unspeakable space of chaos, coldness and darkness, most clearly articulated in feminist writings (cf. Webster 1998). Nevertheless, it is precisely because of romantic middle-class conceptions of ‘home’ that oppression and abuse taking place in the ‘home’ are so difficult to come to terms with. 25 Emile Habibi is one of the most well-known Palestinian writers in Israel. He represented Rakah, the Israeli Communist Party, in the Knesset. He died in Nazareth in 1996. 26 Habibi, Emile (1970), ‘Al-Hubb Fi Qalbi’ (Love in My Heart), in Sudasiyyat al-Ayyam al-Sitta (Sextet of the Six Days), trans. Muhammad Siddiq, pp. 116–17; quoted in Siddiq 1995:92.

2 CATASTROPHE AND BEYOND 1 For accounts of the uprising, see Swedenburg (1995), Mattar (1988) and Johnson (1982). 2 The number of refugees in 1948–9 is disputed. UN figures estimated the number at approximately 726,000 (cf. Morris 1990). As Morris shows, it is impossible to arrive at a definitive estimate. Therefore Morris himself tends

232 NOTES

3 4

5

6

7

8 9 10

11

12

13

to favour the analysis made by the British Foreign Office in September 1949, arriving at the loose figure of ‘between 600,000 and 760,000’ (Morris 1987:298). Abu Iyad was assassinated in 1991, probably by forces related to the Iraqi regime. Irgun Tzevai Leumi-Lochaemi Cherut Yisrael; the Irgun and the Stern movement, respectively. They were right-wing organisations which used terror methods against British as well as Arab institutions and targets. Masalha states that Ben-Gurion, in his War Diary, is vague regarding the de facto policy of expulsion and that it is clear that Ben-Gurion did not want to ‘go down in history…as the “great expeller”’ (Masalha 1988:127:2000). The AHC was formed in relation to the Great Revolt by the Palestinian Arab political parties in order to coordinate the local committees, but had no real control over the uprising. The AHC was headed by hajj Amin alHusayni, who had now become more radical vis-à-vis the British as well as the Jewish presence. In September 1948 the All Palestine Government was formed by the AHC. The All Palestine Government was the leading Palestinian political institution until the formation of the PLO in 1964, while the AHC receded into an existence in name only (Mattar 1988:141). In 1921 hajj Amin al-Husayni (1895–1974) was appointed mufti of Jerusalem by the British rulers. (Mufti refers to a Muslim expert who gives non-binding legal opinions on shari’a). In 1929 he was appointed president of the Supreme Muslim Council. Husayni was one of the most influential families at the time and has continued to have a great impact upon the politics of Palestine. (See Mattar 1988 for a detailed biography on the mufti). The quotation is taken from Weitz’s Diary III: 367, entry for 18 December 1948. A conciliatory committee had been set up by the UN General Assembly in late 1948 in order to find a peaceful settlement to the stalemate. UNHCR intervened in the Palestinian situation on two occasions during the 1990s: first, when Palestinians were stranded in Kuwait during the Gulf war and, second, during the Libyan expulsion threat in 1995 (Shiblak 2000). This is basically the same definition as the one adopted in 1952. See Takkenberg (1998) for an analysis of the developments of UNRWA’s defini-tions. Descendants are counted in a patrilineal fashion, so that children born to a registered refugee woman married to a non-registered man are not registered (see Takkenberg 1998). Susan Akram (2001) argues that since the UNCCP has failed to provide protection that task should be overtaken by the UNHCR.

NOTES 233

14 Through, for example, large-scale water projects, the refugees were to find jobs, become self-supporting and thence integrated into host states (B. Schiff 1995). 15 Lebanon refused, however, to accept the Palestinian deportees, who were stranded in the Marj al-Zuhur camp in the no-man’s land between Israel and the Israeli security zone in southern Lebanon. Half of the deportees were allowed to return in September 1993, while the remainder returned in December 1993, a year after the original decision. 16 The proportion of the Christian population of Jerusalem has also declined as a result of Israeli expansion of the boundaries of the municipality of Jerusalem, including several villages with Muslim majorities; as a result of Muslim migration to Jerusalem, particularly from the Hebron area (Tsimhoni 1993:21ff.); but also due to immigration to Jerusalem by Muslims, from the Hebron region in particular. 17 It should be noted that Christian refugees have settled outside refugee camps to a much greater extent than Muslims. In 1967 less than 1 per cent of Christian refugees remained in refugee camps (Tsimhoni 1993:28)

3 PALESTINIANS IN THE WORLD 1 The real figure for Palestinian refugees actually living in Lebanon is, however, probably considerably lower (see pp. 53). 2 Syria has not been included in this overview, mainly due to a lack of comprehensive studies. For some insight, see Brand (1988), Suleiman (1994) and Sahli (2000). 3 An Arab League resolution in 1952 called for the issuance of a standard Arab passport to refugees, but no such actions were ever taken (Brand 1988: 25) due to intra-Arab differences. Saudi Arabia in 1951 granted civil rights to refugees, and Iraq followed suit in 1953 (Plascov 1981:47). In 1955 a new Arab League resolution called for the issuance of travel documents to Palestinians living outside the Arab world. Palestinians in other parts of the world were to have the right to choose from what Arab country they wished to receive a passport (Brand 1988:25). As the resolutions were non-binding, they were largely ignored. The Arab League advocated that host governments should not offer nationality since this could weaken the political rights of the refugees. However, all other civic rights were to be extended to the Palestinian refugees (R.Sayigh 1988:279). 4 Statement by Jordanian Prime Minister Ziad al-Rifai on the Implementation of Jordan’s Disengagement from the West Bank, 20 August 1988 (in Lukacs 1992:525). According to the document, Gazan Palestinians would also still be able to have their temporary Jordanian passports renewed.

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5 The Communist Party was during this time divided into the Jordanian Communist Party in the West Bank and the Palestinian Communist Organisation in Gaza. 6 The ANM pledged allegiance to the unitary philosophy of Nasser. 7 Another radical pan-Arab political group, which has been most influential in Syria (ruling party since 1963) and, in another version, in Iraq (ruling party since 1968). 8 The Accord was strongly criticised by the rejectionist groups in the PLO, and the Palestine National Salvation Front was formed in Damascus in order to confront the deal. 9 The first election in the country since 1967. 10 Chamoun was Lebanon’s president between 1952 and 1958 and continued to be an important Maronite leader. During the war he headed a Lebanese Front composed of various Christian—Maronite conservative groups. The party set up an armed militia of its own, the ‘Tigers’. 11 In 2001 Sabra and Shatila were again raised on the international agenda, as Israel’s newly elected prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was accused of crimes against humanity by survivors of the massacre. Survivors sued Sharon before a court in Brussels under the Belgian law which makes it possible to charge and try war crimes, genocide and crimes against human rights regardless of where in the world the crime was committed. In June 2002 three appeal judges in Brussels came to the conclusion that Belgian war-crimes law could not be used to try Sharon. In February 2003, the Belgian Supreme Court ruled that Ariel Sharon was protected from indictment by immunity as long as he held the postition of Prime Minister. 12 See R.Sayigh (1994a) for an account of deteriorating Shi’a-Palestinian relations in the 1980s, as well as an orally based history of the Battle of the Camps. 13 A survey indicates that 75 per cent of the refugee families in Lebanon have been displaced more than once, and 19 per cent more than three times (Quatishat and Mahmoud 1993; quoted by Tamari 1996). 14 According to the census carried out by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in 1997, the West Bank population had reached 1.9 million at the time, and Gaza’s population was almost 1.1 million (www.pcbs.org). 15 In 1990, following developments in the then Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and after lengthy internal debates, the Palestine Communist Party changed its name to the Palestine People’s Party. 16 Abdel-Shafi was appointed head of the Palestinian delegation to the peace negotiations resulting from the Madrid Conference in 1991. 17 For an overview of the labour situation in the West Bank and Gaza, see Øvensen (1994); for a detailed account of Gaza, see Roy (1995). 18 See Hass (1996) for detailed accounts of the tedious and arbitrary system which maintains Gaza’s confinement and the humanitarian effects of this system.

