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Diasporic Palestinian Identity and Homeland Nationalism

May of this year will mark the seventieth anniversary of the Nakba, (Arabic for the Catastrophe), the 1948 expulsion of over seven-hundred thousand Palestinians from historical Israel/Palestine in the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli War and Israeli independence. There are now around seven million refugees, displaced peoples, and their descendants spread across the world, mostly concentrated in the Middle East. The political and ideological landscape has changed immensely due to back and forth peace deals between Israel and Palestine. These changes have a profound effect on the community of refugees and their descendants in terms of how they perceive the “homeland”. In light of the seventieth anniversary of the Nakba, what are the opinions and perceptions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants when asked about their homeland? How do they see the future of Palestinians? In my research, I would like to address the prevailing forces that drive the politics, opinions, and sentiments of refugees and their descendants. More specifically there will be discussion of how Palestinians view the homeland through their ideologies and the importance of key issues such as right of return and secular versus Islamist discourse. Woven throughout this essay will be excerpts from an interview with Dr. Zafer Lababidi of Florida State University about his experiences as a diasporic Palestinian Arab.

 

To better construct a meaningful dialogue about the issues surrounding Palestinian nationalism, the core concepts and ideas must be explained. The Nakba was key in the development of what is known today as Palestinian nationalism. It is not to say that Palestinian nationalism began in 1948, instead it began during a period of literary renaissance throughout the Levant, most notably in what is now Syria and Lebanon. At that point ideology among Arabs was more focused on general Arab nationalism as the idea of individual nationalistic identities had yet to prosper. The movement took on a particularly Palestinian identity in response to Zionism, a secular Jewish movement centered on the return of the Jewish people to Palestine or Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel. Growing anti-Zionist sentiment culminated in outright rebellion in 1936 which was repressed by the British Mandatory authorities and Zionist paramilitary groups, leading to an imbalance of power based in the disarmament of Palestinian Arabs. In 1948 at the expiration of the British Mandate over Palestine the Jewish Agency for Palestine declared the establishment of Israel in Eretz Yisrael. Throughout the ensuing war, Israel systematically depopulated hundreds of Arab settlements, displacing over seven hundred thousand people. This event was the defining moment in what makes Palestinian nationalism today. Other key issues that define are right of return, homeland nationalism, secular versus Islamist discourse, and the shape of a finalized and lasting peaceful solution to the conflict. Right of return for Palestinian refugees and displaced peoples refers to the right to return to Israel/Palestine and potentially the right to lost property and land, though this is more contested. This paper will analyze the arguments and opinions in these key issues to determine the shape of refugee identity in terms of their homeland.

 

A central theme throughout in Palestinian and refugee identity is the continuing Nakba, meaning that the Nakba was not simply a one-time event. Its effects continue until now and in fact, the Nakba itself is a continuous entity, ever-changing and affecting Palestinians worldwide. Dr. Zafer Lababidi creates a haunting analogy for the Nakba saying, “the Nakba to me, the way that I see it, it is an infection of the human body with a virus or a bacteria, and then all the sickness and the ailment that comes after that is the direct result of that kind of infection”. A member of the body of scholars focusing on the Nakba and its effects, Adel Manna clearly states in his article “The Palestinian Nakba and its Continuous Repercussions”, “The experience of statelessness and the injustice which befell the refugees has only intensified” (Manna 87). He argues that it is incorrect to describe the Nakba as one event centered on the expulsion of Palestinian Arabs and its immediate effects, but rather as an accumulation of all events and experiences that have befallen Palestinian Arabs since 1948. In abiding by this definition of the Nakba Israel was not the only perpetrator of Palestinian woes.

 

Upon their expulsion from Palestine, countries that received refugees placed them in camps or became displaced non-citizens in these countries. Palestinians became a marginalized community within their host countries where Arabs saw them with distaste and refused to integrate them into the fabric of society. Manna writes, “The lip-service support for the Palestinian cause was accompanied by contempt and humiliation for Palestinian refugees within Arab societies” (92). Not only were refugees cast aside, leaders of Arab countries championed the Palestinian cause solely as a means of building support. In public, Arabs saw the Palestinian crisis as a unifying issue while privately reviling refugees and distancing themselves from camps. Time and time again Palestinian refugees were cast aside by their host countries left to be supported by organizations such as the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) and the Red Cross, furthering the divide between Arab states and their Palestinian guests. Dr. Lababidi concludes his discussion of this topic in saying that Palestinians are wary to align with any major Arab state because they do not wish for the same thing to happen. He succinctly explains this by saying, “So they are like pawns. They came to the conclusion that they were pawns in a bigger game”.

