From national to post-national territorial identities in Israel-Palestine (original) (raw)
Related papers
Territory as the Kernel of the Nation: Space, Time and Nationalism in Israel/Palestine
Geopolitics, 2002
The article deals with the relations between time and space in the making of modern nations, focusing on conditions of territorial conflicts in general, and on expansionist 'ethnocratic' societies in particular. Under such conditions, it is argued, territory (the 'where' of the nation) becomes a most vital 'kernel' of national mobilisation, while the history of national origins (the 'when') tends to become mythical and homogenous, used chiefly to boost the territorial struggle. A geographical critique of dominant theories of nationalism is presented, focusing on their 'spatial blindness' and analytical fusion of nation and state. These deficiencies are conspicuous in ethnocratic societies, where the 'national project' does not aspire to merge nation and state, but on the contrary, to essentialise and segregate group identities. While the 'when' and the 'where' of the nation are still intimately intertwined, it is the latter that provides the core of nation-building. The claim is substantiated through a detailed account of Zionist and Palestinian nationalisms. In recent decades, the struggle over land has shaped the two national cultures as intensely territorial, with a wide range of symbols, values and practices intimately attached to settlement and land control, pitting Jewish hitnahalut (settlement) verses Palestinian sumud (steadfastness). Territorial issues, however, remain the 'kernel' of Zionist and Palestinian national mobilisation. The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here its spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here it first attained statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance ... After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Diaspora and never ceased to pray and hope for their return By virtue of our natural and historic right we hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel
İsrailiyat: İsrail ve Yahudi Çalışmaları Dergisi, 2021
The “Basic Law of Human Dignity and Liberty,” which functions as the country’s de facto constitution, has defined Israel as a "Jewish state," thus putting the equal rights of all non-Jewish citizens within the Israeli polity into question. As a consequence of the Jewish nature of the state, the Jews have been elevated, whether they were citizens or not, into a privileged position over others and governments gave institutional and legal preference to the Jewish majority particularly in the realms of immigration laws, land allocation, and military service. By the 1990s, however, Israel’s citizens of Palestinian descent seemed to find a balance between their Palestinian and Israeli identities and this tendency was accompanied by a growing emphasis on their status as a "national minority in its historical homeland" and a political struggle for collective rights. Challenging the Jewish hegemony, they have persistently claimed to transform the Jewish state into a "state for all its citizens," and, hence, the recognition of their status as a national minority entitled to collective rights, including the right to self-government and equal representation in the governing bodies. What has been the Israeli state response to these demands? Using qualitative data derived from several in-depth interviews with the members of the Israeli political elite conducted in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa between December 2018 and January 2020, this study argued that Israeli policy makers continued to pursue a "security-oriented" policy towards Israeli Palestinians due to their trans-border ethnic relations. As a consequence, the Palestinian demand for establishing a "state for all its citizens," which challenged the Jewish nature of the state, has been seen as a denial of Israel’s right to exist, or to put in discussion the Jews' right to statehood.
Syllabus: Israeli Territorial Politics: Between Security & Identity
Hebrew University, 2014
Perhaps the most familiar trope in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Israel's insistence on "secure and recognized borders" in any final settlement. Although a consistent theme of Zionist politics and diplomacy even before the founding of the State of Israel, there has always been an internal debate as to which borders would provide Israel with security and which boundaries must ultimately be recognized by the Arab world. Often overshadowed in the international arena but no less important in Israeli domestic discourse is the relationship between Israeli national identity and the Land of Israel. This course will the explore the evolution of and conflict between these two concepts in Israeli domestic discourse and their respective impact on Israel's territorial policies and international boundaries. To do so, we will consider various thematic approaches including Zionism, security, settlement, and homeland as they have been expressed in the Sinai Peninsula, Southern Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, Jerusalem, and the West Bank. To accomplish this goal, this course will incorporate a range of scholarly historical and political readings on Israel as well as discussions on relevant current events.
Between nation and state: `fractured' regionalism among Palestinian-Arabs in Israel
Political Geography, 1999
Theories of nationalism have often overlooked variations in ethnic spatial settings, and have too easily subsumed nation and state. But nationalism surfaces in a variety of dynamic forms, such as among homeland ethnic minorities `trapped' within states controlled by others. In such cases `ethnoregional' identities often emerge, combining ethnonational and civic bases of identity with attachment and confinement to specific places or territories. Ethnoregional movements denote spatial and political entities which mobilise for rights, resources and political restructuring within their states. This is the case in the Israeli Jewish `ethnocracy', where an oppressed Palestinian-Arab minority resides in stable but confined enclaves which make up an Arab `fractured' region. The spatial, socioeconomic and political characteristics of the Arab struggle in Israel provide early signs for the emergence of an ethnoregional movement. This movement is creating a new collective identity, situated between Palestinian nation and Jewish nation-state. The ethnoregional interpretation challenges existing accounts which perceive the minority as either politicising or radicalising, and points to a likely Arab struggle for autonomy, equality and the de-Zionisation of Israel. Arab mobilisation also resembles other ethno-regional movements, whose persistent struggles expose embedded contradictions in the global `nation-state' order.