NOTES 235

19 In the following ‘PNA’ and ‘PA’ will be used interchangeably. 20 According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2000 there were 1,150, 000 Muslims and 376,000 ‘others’ in Israel (Israeli CBS 2000). 21 The division resulted in fact in one Jewish and one Arab section. 22 The DAP has been rather successful and received four seats in the Knesset in 1996, together with part of the Islamist movement. 23 Since the US Immigration and Naturalization Service has not recognised ‘Palestinian’ as a nationality, no completely reliable statistics exist. 24 We have found no figures for this phenomenon, however.

4 STATELESS, ROOTLESS, HOMELESS: MEANINGS OF HOMELAND IN EXILE 1 Quoted in Tibawi (1963:513). 2 ‘Out of place’ is the title Edward Said has chosen for his memoirs (1999). 3 Since 1967 Israel has deported a number of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. 4 See, for example, Turki (1994), Sharabi (1998a, 1998b) and Barghouti (1998b). 5 Mahmoud Darwish has become perhaps the most famous Palestinian poet. In 1948, when he was 6 years of age, he fled from the upper Galilee to Lebanon with his family. The family later returned and were labelled ‘internal refugees’, as they came too late to be included in the census of the Palestinian Arabs. Mahmoud Darwish has lived in Haifa. He left Israel for Beirut in 1971. Together with other writers living in Israel, Darwish has been called a ‘captive’ writer, since Israel is seen as a prison camp (Slycomovics 1998:170). Following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, in 1982 Darwish left for Tunisia and then for Paris. In 1987 Darwish became a member of the PLO Executive Committee. He resigned from that position in 1993, after the signing of the Declaration of Principles. He was for a time refused permission by Israel to return to Haifa. In 1998 he went ‘back’ to the West Bank, to settle in Ramallah. 6 Previously the PCP. The party changed name in 1990 because of developments in the then Soviet Union. 7 Statelessness is indeed a humanitarian tragedy, as fundamental rights are to be guaranteed by states. 8 As is illustrated in Chapter 3, Palestinians’ ability to obtain passports has varied in different contextual settings, but the vast majority of refugees have lacked the possibility of becoming citizens and obtaining passports. Of the Arab states, only Jordan has offered the Palestinians citizenship. 9 Tawfiq Sayigh grew up in Tiberias. He studied at the American University of Beirut and then studied English literature at Harvard.

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10 In The Disinherited (1972), Fawaz Turki narrates in detail what it was like to be a young, poor camp boy in Lebanon in the 1950s and how refugeeism was turned into struggle and the assertion of political identity from the late 1960s. 11 As early as 1992 the Libyan regime announced its intention to reduce the number of foreign workers, and thousands have been deported. In 1995 Qaddafi declared that all Palestinians would be expelled (Shiblak 1995:42). 12 It should here be emphasised that the views of Fawaz Turki have changed considerably during the period in which he has written. To some extent, he is also as a person an ‘untypical’ Palestinian because of his personal lifestyle. However, few have managed to pinpoint in such precise and painful words the experience of many a Palestinian. 13 A number of research projects have been undertaken for this purpose, to create a memory, to install an image of the landscape and what it looked like. Walid Khalidi’s All that Remains (1992) is the best known of these efforts. Also, during the 1990s the BirZeit Research and Documentation Centre launched a large project to bring forth a picture of life during that time, giving name and life to destroyed and depopulated villages and localities. On the internet, the website Palestine Remembered similarly presents a photographic exposition of the towns and cities of Palestine, in both 1948 and 1967 areas. The purpose is clearly to present a portrait of a unified, coherent land. 14 Nationalism often attributes feminine qualities to land. This is particularly evident in military language, where land is ‘penetrated’ or ‘raped’. 15 In the late 1970s and early 1980s a more active sumud was developed by Palestinian students engaged in attempts to preserve land relations as well as culture. Solidarity movements nurtured the idea of a self-reliant society based on the peasantry. Folk culture was also nurtured. At the same time, sumud degenerated after the establishment of the sumud fund in the late 1970s, when the Arab states decided to support Palestinian steadfastness (Tamari 1991:62f.). 16 Israel, too, has made use of the cactus in identity discourses. Secondgeneration, native-born Israelis are labelled sabra. To Israelis it is the fruit which is important, and sabra supposedly means to be tough on the outside but soft and gentle inside. 17 The destruction during the al-Aqsa intifada was unprecedented (see further Chapter 7). 18 On the loss of childhood, cf. Rushdie (1991). 19 Jabra, ‘In the Deserts of Exile’ (in Elmessiri 1982:69–71). 20 Cf. also Hoffman’s (1989) account of how her childhood is recollected. 21 Kanafani was born in Acre in 1936, and fled with his family in 1948, first to Beirut and then to Damascus. In 1955 he moved to Kuwait, then back to Beirut, where he became editor-in chief of al-Hadaf, a weekly publication of

NOTES 237

22 23

24 25

the Popular Front. He was killed in an Israeli car bomb in 1972 and thus achieved the status of martyr. The desert has also come to symbolise working in the Gulf. ‘To go to the desert’ means to look for a job in any of the Gulf countries. Indeed, Kanafani’s story reveals the dangers facing people on the move because of desperation. In June 2000 58 ‘illegal’ Chinese migrants suffocated in a truck discovered in Dover, England. It is also significant that Palestinians trying to cross checkpoints between the West Bank/Gaza and Israel during the al-Aqsa intifada have been hiding in lorries carrying fruit and vegetables. Cf. Malkki’s (1995) account of the construction of a ‘pure Hutu refugee’ identity in a camp existence. Although many camps have gradually merged into urban environments, as slum areas in larger cities (e.g. Peteet 1991:25). It is not always possible to discern when the city ends and the camp begins.