 

Two countries, and only one Arab country, gave Palestinians citizenship: Israel and Jordan. However, both governments focused on control rather and delegitimized Palestinian identity, as Manna elucidates. He uses simple but effective words to explain that Palestinians lost their unity when they lost their homeland and became homeless in a world based on the nation state system (Manna, 93). By the nineteen nineties a political shift occurred during the Oslo Accords where Arab leaders shifted from demanding the right of refugees to return and then establish statehood, to exchanging territory with Israel in the hopes of a two-state solution, one for each nationality. Scholar Randa Farah explains in her article, "Palestinian Refugees, the Nation, and the Shifting Political Landscape”, “Refugees considered this political shift as betrayal” (44). In the Oslo Accords, Israel retained the rights to key resources and territory throughout the West Bank and turned the Palestinian liberation movement into a sub-state of Israel. The issue of right of return was increasingly marginalized at this time, furthering the alienation of refugees. Hardship is central to Palestinian identity and this continued Nakba solidified the community. Manna explains, “The loss of the homeland and the feeling of injustice, betrayal and victimization provided a feeling of commonality” (92). Despite having been torn asunder as a unified community, Palestinians were only strengthened in the face of this hardship and today forms the spine of Palestinian identity. In agreeance with Manna’s explanations, Dr. Lababidi says that, “the general sentiment among Palestinians is that they were also betrayed by Arabs themselves,” and that any negotiations where Palestinians felt like they were backed up by their Arab brothers fell through the cracks. However, despite the need for blame to be placed, it is hard for Palestinians to place that blame on Arab countries because they live on their lands. It would be very self-detrimental to accuse Arab leadership and create more problems for diasporic Palestinians.

 

Among the myriad proposed solutions to the conflict and refugee crisis there are shared issues that the debate hinges on, including the status of Jerusalem, the framework for peace and self-determination (i.e. two-state versus one-state), and the right of return for refugees and displaced Palestinians. Right of return itself is seen and conceptualized by a number of different viewpoints but the basic tenets come from language used in international documents adopted by the United Nations such as United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3236 which states that the United Nations, “Reaffirms [also] the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return” (United Nations General Assembly resolution 3236). Farah agrees and reiterates the importance of the right of return in saying, “the historical perspective reveals that the refugee right of return is at the core of the Palestinian national question” (41). The historical perspective in question is in reference to the original Nakba, the 1967 War, as well as the Oslo Accords and other negotiations. She argues that the right of return as a fundamental argument in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been marginalized and reduced in favor of self-determination and nationhood. Another argument contends that the Israeli Law of Return where Jews can immigrate to a land where they have no familial ties represents an injustice against the Palestinians who cannot return to a place where their direct ancestors lived. Dr. Zafer Lababidi makes an important argument about this issue,

 

It is also one of the main arguments that a lot of people use in order to justify the right of return to the Palestinians. Because all the things that you mentioned are absolutely correct and right, people are literally twenty miles away from the borders and it hurts when you cannot return even for a short period of time just to make that connection that you’re yearning for.

Israeli officials and scholars argue that there were no binding international decisions, only recommendations, and, by allowing Palestinian Arabs to live in Israel, that the notion of a Jewish state would cease to exist which will not be allowed by the Israeli government. However, within the current framework right of return is considered to be an issue that will be tabled until final discussions before the implementation of a lasting solution.