This article examines the effects of the 1967 war on the national discourse of the Palestinian intellectuals in Israel. It analyses the articulation of the meaning of " homeland " and " citizenship through a comparative analysis of the Palestinian poets and writers' works 3 before and after the 1967 war. The central aim is to illustrate how the national discourse of Palestinians in Israel went through a major transformation after the 1967 war. The paper shows that whereas the first generation following the nakbeh was concerned with articulating the meaning of homeland and national identity in a context of a colonizing state, the generation that followed the 1967 war was more concerned with articulating the meaning of citizenship within such a state. In this regard the relation to Israel became no longer based on it being a colonial entity, which needs to be dismantled, but as an occupier state, one that transgress international laws and needs to be challenged. The national task of the Palestinians in Israel thus transformed from one that refutes the state to one that seeks to negotiate with it. This transformation, though, has not been without its contradictions; the Palestinians inside Israel needed to deal with a state that gave them citizenship but defined itself as the state of the Jewish people. It thereby excluded them from it. At the same time, the 1967 war and its aftermath revealed the resilience of the State Israel and the inevitability of working within it. This became all the more salient as soon as the Palestinians national struggle, as led by the PLO, shifted its call for the creation of a secular democratic state to the creation of a Palestinian state within the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians inside Israel were thereby trapped between a state that gave them limited citizenship but negated their national identity and a Palestinian national movement that de facto excluded them. It was only towards the ends of the eighties and 1 Published at The Electronic Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, MIT, spring 2008 2 Post doctoral fellow at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University. 3 I use the term Intellectual here in its wide meaning as define by Bryan (2001:1). The term referes to all those whose main occupation involves " producing or distributing culture ". In this article, the term includes poets, journalists, novelists and other persons of pen.
From separation to interpenetration: a bi-national state in Palestine/Israel
In his powerful photographic essay on the openDemocracy website, Eyal Weizman analyses the role of Israel's West Bank settlements since 1967 as a deliberate strategy of territorial fragmentation and colonial expansion, revealing a "politics of verticality" which reconstructs political boundaries in three rather than two dimensions.
This article addresses the relationship between territorial borders and ethnic boundaries in the Zionist movement. Beginning with the Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903, the distinction between these two components of the Zionist movement rose to the forefront of the Zionist consciousness. The argument over the Uganda proposal revealed the differing preferences of political and practical Zionism. But this argument, which ended with the rejection of the Uganda plan in 1905, did not terminate the discussion of the relationship between 'the people' and 'the land'. The aspiration of Zionism's central stream to establish a Jewish nation-state in Palestine was challenged by political groups on the right and on the left, each of which emphasized either the ethnic or the territorial component. While Palestinian Zionism reinforced the territorial component during the 1920s and '30s, the 1937 partition plan of the Peel Commission returned the issue of the relationship between the people and the land to the centre ring of political decision-making. This article demonstrates that the attempt of the central stream of the Zionist movement to balance between the people and the land, between the ethnic and the territorial components, defined the boundaries of Zionism during the period discussed.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2015
Depending on who is speaking, the tipping point beyond which a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict becomes impossible is approaching, imminent, or passed. Raja Khalidi, in the opening to his chapter in One Land Two States, writes "[it] does not take an expert to recognize that a partition of territory and sovereignty on the basis of geo-demographic realities today is most likely not a viable solution." A binational or civic one-state democracy seems remote and undesirable, or else a formula for entrenched apartheid. As a result, those who believe the conflict must be resolved and not just managed are increasingly exploring ideas that acknowledge both the need for separation, but accept that the land is small and the populations increasingly inextricable. One Land Two States is one of the only book-length works to explore a specific separate-buttogether model in theoretical and practical depth. It adds to a slow but steady growth of academic literature considering confederal proposals for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One Land Two States grew out of the "Parallel States Project," a group of prescient academics who began their discussions in 2008; the chapters in this edited collection were written by participants in that project. The academic interest complements a similar flurry of activity on the ground. Local civil society efforts have yielded confederal projects with similar names, such as Two States, One Homeland and Two States, One Space. Benjamin Netanyahu's recent re-election in March gives the issue new urgency. The fallacy of a status quo has been shattered by a trio of wars in Gaza and Netanyahu's election-eve rejection of the two-state concept, as well as more aggressive Palestinian activity in the international arena. Israel is deepening its grip on "Area C"-60 percent of the West Bank-and coalition partner Naftali Bennett, among others, has called openly for annexation. Strict two-staters have argued that confederal approaches are unrealistic slogans. But radical political changes can indeed start as broad ideas, fleshed out over time by new proponents. This book advances that process, through theoretical discussions of sovereignty, elaborate proposals for security and economy, law, and even the role of religion. It is comprehensive, detailed, and confronts problems at every step; accusations of sloganism or naiveté do not apply. Several chapters are devoted to disaggregating the elements of sovereignty and putting them together again differently. Jens Bartelson summarizes the main criticisms of traditional sovereignty, then ups the ante: if we accept that classic territorial inviolability has been breached over history, if political ownership is increasingly delinked from land, then what? That's when the authors take the leap, in proposing sovereignty based on identity, rights, individuals, and law. The result is a tantalizing proposal for "parallel states" (which could more accurately be called layered states, since "parallel" implies side-by-side but never touching). The two states would be defined by citizenship rather than geography or borders. "Heartland" areas dominated by one of the national groups would be small and limited-all the rest is open season: "Two parallel state structures, both covering the whole territory, with one answering to Palestinians and one to Israelis regardless of where they live" (p. 2). What can this putatively simple formulation mean? Can two different governments on the same land be a fair and functional way of managing life for two integrated but hostile populations? The authors do not underestimate the theoretical challenge, calling it "conceptually demanding." Mossberg, a former diplomat, proposes that sovereign powers can be divided between shared and