5 RESISTANCE AND RETURN: THE POLITICS OF HOMELAND 1 Darwish (1978), Yawmiat al-huzn al-’adi, 2nd edn, Beirut; cited by McKean Parmenter (1994:97). 2 al-Fateh is the reverse acronym for al-Harakat al Tharir al-Watani alFalastin, which means the Palestinian national liberation movement. 3 They joined at different points. 4 Palestinianism in proto-forms certainly already existed at the beginning of the twentieth century, however, partly expressed by the bourgeoisie and intellectual strata, but also by the Palestinian peasantry (R.Khalidi 1997). 5 Founded in 1967; the forerunner was the ANM, which was pro-Nasser. The PFLP is a Marxist—Leninist movement which argues that the Palestine question is ultimately an issue related to class. An important feature of both the PFLP and the DFLP is that Palestine is part of Arab unity; this is particularly so for the PFLP, while the DFLP has been more inclined towards Palestinian territorialism. The PFLP has split many times into ever smaller organisations. The rejectionist front was formed in 1974, consisting of PFLP, PFLP-GC, the Arab Liberation Front (ALF)—linked to the Iraqi Ba’ath party—and the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF). Four years later, the Front had broken asunder and al-Fateh again dominated the scene. The rejectionist front enjoyed, however, a considerable amount of support, especially among the refugees (Cobban 1984:62). It was in the early 1970s that factionalism began to be a problem, with loyalties being directed more towards individual factions at the expense of the overall resistance. In the 1970s the PFLP was the main ideological contender to the hegemony of Fateh. Today it has lost much of its appeal, at least in the West Bank and Gaza.

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6 For example the terror attacks against Israel at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972, when 11 Israeli athletes were killed by the organisation ‘Black September’, linked to Fateh, or the attack perpetrated by the DFLP against a school in Ma’alot in 1974, when 32 children were killed. 7 Among the participants were members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, elected in the West Bank and Gaza in January 1996, along with other personalities from the ‘inside’ to assure the outcome of the vote. 8 Fida, or feda, in Arabic means to sacrifice or redeem, and fedayyen therefore refers to those who make the sacrifice. 9 Produced by the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU), which is composed of representatives of the PLO factions. 10 Hamas and Islamic Jihad took responsibility for a number of terror attacks during the period. The first suicide bombs to occur were in April 1994 and they were designed as revenge against the massacre of 29 Palestinians in Hebron in February that year. In October 1994 there was increased activism, particularly among Hamas cells, as in the terror attack against a bus in central Tel Aviv which killed 21 people. In February/March 1996 four bombs exploded in the course of eight days in the middle of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Ashkelon, killing more than 60 Israelis. After that Hamas was subject to heavy repression by the PA. Hamas’s popular support decreased considerably and was down to 8 per cent in September/October 1996 (CPRS, Opinion Poll, no. 24, 26 September-17 October 1996). 11 On the intifada, see, for example, Lockman and Beinin (1989), McDowall (1989), Peretz (1990), Z.Schiff and Ya’ari (1990), Nassar and Heacock (1990) and Hunter (1993). 12 Initially, the DFLP was the PDFLP. 13 Most women’s organisations have been connected to PLO factions.

6 RIGHT OF RETURN, THE REFUGEES AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE PEACE PROCESS 1 Including material losses, accounting for inflation, allowing a 4 per cent growth rate and including human capital losses as well as psychological damage, Kubursi estimates a value of US$281 billion in 1998 prices (Kubursi 2001:223). 2 This process was initiated with the PNC of 1974. 3 See Corbin 1994; Abbas 1995; Savir 1998; Aggestam 1999. 4 Baruch Goldstein was a settler extremist responsible for the mass murder of 29 Palestinians in the Ibrahim Mosque in Hebron in February 1994. 5 One of the outcomes of the Madrid Conference was the establishment of the multilateral track, which was divided into different working groups, one of which was to deal with the refugees. The others were environment, water, economic development and security/confidence-building. The participants

NOTES 239

6

7 8 9 10

11 12

13 14

15

16

17

in the multilateral negotiations were Israel, the PA, Jordan, Egypt and a number of Gulf and North African Arab states. The USA and Russia have hosted the process, while the EU and Japan have also played a role. Between 1993 and 1998, a rather stable proportion of two-thirds of the population in the West Bank and Gaza defined themselves as supporters of the peace process, with a peak of 78.7 per cent in December 1996 (CPRS, Public Opionion Polls, 1993–8). Badil concentrates its work on the rights of refugees. Netanyahu won by 0.9 per cent. Figures on settlements remain problematic, but the ones provided by the Israeli organisation Peace Now are generally regarded as reliable. Although Barak was ultimately elected in order to restore national unity— the list created was called One Israel—disintegration was heightened under his leadership. Divisions between secular and religious elements were sharpened as Barak headed the ‘secular revolution’. The schism between former Education Minister Yossi Sarid, from the liberal-leftist Meretz, on the one hand and Shas on the other in the summer of 2000 eventually emerged as a major headache for the Prime Minister. Meretz was the first party to leave the government. The coalition definitely cracked, as three of the coalition partners—Shas, Yisrael Ba’Aliya and the National Religious Party — supported a preliminary reading to dissolve the Knesset and calling for early elections. It should be emphasised that such replies in opinion polls might to an extent be the result of what people believe is expected of them. In February 2002 a document was revealed, prepared by the EU Special Representative to the Middle East Process, Ambassador Miguel Moratinos. The nonpaper was acknowledged by both sides as relatively accurate. Replacing Feisal Husseni, who died in 2001. Several other discussion plans and suggestions since the early 1990s have suggested something similar, i.e. token return in the form of family reunification, some form of compensation and otherwise resettlement in a Palestinian state in the West Bank accompanied with resettlement in Arab states. For an overview of such proposals, see Massad (2001). No longer were Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza required to obtain permission from Israel to go abroad. Holders of Palestinian passports were also able to travel to Jordan and Egypt without return permits. In January 2002 the Israeli authorities banned all holders of Palestinian passports from exiting or entering Israel through Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv (Baker 2002). According to the Basic Law itself, a law was to become law after three readings in the Council, regardless of the opinion of the executive (Draft Basic Law for the National Authority in the Transition Period 1995). In the Autumn of 1997, the author of this book together with Michael Schulz conducted 48 interviews with PNA representatives, PLC members,