 

From every angle this is a complex issue however for the purposes of this research legal precedent is not the goal. Current Palestinian opinions on the matter are mostly unified in support of an immediate right of return as for many the pain of being separated from their ancestral home is unbearable. In Julianne Weinzimmer’s book Homeland Conflict and Identity for Palestinian and Jewish Israeli Americans she interviews Palestinians to bring out intimate details about their identities. In one interview Mansur, a Palestinian living in the United States, describes his relationship to a postcard displaying an old man who he says is carrying a burden. Mansur explains, “This guy represents me. I am carrying on my shoulders the huge burden of the Palestinian suffering, the pain of the diaspora, being denied the right to be free, to go and visit my family when I want to, to go to the farm that I grew up as a little child around, and to enjoy what my father left me” (Weinzimmer 50). He relates to Weinzimmer the pain of having no right to experience a place that he only heard stories about. For Mansur, the issue is much more than a talking piece to be used in large-scale political bargaining, its simply the ability to feel connected to something deeply rooted within him but just out of reach.

 

Mansur yearns for that which he simply cannot touch; his homeland has been broken down and reimagined as parts of a new state which is alien to him. It is hard to physically realize an emotion however this attachment to the land can be conceptualized as a key part of what makes up the Palestinian national movement. The professor and scholar Mosheer Amer better explains this phenomenon, saying, “the conception of this ‘territory’ in Palestinian nationalist discourses has been a defining component of Palestinian national self-perception and struggle” (Amer 120). It is not just the physical land that is of such great importance to Palestinians, they have assigned Palestine “a religio-symbolic space in the collective consciousness of Palestinians,” (121) and in fact, in the charter for Hamas, the Islamic Nationalist group that governs the Gaza Strip, Palestine is called the navel of the world, indicating the paramount symbolic importance that Palestine represents. Indeed, it is hard to refute the worldwide significance of Israel/Palestine being either one of the central locations for or the birthplace of the three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

 

Speaking of these faiths, the religious significance of Palestine plays separate yet uniting roles in the discourse surrounding Palestinian homeland nationalism. There are two major discourses at play in Palestinian society. They somewhat easily align with the two major factions of Palestinian politics, Fatah and Hamas. Fatah declares itself a secular nationalist party and is the largest faction of the conglomeration called the Palestinian Liberation Organization which controls the West Bank. Hamas is the leading Islamic fundamentalist and Palestinian nationalist organization which governs the Gaza Strip. The two organizations possess the support of the main body of Palestinians and tend to represent the two different ideologies that Palestinians adhere to. Fatah takes a more generalizing approach to its description of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, the current leader of Fatah, said in an address in 2006, “Palestine is the cradle of monotheistic religions; it is the land of Al-Aqsa, and the land of the Nativity Church and the Holy Sepulchre” (Amer 121). In this statement Abbas refers more generally to the various monotheistic faiths that radiate from Israel/Palestine, though rather obviously excludes Judaism. This is useful to present the more secular-leaning intentions of Fatah, though still showcasing the importance of religion to Palestine. However, Hamas uses much blunter language that strongly identifies them with Islam. It is Hamas that called Palestine “the navel of the world” and that they [Hamas], “stand at one of Islam’s greatest fronts” (Amer, 121). Hamas states explicitly its alignment with Islam and sees that connection as the most important part of the Palestinian claim to the land of Israel/Palestine. In Amer’s words, “In Hamas’s discourse, there is a slippage of the
secular and the nationalist (anti-colonial struggle and self-determination) into the divine and
the religious (Palestine as a religious endowment)” (125). However the conclusion is reached, the end goal is still obvious in both cases. Both organizations foresee Palestine very specifically as a Palestinian homeland and their brands of nationalism are heavily associated with that. In many documents both Fatah and Hamas share use of similar vocabulary and views of the homeland and the search for statehood. As for Palestinians themselves, Dr. Lababidi mentions that many Palestinians lean towards supporting Hamas because, “Hamas is pro taking what has been taken away from them by force. And that is the only language that the Israeli government understands, according to them”. As Amer points out both organizations construct a common history with an importance placed on physical attachment to the land (128). The terminology best used to define this ideology would be homeland nationalism, which is the prevailing and unifying ideology among most Palestinians.

