De-Arabization of the Bedouin (original) (raw)
Related papers
De-arabization of the bedouin: A study of an inevitable failure
Interchange, 2004
This paper offers an assessment of the efforts to de-Arabize the Bedouin Arab youth of the Negev. We show that despite the extensive efforts to achieve this goal, they have become pronouncedly alienated from the State of Israel, and are increasingly perceiving themselves as an integral part of Israel’s Palestinian Arab national minority. The findings of our research illustrate the futility of the policy to de-Arabize the Bedouin and to instill in them the unfounded belief that they are full and equal citizens of the State of Israel. We argue that the failure of the policy in this regard is inevitable primarily for the following reason: Israel’s national identity is constructed in a manner that leaves no room for Arab culture and heritage and this identity provided the legitimization for discriminatory policies against the Bedouin, as well as against other Arab groups. Thus, the shift toward Palestinian national and cultural identity found among Bedouin youth, can be partly explained as a result of their growing awareness of this political reality and their decreasing readiness to accept it. But then again, this shift is nothing but another manifestation, albeit a sobering one at that, of the challenge facing Zionist ideology since the pre-state era, more than 50 years ago. To put it succinctly, the challenge is this: if Israel aspires to be judged as a liberal democracy and to ensure its legitimacy and political stability, it must make significant changes in its basic governing principles. It must either incorporate the culture and collective aspirations of its Arab citizens within the national identity, and/or allow them some form of political autonomy.
The Arabs in Israel—Hybrid Identity of a Stateless National Collectivity
Mediterranean Studies, 2021
The debate concerning the identity of Arabs in Israel involves a dimension that has not yet been studied—the hybrid identity of a stateless minority. The definition of Israel as a Jewish state, the fact that Arabs in Israel do not take part in the country’s Independence Day, and the emergence of a national movement among Arabs in Israel demanding cultural but not territorial autonomy are major factors that foreground this status of Arabs in Israel. The current study focuses on the influence of activist Arab groups—political, literary, and journalistic—within the Israeli Communist Party. The party operated as a group of “populist intellectuals” immediately following its consent to the Palestine Partition Plan. The goal of the Communist Party was to engineer the identity of the Palestinian collectivity in Israel as a hybrid identity adapted to the political and territorial circumstances in the aftermath of the War of 1948.
The Journal of international studies, 2012
The notion of nation is quite recent. It is intertwined with that of equal citizenship and nationality, the aim of the state is to uniform those who are going to become its citizens, under a homogenous state design. But it is this process of state uniformity that is flawed: state’s mechanisms of categorization result from a process of inclusion and exclusion—majority and minority—that cannot help but create marginalization. For this reason, gypsies, vagrants, nomads and pastoralists (Berbers and Bedouins) become national minorities to be controlled under the majoritarian power of the state. Because “all majoritarianisms have in them the seeds of genocide” (Appadurai 2006: 57), states tend to pursue a policy of ethnic cleansing in order to eliminate the dirty spots from their national purity. On the basis of this consideration, the case of the Palestinian Arab Bedouin is an example of how the state can control, suffocate and cleanse its own national minorities and ethnic groups.
The Arab Minority in Israel: Reconsidering the “1948 Paradigm”
Israel Studies, 2014
The article demonstrates how, in the years since the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Arab Palestinian elites in Israel have begun to focus on reconsidering, and in fact, reconstructing the "1948 Paradigm", the policy guidelines adopted in 1948 by the State of Israel toward the Arabs who remained within the newly established state. It surveys the historical background and the causes for the political and ideological shift, particularly following the 1993 Oslo Accords. The article examines the reconceptualization of the Arabs' status in Israel, highlighting the emphasis on the claim to be acknowledged as a national minority and as an indigenous people. It discusses the newly introduced Nakba discourse, the call for the return of the "internal refugees", and the demand for autonomous Arab representation. It also addresses the alternative models suggested by Palestinian Arab intellectuals and political figures to resolve the apparent contradiction between democracy and Israel's nature as a Jewish state.
This book examines the role played by Arab-Palestinian culture and people in the construction and reproduction of Israeli national identity and culture, showing that it is impossible to understand modern Israeli national identity and culture without taking into account its crucial encounter and dialectical relationship with the Arab-Palestinian indigenous 'Other'. Based on extensive and original primary sources, including archival research, cookbooks and a variety of cultural products – from songs to dance steps – From the Arab Other to the Israeli Self sheds light on an important cultural and ideational diffusion that has occurred between the Zionist settlers – and later the Jewish-Israeli population – and the indigenous Arab-Palestinian people in Historical Palestine. By examining Israeli food culture, national symbols, the Modern Hebrew language spoken in Israel, and culture, the authors trace the journey of Israeli national identity and culture, in which Arab-Palestinian culture has been imitated, adapted and celebrated, but strikingly also rejected, forgotten and denied. From the Arab Other to the Israeli Self provides a pathbreaking, probing and critical look into the processes of mobilization and articulation of elements of Palestinian culture in the construction of Israeli identity. This is an accessible, yet insightful and thought-provoking contribution to an under-researched area that I unreservedly recommend to anyone who wants to understand the complexity of identity politics in this contested land.