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18 19

20

21

22

23 24 25

26

27

representatives of PLO factions, as well as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The purpose of the interviews was to bring out internal discussions on the potential for democratisation, the political system and governance (e.g. Lindholm Schulz 2002). According to PLC members (interviews April/May 1999), in 1999 it was quite normal to hold sessions with only 30 of the 88 delegates present. Such as Marwan Barghouti, PLC member Ramallah; Husam Khader, PLC member Nablus; Sa’id el-Krunz, PLC member Gaza; Abbas Zaki, PLC member Hebron. The Council report on mismanagement, improper accounting structures and misuse of public funds in the Authority was formulated as a study of a prior report conducted by the PA General Control Office operating under the Ministry of Finance. The Auditor’s report had revealed that US$326 million had been mismanaged. The Council report also recommended that criminal charges for corruption should be brought against the Minister of International Cooperation and Planning, Nabil Sha’ath, as well as the Minister of Civil Affairs, Jamil Tarifi (PLC ‘Report on the Findings of the General Control Office’, August 1997). Primary elections were held in the Ramallah area in November 1994. When refugee camp activists emerged as the winners in a number of cases, continued elections were halted. New primary elections were held in the West Bank and Gaza in 1999. It should be emphasised that in the CPRS opinion polls several hypothetical candidates are posed against Yasser Arafat, whereas in the 1996 elections there was only one runner-up, Samiha Khalil. In December 2001, 80 per cent of the population of the West Bank and Gaza reportedly supported the continuation of the uprising (JMCC 2001). It is true that the name tanzim was used in the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians that occurred in September 1996. Shabiba means ‘young men’, but has come also to denote young activist men and street fighters. Sometimes the term refers specifically to Fateh’s student movement. Suicide bombs continued to be used as a weapon by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, while Fateh-related militias and other groups primarily used other forms of violence, such as spectacular attacks against military checkpoints, tanks and settlements. Support for suicide bombs, however, peaked with 64 per cent of the population of the West Bank and Gaza claiming support for such ‘operations’ (JMCC 2001). Fateh-related groups such as the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades increased their use of suicide bombs during the first half of 2002. In late 2002 and early 2003, Palestinian officials as well as Fateh representatives called for an end to suicide bombings. As PFLP Deputy, Ali Mustapha returned to the occupied territories in 1999. In 2000 he was named as the successor to George Habash, who had led the movement since its establishment in the late 1960s.

NOTES 241

28 On 15 January 2002 the PNA arrested Ahmad Sa’adat, Secretary-General of the PFLP, who Israel held responsible for the murder of Ze’evi (Baker 2002). In the heightened violence in early March and under heavy American and Israeli pressure, the PNA arrested other people allegedly involved in the assassination. 29 Syria abstained.

7 NEW HOMES AND IDENTITIES IN MOTION 1 The hamayel could be defined as a semi-organised collection of extended families (‘ailah) based on patrilineality. 2 The centre produces a journal called Al-Jana, The Harvest: Records of the Oral Culture and History of the Palestinian People. 3 Nabil came to Lebanon as a boy during the exodus, and studied at the American University of Beirut. He studied for an MA in Canada, and then worked as a researcher in Kuwait before going to the USA to study for his PhD. After that he went back to Kuwait and then to Lebanon, where he worked at the American University of Beirut for a year, after which he had to quit. He then went to Libya for three years, but was forbidden to work in 1995, when Libya expelled a number of Palestinians. 4 The project led to a special issue in the Lebanese daily al-Nahar on Palestinian camps. The volunteer teacher Mayssoun Sukarieh was assigned the task of collecting children’s stories in Shatila. 5 The respondent tried unsuccessfully to enter Ben-Gurion Airport in 1995 on a Swedish passport. He was dismissed on the grounds that being a Palestinian refugee he could not enter. 6 Scandinavian Airlines. 7 This is evident in the labour market as well as the segregated housing conditions of Swedish cities. Although the Palestinians as a community are scattered across various housing conditions in Sweden, ‘immigrants’ to a large extent end up in the suburbs of the larger cities (Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö), where some residential areas are almost exclusively inhabited by non-Swedes or Swedes with a foreign background. 8 Suheir Hammad was born in Jordan to Palestinian refugee parents in 1973. The family also lived in Beirut for a period, but eventually settled in Brooklyn, New York. 9 Rawia Morra was born in Beirut in 1966 and came to Sweden in 1985 as a stateless Palestinian. 10 Parliamentary elections were held on 15 September 2002. 11 The suggestion that language skills be connected to the acquisition of citizenship was launched by the Liberal Party (Folkpartiet), but it fit discursively with other suggestions from the Conservatives (Moderata Samlingspartiet) on higher demands vis-à-vis ‘immigrants’ receiving social

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welfare and a proposal that if a person holding dual citizenship commits a crime in Sweden, Swedish citizenship should be revoked. 12 Asylum-seekers in Sweden were for a period placed in special housing units (refugee locations) with other refugees and asylum-seekers until their cases had been decided. Now, the Board of Migration seeks instead to locate asylum-seekers in apartments and to ‘spread them out’ in society. Often, however, the result is similar to putting them in specific housing units.

8 COMING HOME? 1 Shiblak (1997) reports an estimate of 60,000. 2 Salah Ta’amari was elected as a Bethlehem representative to the PLC in January 1996. He came first among the candidates of Bethlehem, which indicates the importance of ‘struggle’ as a quality in determining whom to vote for. Thus, the ‘outside’—‘inside’ divide could be superseded by struggle. Those who have struggled, whether inside or outside, are the ones who enjoy the most legitimacy (cf. JMCC 1998).

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INDEX

Abbas Mahmud 224 Abdel-Shafi, Haidar 69, 234 Abdallah, King of Jordan 45, 49 Abdullah, Saudi Crown Prince 164 Abdulrahim, Dima 81 Abna al Balad (Sons of the Village) 73 Absentees’ Property Law 1950 75 Abu Hanoud, Mahmoud 163 Abu-Odeh, Adnan 47, 48, 49, 50–3 Abu Safiyeh, Yousef 159 Abu Sittah, Salman 141 Abu Zayyad, Ziad 159 accents 221 Across Borders Project 180 Agreement on the Gaza Strip and the Jericho Area 142–4 al-‘Ahd 48 Ahluwalia, Pal 12 Ahmed, Hisham 39 Åkesson, Lisa 170 Aldiik, Ahmed 84–7 Ali Mustapha, Abu 163, 241 alienation 20–2 Allenby Bridge 89–1 ‘Allush, Layla 96–9 Alqudsi-Ghabra, Taghreed 172 ‘Alush, Musa 206 Amal movement 55 Amayreh, Khalid 134 ambivalence 199–5 American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee 79

American Muslims for Jerusalem 179 Ami, Shlomo Ben 152 Amir, Yigal 144, 149 Amman 45 Amman Accord 1985 47 Anderson, Benedict 17, 87, 99 Andersson, Sten 82 al-Aqsa intifada 5, 81, 134–7, 180, 224, 228; collapse of peace process 158, 161–8; martyrs 129; media coverage 181 al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades 162, 163 Arab Higher Committee (AHC) 32, 232 Arab league 47, 64 Arab Legion 46, 49 Arab Liberation Front 65 Arab nationalism (pan-Arabism) 116 Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM) 46, 53, 62 Arab Resource Centre for Popular Arts, Beirut 172 Arab Summit 2002 165 Arafat, Yasser 53, 118, 119, 125; al-Aqsa intifada 162, 163–6, 165; excluded from Peace Accords 1994 47–48; headquarters besieged 165; Legislative Council 159–l; peace process 152, 153;