 

The concept of homeland nationalism was expounded upon by the scholar Nadim Rouhana in the article titled, “Homeland Nationalism and Guarding Dignity in a Settler Colonial Context: The Palestinian Citizens of Israel Reclaim Their Homeland”. Rouhana explains that he theorizes “a homeland nationalism centered on politically reclaiming the homeland” (1). The importance of this statement is that Israel and Zionism have not triumphed as settlers, in fact they have failed to suppress Palestinian identity and claims of homeland. Rouhana investigates parliamentary discourse and examples of dialogue to enforce that Palestinians have developed a homeland nationalism in the face of injustices perpetrated by Israeli governance. Of particular importance is a series of debates in the Israeli parliament, called the Knesset. In these debates an Israeli party leader critically denounces the leader of an Arab-Israeli party, perpetuating the ultra-Zionist desire to expel all Palestinians from the foreseen Jewish only Israeli state. Rouhana summarizes, explaining, “the Palestinian head of what went on to become the third largest party in Israel was attacked, insulted, and told outright by the foreign minister--live, on national television--that he is unwanted in his own homeland and that he should go to Gaza” (10). In spite of this rhetoric, Zionism has failed time and time again to either expel all Palestinians or to quell Palestinian nationalism and fully incorporate Palestinians into the Israeli state. Rouhana concludes that in facing Zionism, Palestinians have developed a new homeland nationalism where the final goal is to secure a homeland for Palestinians.

 

As the situation in Israel/Palestine becomes more and more complex and convoluted each and every day, Palestinians face the pressure of time in the quest to establish a state based on homeland nationalism. The Israeli government is continually planning and creating new settlements in the West Bank as previously established ones continue to grow. The map of the West Bank is less like a map than it is like the world’s foremost unsolvable jigsaw puzzle. As a young Jewish-American man whose heart aches for the Palestinians who have suffered so much in so little time, I sincerely hope that the time comes where Jews and Palestinians can live side by side and work towards a collective good. Knowing the pain that Jews have been through over thousands of years I know that the injustices committed against Palestinians in the past seventy are only the beginning if this situation is not resolved soon. In the case of Dr. Zafer Lababidi, he identifies with all Arabs saying, “I see all Arab countries as my homeland. I hate those borders that were forced upon us, I hate everything that segregates and separates us, I feel that I’m tied to the entire region, not a specific piece of land. Historically we’re the same people and speak the same language, so it hurts when you see the result of colonialism and what happened after World War One, we’re suffering from the same consequences up until now. So the ideal homeland is just the entire Arab region, that would be my homeland”.

 

Works Cited

Amer, M. Mosheer, "The Discourse of Homeland: The Construction of Palestinian National Identity in Palestinian Secularist and Islamist Discourses." Critical Discourse Studies, vol. 9, no. 2, Apr. 2012, pp. 117-131. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/17405904.2012.656374. Accessed 4 Feb. 2018.

Farah, Randa. "Palestinian Refugees, the Nation, and the Shifting Political Landscape." Social Alternatives, vol. 32, no. 3, July 2013, p. 41. EBSCOhost, login.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=101076882&site=eds-live. Accessed 4 Feb. 2018.

General Assembly resolution 3236, Question of Palestine, A/RES/3236 (22 November 1974), available from http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/3236(XXIX)&Lang=E&Area=RESOLUTION. Accessed 21 Feb. 2018.

Manna, Adel. "The Palestinian Nakba and Its Continuous Repercussions." Israel Studies, no. 2, 2013, p. 86. EBSCOhost, login.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsgcc&AN=edsgcl.324588179&site=eds-live. Accessed 4 Feb. 2018.

Rouhana, Nadim N. "Homeland Nationalism and Guarding Dignity in a Settler Colonial Context: The Palestinian Citizens of Israel Reclaim Their Homeland." Borderlands E-Journal: New Spaces in the Humanities, vol. 14, no. 1, Jan. 2015, p. 1. EBSCOhost, login.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edo&AN=112855559&site=eds-live. Accessed 4 Feb. 2018.

Weinzimmer, Julianne Melissa. Homeland Conflict and Identity for Palestinian and Jewish Israeli Americans. LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC, 2011. The New Americans: Recent Immigration and American Society. EBSCOhost, login.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=520572&site=eds-live. Accessed 21 Feb. 2018.