INDEX 269

PLO Covenant 122–4; right of return 156; sumud 104–7 armed struggle see resistance Arzt, Donna 45 Ashcroft, Bill 12 Ashrawi, Hanan 159 assistance 177 Association of Forty 74 Association for the Palestinians’ Right of Return 83 al-Awda 148–50, 155, 156, 179, 180, 224 Ba’athism 46, 53 Badil 148, 156, 239 Bahrain 63 Barak, Ehud 150, 151, 152, 153, 154 Badr, Lyana 54–7 Barghouti, Marwan 159, 162 Barghouti, Mureed 108, 182 Basch, Linda 11, 16 Basic Law 158 Battle of the Camps 55 ‘battle for Jordan’ 1970/71 46–9 Bauman, Zygmunt 18–19 Bedouins 41 Beilin-Abu Mazen Agreement 1995 144 Beirut 53 belonging 226–30; see also identity Ben-Gurion, David 26, 30 Ben-Gurion airport, Tel Aviv 89 Benvenisti, Meron 31, 73, 75–8, 103, 106 Bethlehem 68, 165 Bishara, Azmi 73–6 Bitawi, Sheikh 39 Black September 119 body, Palestine in the 190–3 borders 72, 87–90, 226 boundary production 17–18 bourgeoisie 169–2

Bowman, Glenn 169–2 Brand, Laurie 37 Bush, George W. 163, 165, 201 business capital 169 Buwayz, Faris 59 cactuses 104 Cainkar, Louise 201 Cairo accords 1994 143 Cairo Agreement 1969 52–5, 57 Camp David accords 1979 47, 62, 132 Camp David negotiations 2000 3, 151– 4, 228 camps see refugee camps Canada camp 69 car registration plates 72 Carmel, Moshe 26 catastrophe (nakba) xii–2, 3–4, 4, 22– 37; Arab/Palestinian leadership 32; estrangement, victimisation and suffering 91–4; exodus 25–7; expulsion vs accident 28–32; prevention of return 32–5; refugees 23–8, 34–7; transformation of class structures 169–2; URWA and its cause 36–8; violence and fear 26–8 Chacour, Elias 77 chain migration 79 Chambers, Iain 10 Chamoun, Camille 54, 234 checkpoints 72, 87–90, 226 children: Deheishe and Shatila camps 180–3, 209–12; integration into host country 195– 9; transfer of hope of return to 206–8 Christian migration 20, 42–4 Christison, Kathleen 201 citizenship:

270 INDEX

Egypt 60–3; Israeli 76–9; Jordan 45–7; Lebanon 51–4 civilian and supply convoy attack 27 class 169–2 Clifford, James 8, 16, 115 Clinton, Bill 50–3, 151, 153–5 closures 70–3 Cohen, Robin xii, 8 collective memory 172–4 Committee for the Defence of the Rights of the Displaced in Israel 74 Communist Parties 234; Jordan 46; Lebanon 53; Palestine Communist Party (PCP) 67 complementary identities 195–199 corruption 218–1 crossing points 72, 87–90, 226 culture: cultural alienation 201–5; folk culture 99–2 Custodian for Absentees’ Property 75 cypress trees 106 daily labour migration 69–3 Darawshe, MK Abdalwahab 73 Darwish, Mahmoud 5–6, 86, 116, 204, 235; ‘Awaiting the Return’ 100–3; grandfather and waiting to return 94–7; ‘Guests on the Sea’ 224; identity of Palestinians in Israel 77; ‘A Lover from Palestine’ xii; martyrdom 127–30; ‘My Father’ 209; resignation from PLO Executive Committee 146; resistance 120, 125 death, return in 208–10

Declaration of Palestinian Independence 1988 97–98, 133, 141 Declaration of Principles (DOP) 45, 142–4 Deheishe 180–3, 209–12 Deir Yasin massacre 25, 27 democracy 220 Democratic Arab Party (DAP) 73, 74, 235 Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) 67 Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash) 73, 74 demonstrations 180; October 2000 77–78 Department of Expatriate Affairs 170 deportations see forced migration desert, exile as 109–13 Deuxième Bureau 59 development schemes/assistance 36 diasporas 7–21, 225; defining Palestinian diaspora 19–2; hybridity 12–14; and nationalism 14–19; transnational condition 9–12 discrimination 199–5 displacement 8, 9 dream of return 209–13 al-Durra, Muhammad 129 economy: Palestinian economy in Lebanon 57–9; remittances and 173–6; transnationalism 169–2; West Bank and Gaza 162 education 58, 63, 130–3 Egypt 34, 132; Gaza 68–l; Palestinian community 60–4 Eilat negotiations 154 Ein al-Hilweh 113 Ein Houd 74

INDEX 271

elections: Israel 73–6, 149–1, 154–6; Jordan 48; PNA 157–9; Sweden 199; West Bank 67–68 employment 50, 57, 62, 162; return and 219; work permits 52, 57 Eshkol, Levi 33–5 essentialism 168 estrangement 20–2, 91–4, 199–5 ‘ethnic cleansing’ 31 Europe, Western 80–5 exile 84–115; as desert 109–13; estrangement, victimisation and suffering 91–4; and homeland 96–109; liminality 93–8; movement and exclusion 84–90; refusal of life in exile 207–9 expulsion strategy 27, 28–32 Fahmi, Ahmed 106–9 Faist, Thomas 8 ‘Fakhani republic’ 53; end of 55–8 family 170–9, 225–9; decline in importance of 174–9; difficulties in meeting 175–8; economy and remittances 173–6; holidays and traditions 172–5; home where family is 185 Farah, Randa 7, 36, 37 Fateh 62, 64, 126, 164; conflicts within 159–1; Gaza 68, 69; Lebanon 53, 54, 55–8; revolution 118–21 Fateh Shabiba movement 83, 162, 240 Fateh tanzim 162 fear: catastrophe 26–8;

and return 209–13 feday, as symbol 125–8 fedayeen 66–9, 113, 118–1 fellah 124–6 feminisation of land 100–3 Flapan, Simha 28 folk culture 99–2 Folke Bernadotte 33 forced migration: continuing 39–2; expulsion strategy 27, 28–32; setback 38–39 ‘foreign residents’ 38 Freij, Elias 68 friendship networks 176–9 Frontiers of Dreams and Fears 180–3 funerals 172–5 Gaza 20–2, 43, 65, 66–72, 109, 132, 223, 228; al-Aqsa intifada 134–7, 161–8; attitudes to peace process 146–8; daily labour migration 69–3; Egypt and 62, 68–1; intifada 132–6; life as prison 90; migration to Sweden 82; occupation as ‘diaspora’ 71–4; refugees in Jordan 49; returnees 213; self-rule 142–4, 156–62; UNRWA budget 147–9 Gaza Strip 70 Gazit, S. 38 gender 136–40 Geneva Convention 1951 35 Germany 80 Ghabra, Shafeeq N. 42, 62 Gilo settlement 161 globalisation/globalism 9, 11, 18–19, 228 Goldstein, Baruch 144, 239 González, Nancie L. 78 governance 220

272 INDEX

Great Revolt 1936–8 22, 32 guarantor system 63 Gulf, the 41–3, 62–8; connections with Palestine 64; nationalisation efforts 63–6 Gulf War 63, 64–8, 79 Habib, Philip 55 Habibi, Emile 21, 207, 232 Haganah 27, 28, 30 Haifa 26 Hall, Stuart 12–13 Hamas 39, 64, 144, 160; leaders killed by Israelis 162, 163; suicide bombs 127, 238; women 138–40 hamayel (clan) system 172, 241 Hammad, Suheir 6, 102–5, 185, 190, 202, 241 Hammar, Tomas 12 Hammer, Juliane 178–1, 185, 209, 213, 219, 221 Hamzeh, Muna 72, 134, 162 Har Homa 150 al-Hasan, Hani 118 al-Hasan, Khalid 118 Hashemites 45, 46 Hasmoean tunnel 150 Hass, Amira 70, 71 Hebdige, Dick 110 Hebron 143 Hebron massacre 127 Hilal, Jamil 41 Hizbollah militia 134 holidays 172–5 Holocaust conference 1999 81 homeland/home 2, 3, 4, 5, 96–109, 226–30; carried within people 184–7; conceptualisations of 182–93; country of exile as 187–90, 189–2; diasporas and 8–9, 15, 18–19; estrangement, victimisation and suffering 91–4;

experience of return 214–20; feminisation of land 100–3; lack of 183–6; occupation politics 105–8; olive trees and rootedness 101–7; Palestine in the body 190–3; plural homes 185–8; refugee camps and 111–17, 186–9; return see return; security 187–90, 189–2; time lost 106–11; where family is 185 Hommery, Rozenn 65–8 Honduras 78 honour 136; and land 91–4 ‘honour killings’ 200 hope 207 housing/houses: decoration and recreation of Palestine 177; demolition of 106; destruction of villages 33; returnees and 219 Hrawi, Elias 59 Husayn, Rashid 111 al-Husayni, hajj Amin 32, 232–5 al-Huseini, ‘Abd al-Qadir 25 Hussein, King 47, 48 al-Hut, Mahmud 84 al-Hut, Shafiq 146 hybridity 12–14, 168–70, 192–203, 226–30; complementary identities 195–199 identity 5, 10, 109; citizenship and in Jordan 45–7; complementary identities 195–199; dilemma for Israeli citizens 76–78; estrangement and discrimination 199–5; exclusion and crossing points 86– 90; and future 95–8;

INDEX 273

hybridity see hybridity; lack of homeland and 183–6; stigmatisation and in Lebanon 58– 60; struggle as 119–5; UNRWA and 37 identity cards 71–4 ideology 118–21 Idris, Wafa’ 138 information technology 180–4 insider-outsider tensions 218–5 institution-building 157–9 integration 48–1, 114–17 Interim Agreement 1995 70, 143 internal displacement 72–5 Internet 180–3 intifada 36, 39, 69, 132–6; Christian migration 42–4; gender roles 138; martyrdom 127, 128; metaphors from nature 126–8 investment 170 Iraq 64–7 Islamic Association 73, 74 Islamic Association for Palestine 179 Islamic Jihad 39, 127, 144, 160, 163, 238 Islamic organisations 178–1 Israel 20–2; al-Aqsa intifada 134–7, 161–8; creation of xii, 23, 25, 109 (see also catastrophe); daily labour migration from Gaza and West Bank 69–3; elections 73–6, 149–1, 154–6; expulsion strategy 27, 28–32; forced migration 38–41; governments 149–2; insistence on change in PLO Charter 122–4; intifada 132–6; invasions of Lebanon 55; occupation as ‘diaspora’ 71–4;

occupation and politics of trees 105–8; peace accords with Jordan 40, 45, 47–48; peace process see peace process; ‘permanent residents’ in Jerusalem 40; refusal to allow return 32–5; resistance 118–21; war of 1967 38; withdrawal from south Lebanon 99, 136; see also Jerusalem Israeli citizens 72–78; identity dilemma 76–78; land/place 74–8 Israeli Communist Party 73 Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) 33, 134 Israeli Palestinian Centre for Research and Information (IPCRI) 153 Iyad, Abu 25, 103, 132 IZL (Irgun Tzevai Leumi) 27 Jabalyia refugee camp 69 Jabotinsky, Ze’ev 30 Jabra, Jabra Ibrahim 5, 102, 110 Jaffa 98 Jahileen Bedouin Society 41 Jayyusi, Salma Khadra 10, 189 Jerusalem 25–6; Camp David negotiations 151–3; Christian migration 42; forced migration 38–39, 40–2; silent transfer 40–2 Johnson, Nels 93 Jordan 39, 41, 43, 45–51, 62, 132; battle of Karameh 118; citizenship and identity 45–7; civil war 1970 –71 119; improved living conditions in camps 114–17; integration 48–1, 114–17; NGOs 179; and Palestinians from Kuwait 65;

274 INDEX

peace treaty with Israel 40, 45, 47– 48; PLO politics 46–48; politics 45–8; relations with Palestinians 49–3 journeying, endless 84–90, 168–70, 226 Judaisation 75–8, 98 Kanafani, Ghassan 5, 97, 110–13, 125, 214–17, 237 Kanafani, Norma 214 Karameh, battle of 118 Karine A affair 163–6 Kfar Etzion 27 Karmi, Ghada 80, 81, 207–9 Kasaba, Al 83 Katz, Yossi 152 keys 206 Khalaf, Salah 118 Khalidi, Rashid 32, 87 Khalidi, Walid 30, 30, 33 Klein, Menachem 141 el-Krunz, Sa’id 159 kufiya 125 Kuwait 42, 62–8, 179–2 ‘Kuwaitisation’ 63–6 labour market see employment labour migration 41–3; daily from West Bank and Gaza 69– 3 Labour Party (Israel) 150 land 74–8; alienation and class structures 169; confiscation 71, 74–7; homeland see homeland/home; honour and 91–4; Judaisation 75–8; martyrdom and 127–31; see also place Land Acquisition Law 1953 75 Land Day 75, 180 Latin America 78, 169

Lausanne Conference 1948/49 34, 36 Lauz, Yusuf Abu 185 Lavie, Smadar 168 Law of Return 1950 76 Le Troquer, 65–8 leadership: territorialisation of 156–62; weakness and catastrophe 32 League of Arab States Protocol 1965 51 Lebanese National Movement (LNM) 53, 54 Lebanon 3, 34, 43, 51–60, 211; attitudes to peace process 146, 147; deportation of activists to 39; end of ‘Fakhani republic’ 55–8; ‘foreigners’ 51–4; improved living conditions in camps 114–17; Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon 99, 134; NGOs 179; PLO politics 52–7; revolution 119; socioeconomics 57–9; stigmatisation and identity 58–60; UNRWA budget 147–9 Lebanon Appeal 148 Legislative Council 157–9, 159, 160, 218 Lesch, Ann Mosley 62 LHI (Lochaemi Cherut Yisrael) 27 Libya 59, 89–2 life, as prison 90 liminality 93–8 locality 96, 103 London 80, 81 love for the homeland 99 Lydda 26, 27 Ma’ale Adumim 41 Madrid Conference 1991 142 Mahmoud, Abd el-Raheem 125–7, 128

INDEX 275

Malkki, Liisa 9 marginality 111–17 Margolis, Naxine 12 Maronites 51, 53, 58, 59 marriage 172–5 martyr (shaheed) 127–31 Masalha, Nur 30, 30, 31 Masri, May 181 al-Masri, Tahi 48 media 181–4 mentality 220–5 migration 2, 20, 22–43; catastrophe and 23–32; chain migration 79; Christian migration 20, 42–4; expulsion vs accident 28–32; forced 38–41; to the Gulf 62; to Jordan 45; labour migration 41–3, 69–3; to Latin America 78; Lebanon and 51, 60; patterns at the turn of the century 22; setback 38–39; to Sweden 82–5, 198–1; to USA 79; to Western Europe 80; see also refugees Mitchell Commission Report 162 mobility 84–90, 168–70, 226 morality 201 Moratinos Nonpaper 154, 239 Morley, Dave 19 Morra, Rawia 190, 241 Morris, Benny 26, 27, 28–30, 31, 32, 33 ‘mothers of martyrs’ 137 movement, constant 84–90, 168–70, 226 Mubarak, Hosni 62–4 multilateral working group on refugees 145, 239 Musa, Abu 55

Muslim Brotherhood 46 Muslim organisations 178–1 Mutual Letters of Recognition 122 al-Nabulsi, Sulayman 46 nakba see catastrophe Nasir, Kamal 126 Nasser, Jamal Abdel 62, 116 nation-building 16 National Association of Arab Americans 79 National Committee for the Defence of the Rights of the Internally Displaced 149 National Democratic Alliance (NDA) 73–6 National Front 69 National and Islamic Higher Committee for the Follow-Up of the Intifada 162 nationalisation 63–6 nationalism: diasporas and 14–19; through transnationalism 5, 225–31 Nationality Law 1952 76 nature 14; metaphors from 126–8 Nazareth 27 Netanya 165 Netanyahu, Benyamin 150 ‘1948 people’ 146–8, 209–11 1967 war 38–39 Noble, Iris 37 Nusseibeh, Sari 141, 155 occupation: as ‘diaspora’ 71–4; politics of trees 105–8 olive trees 101–7; uprooting of 105–8 opinion polls 159–1 opsimism 207 oral histories 6–6

276 INDEX

Oslo process/Agreement 122–4, 143, 146, 147 Ossama, Um 86 othering 17–18, 223–6 outsider-insider tensions 218–5 Palestine: in the body 190–3; recreating from afar 177–84; see also homeland/home Palestine Affairs Centre 79 Palestine Communist Party (PCP) 67 Palestine Labour Union (Arbetarförbundet) 179 Palestine Liberation Front 65 Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) 5,116–19, 148, 228–1; changing revolutionary discourse 132–4; Covenant 118–20, 122–4, 127; Egypt and 62–4; Fateh and 119; fighters forced to leave Lebanon 60; Gaza 68; Gulf countries 63, 64; Gulf War 64–7; intifada 132–6; and living conditions in camps 114, 115; martyrdom 127; narrow regionalism 103; peace process 2–3, 144, 146, 147, 151; PNA 156–62; politics in Jordan 46–48; politics in Lebanon 52–8; returnees 129; right of return 141–3, 144; social networks 176–9; state-building 130; and Sweden 83; and USA 79, 178; West Bank 66–9, 67

Palestine National Council (PNC) 122– 4 Palestine National Front (PNF) 39, 67 Palestine People’s Party (PPP) 86, 235 Palestine Resistance Movement 119 Palestinian Authority (PA) see Palestinian National Authority (PNA) Palestinian Declaration of Independence 198897–98, 133, 141 Palestinian Development and Investment Corporation (PADICO) 170 Palestinian diaspora, defining 19–2 Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) 157–9, 159, 160, 218 Palestinian National Authority (PNA) 23–5, 70, 143; al-Aqsa intifada 163–6, 165; Department of Expatriate Affairs 170; elite collisions of interest 159–1; institution-building and political structure 157–9; Israeli citizenship 40; Karine A affair 163–6; refugee issue 152–4; returnee workers for 211, 213, 218– 1; self-rule 156–62; state-building 157; UNRWA 160–2 Palestinian National Covenant (Palestinian Charter) 1968 118–20, 122–4, 127 Pappé, Ilan 30 passports 187; Jordanian 45–7; lack of 77, 88 Peace Accords (Jordan-Israel) 1994 40, 45, 47–48 Peace Implementation Programme 161 peace process 2–3, 5, 57, 79, 142–68, 228;

INDEX 277

al-Aqsa intifada 161–8; Camp David 151–3; derailment of 149–7; mobilisation around the refugees 148–50; multilaterals 145; PNA 156–62; quadripartite committee 145; and the refugees 3, 5, 144–6, 152– 7, 211–14; resentment and bitterness 146–50; and returnees 211–15 peasants 101–4, 107–10, 124–6; land alienation 169 people, disillusionment with 219–2 Peres, Simon 149–1 permanent residency 40 Persson, Göran 81, 82 Peteet Julie 91, 136–8 Phalanges 53, 54 place 84–115; camps, marginality and resistance 111– 17; constant movement 84–90; estrangement, victimisation and suffering 91–4; exile as desert 109–13; homeland see homeland/home; life in liminality 93–8; nationalism and 14–17 placelessness 10–12 Plan Dalet (Plan D) 28–32 Plascov, Avi 45–7, 46, 49–2 political structure 157–9 Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP) 136 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) 46, 55, 119, 136, 162–5, 238 Popular Resistance 68–1 Portes, Alejandro 11 Portugali, Yuvali 14 Powell, Colin 165

prison’ metaphor 90 privilege 218–1 Progressive Movement (later Progressive List for Peace) 73 property 140 al-Qaddafi, Mu’ammar 59, 89 al-Qaddumi, Faruq 146 Qastal 25 Qatar 63 quadripartite committee 145 Rabin, Yitzhak 144, 149 Rafah 164 Rakah 73 Ramallah 165, 166, 213, 223 Ramallah communities 178 Ramle 26 refugee camps 6, 6; children of Deheishe and Shatila 180–3, 209–12; and home 111–17, 186–9; Gaza 69; and identity 123; Jordan 45, 48–1; Lebanon 51, 54–7, 55–8, 57–9, 59; sites of marginality and resistance 111–17 refugees 2, 3–4, 15, 20, 228; catastrophe 23–8, 34–7; dream of return 209–13; expulsion vs accident 28–32; Gaza 66–9, 69; from Lebanon 55; mobilisation around 148–50; peace process and 3, 5, 144–6, 152– 7, 211–14; prevention of return 32–5; as returnees 129; right of return see right of return; setback 38–39; Sweden 82–5; UNRWA 36–8; West Bank 66–9

278 INDEX

Relph, Edward 14 remaining in diaspora 224–7 remittances 173–6 representation of others 6–7 reproduction, women and 136–40 resettlement 69, 114–17 resistance 2, 4–5, 16, 116–40; al-Aqsa intifada 134–7; de-territorialised state-building 130–3; expanding the discourse of 132–4; fellah and feday 124–8; gender and 136–40; as identity 119–5; as ideology 118–21; intifada 132–6; martyr (shaheed) 127–31; refugee camps as sites of 111–17; returnees 129 return 3, 5, 204–27, 228–1; in death 208–10; dream and fear 209–13; experiences of return 213–25; future and 204–9; and homeland 214–20; mentality 220–5; othering 223; part of identity 204–10; peace process 211–15; refugees and returnees 129; refusal to allow 32–5; remaining in diaspora 224–7; right of return see right of return; tensions 218–2 Return Centre 83 revolution 118–21 ‘revolutionary generation’ 123 right of return 3, 5, 140–68; as politics 141–3; see also peace process Robins, Kevin 19 rootedness 14–15, 101–7 rootlessness 84–90 Rubenberg, Cheryl 222

Rubinstein, Danny 224 Sa’ad, Um 208 Sabra camp 55 Sadat, Anwar 62 Saddam Hussein 64 Sahlin, Mona 200 Said, Edward 5, 6, 20, 146, 199; exile 9, 10; hybridity 168, 192–6; nationalism 16–17, 17–18 Said, Wadie 192 al-Saiqa 55, 126 Saleh, Saleh Abdel Jawwad 159 Salma, Abu 206 Sarup, Madan 18 satellite TV 181–4 Saudi Arabia 62, 63, 64 Saudi peace initiative 164, 165 Sayigh, Rosemary 51, 91, 92, 108, 124– 6, 183; resistance and identity 119–2, 123 Sayigh, Tawfiq 88, 101, 235 Sayigh, Yezid 118, 122 security 187–90, 189–2 self-government 142–4, 156–62 September 11 terrorist attacks 163, 201 setback (naksa) 38–39 settlements 71, 150 Sha’ath, Nabil 159 shaheed (martyr) 127–31 Shain, Yossi 15 Shamir, Simon 66, 91, 113 Sharabi, Hisham 93–6, 146 Sharm el-Sheikh memorandum 150–2 Sharon, Ariel 134, 143, 155, 161, 163, 165 Shatila camp 55, 210–13; children and Deheishe children 180–3, 209–12 Shehadeh, Raja 89, 98, 105 Sherman, Martin 15 Shiblak, Abbas 80

INDEX 279

Shi’ites 53, 58 ships 213 Shlaim, Avi 28 Siddiq, Muhammad 91 simplicity 107–10 Slycomovics, Susan 74 Smith, Pamela Ann 169 Smooha, Sammy 76 Social Democratic Party (Sweden) 81– 4, 83, 179 social interaction 222 solidarity 113 state, and nation 15 state-building: de-territorialised 16, 130–13; self-rule 157 steadfastness (sumud) 104–7, 237 stigmatisation 58–60 storytelling 172–4 struggle see resistance suffering 2, 91–4, 220–3 suicide bombs 138, 158; al-Aqsa intifada 162, 163, 164–7, 166, 240–2; 1994 127, 238 sumud strategy 104–7, 237 supply convoy attack 27 Sweden 81–5, 177, 180, 195–9, 198– 1, 241–3; integration 198–1; and PLO 179; welfare state 189 Swedenburg, Ted 108, 168 symbols/icons of resistance 124–31 Syria 43, 54, 62, 90 Syrian National Party 53 Ta’amri, Salah 222–5, 242 Taba negotiations 154 Ta’if accord 1989 57 Tal al-Zataar camp 54–7 Tarifi, Jamil 159 Temple Mount 134, 161 Tenet Plan 162

tensions, between residents and returnees 218–5 territorialisation of leadership 156–62 territory see homeland/home, land, place terrorism 119; September 11 163, 201 time: life in liminality 93–8; lost 106–11 Tölölyan, Kachig 12 Toubbeh Jamil 25, 110 tourist visas 72 traditions 172–5, 201–5 Transfer Committee 32–4 transfer policy 27, 28–32 Trans-Jordanian nationalism 50 transnationalism 5, 168–203; class and economy 169–2; conceptualisations of home 182– 93; diasporas and transnational condition 9–12; family 170–9; hybridity 192–203; nationalism through 5, 225–31; recreating Palestine from afar 177– 84 travel 84–90, 168–70, 226 travel documents 72; see also passports trees 14, 106; olive trees 101–8 Tsemel, Lea 40 Tsimhoni, Daphne 42–4 Tuqan, Fadwa 5, 100, 208 Turki, Fawaz 5, 6, 182, 215, 235; battle for Karameh 118; exile as desert 111; feeling of being a stranger on return 217, 219–2; future 93; hybridity 194–7; lack of homeland 183–6;

280 INDEX

leaving the homeland 92; Palestinian identity 191; passportlessness 88–89; refugee camps 112–15, 113–16; resistance as identity 123–5; return 204; Sari Nusseibeh 155 Union for Palestinian Workers 83 United Kingdom Plan 47 United Nations (UN) 33, 34, 38; partition plan of 1947 25 United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP) 36 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 194 140, 142 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 34–6 United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) 2, 34–8, 43, 162; attempts to improve living conditions in camps 114; budget 147–9; and its cause 36–8; education 130, 132; and identity 37; Jordan 48, 49; Lebanon 51, 57, 58, 59; peace process 160–2 United Nations Security Council 81, 165 United States (USA) 79, 163–6, 165, 198; Arab-American associations 178–1; citizenship 188; culture 200–3, 201–5; as market 169; residents and return 211; returnees from 216, 223; September 11 terrorist attacks 163, 201

unrecognised villages 75 Usher, Graham 162 Van Hear, Nicholas 11–12 veil 138 Vertovec, Steven 11 victimisation 91–4 villages: destruction of 33; unrecognised 75 violence 26–8 visits to Palestine 173, 213, 225 Voice of Palestine 181 Wadi, Faruq 215 waiting 93–7 wall magazine 99–2 war of 1967 38–39 al-Wazir, Khalil 118 weddings 172–5 Wehr, Hans 19 Weighill, Marie-Louise 36 Weitz, Yousef 33 Weizmann, Chaim 30, 31 West Bank 20–2, 43, 66–72, 109, 132, 151, 223, 228; al-Aqsa intifada 134–7, 161–8; Christian migration 42; crossing Allenby Bridge to 89–1; daily labour migration 69–3; intifada 132–6; Jordanian administration 45, 45, 49; life as prison 90; migration to Sweden 82; occupation as ‘diaspora’ 71–4; outmigration 41; self-rule 142–4, 156–62; setback 38; transfers to Jordan 39 Western Europe 80–5 women 136–40 work permits 52, 57; see also employment

INDEX 281

Wye River agreement 1998 122, 158 Yarmouk camp 112 Zayyad, Tawfiq 104 Ze’evi, Rahavam 163 Zinni, Anthony 165 Zionism 30–2

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