Israeli and Palestinian national narratives: national and individual constructions, social suffering narratives, and everyday performances

PDF

Download

Open document

Flip pages

Summarize

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content ISRAELI AND PALESTINIAN NATIONAL NARRATIVES: NATIONAL AND
INDIVIDUAL CONSTRUCTIONS, SOCIAL SUFFERING NARRATIVES, AND
EVERYDAY PERFORMANCES

by

Steven Neil Rousso-Schindler

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY)

May 2007

Copyright 2007 Steven Neil Rousso-Schindler

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research would not have been possible without the critical guidance
and support of my committee members, Dr. G. Alexander Moore (Committee
Chair), Dr. Gary Seaman, and Dr. Laurie Brand. I am also indebted to Dr.
Cheryl Mattingly, Dr. Dorinne Kondo, Zhifang Song, Teresa Kuan, Sahra
Sulaiman, Courtney Mykytyn, and Andrew Fogelman for their thoughtful
insights and challenging critiques. Funding from the David L. Boren Graduate
Fellowship was critical for the pursuit of the research. I wish to thank my
children for allowing their father to work days, evenings and many weekends
with little complaint. Finally, I wish to thank my wife Niki who not only
sacrificed progression in her own career for this dissertation but provided her
full intellectual, editorial, and emotional support throughout the entire process.
Without her dedication, insight and patience, this work could have never been
completed.

ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract v

Preface vii

Introduction 1
My Research 10
Agency, Identity and Social Space 19
Perspective and Cultural Scripts 26
National Narratives as Narrative 31
Narratives of the Nation 44
Sketch of This Work 45

Chapter 1: The Israeli “Demography” Narrative of the Nation 48
Introduction 56
A Brief History of the “Demography” Narrative in Israel 60
Demography as Articulated in the Jewish-Israeli Media 64
The “Demography” Narrative and Israeli Policymaking 72
The “Natural Growth” Narrative 74
The “Immigration/Emigration” Narrative 78
The “Unilateral Separation” Narrative 85
Debating the “Demography” Narrative in the Media 91
2003 Herzliya Conference 91
The Zimmerman Report 105
Conclusion 118

Chapter 2: Power Dynamics and Performances at the Ulpan 125
The Ulpan 130
How Power Impacts Performances Before They Begin 140
Power during Performances – Institutional Power, The
Ulpan Teacher and the New Israeli Immigrant Students 156
Palestinian Resistance during Performances – Silence and Secrets 176
Conclusion 182

Chapter 3: Narratives of the Nation, Everyday Performance and
Belief Tendencies 186
Narrative, Experience and Belief Structure 187
Performance Space – Regions and Spheres 192
iii
“No Partner” Narrative Performance in the Ulpan 199
Analysis of the “No Partner” Narrative Performance 211
The Nature of Narratives of the Nation and Rhetoric
During Performance 223
Performance and its Impact on New Narratives and
Belief Structures 228
Demands of Narratives of the Nation upon the Audience 234
Mastery and Appropriation of Narratives of the Nation 240
Belief Tendencies 245

Chapter 4: The Transformation of Palestinian Social Suffering
Experiences into Israeli Narratives of the Nation 258
Palestinian Narratives of Social Suffering 267
Routinized Forms of Palestinian Suffering 270
Suffering from Everyday Violence 287
Extreme Palestinian Suffering Narrativized in the Israeli Media 302
Competing Narrativizations of Extreme Suffering
in the Israeli Media 308
Extreme Suffering in Jenin 317
Jenin - Two Years Later 334
Conclusion 340

Conclusion 345
Focus on Narrative, Power and Performance 347
Focus on the Impact of Narratives of the Nation 357

Bibliography 363

Appendices 377
Appendix A – Balfour Declaration 377
Appendix B – United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 378
Appendix C – United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 403
Appendix D – United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 406

iv
ABSTRACT

This dissertation examines different processes of constructing,
conveying, and the personal assimilation of Israeli and Palestinian narratives of
the nation. I depart from other scholars who employ the term “national
narratives” and use “narratives of the nation” as a way to emphasize both the
national and literary components of these national stories. Narratives of the
nation are constructed by a wide variety of nation people and are not simply
narrated by the state for its own purposes, as is often implied by scholars.
Narratives of the nation are the many political, economic, social and religious
stories that nations tell about themselves. By incorporating narrative theory and
tracing the process of narrative construction, I argue that narratives of the nation
act similarly to what we consider to be more conventional narratives.
Narratives of the nation are aesthetic stories that are suspenseful, driven forward
by a plot, and have a moral to the story. The first part of this dissertation traces
in the Israeli media how the Israeli nation narrates the Jewish-Israeli and
Palestinian population ratio. This “demography” narrative is so fundamental
that if Jewish-Israelis were to comprise less than sixty percent of the total
population in Israel, the Israeli nation would collapse as it is presently
constructed. The next part of my dissertation reveals a number of the power
dynamics between Israelis and Palestinians that are instrumental in shaping the
narrative construction process at the individual level in an Israeli Hebrew
v
immersion course called an ulpan. The main argument put forward is that a
history of unequal power relations between Palestinians and Israelis has led to a
silencing of Palestinians during the narrative construction process in the
classroom. Once an everyday performance of narratives of the nation begins,
newly formed narratives can emerge. These narratives provide belief structures
for participants that can impact their personal beliefs about narratives of the
nation. Finally, I consider how social suffering experiences in Palestine can
impact Palestinian and Israeli narratives of the nation. Most importantly, Israel
must narrate Palestinian social suffering experiences in a way that reinforces the
idea that it has a moral army.

vi
PREFACE

The following is a chronology of many of the major historical events
that have affected Israeli and Palestinian relations since the time Eastern
European Jews first began immigrating to Ottoman-controlled Palestine in the
late nineteenth century. Much of the historical information contained through
1999 was taken directly from Kimmerling (2002) and Shlaim (2000).
Beginning in 2000, I include primarily the historical events that have impacted
some of the discussions in this work.
This chronology is meant as an introduction for those readers who are
not familiar with contemporary historical events in Palestine/Israel. While the
factual basis of the following events are rarely put into question, their meaning
is. Each event listed becomes part of Israeli and Palestinian narratives of the
nation in very different ways. The most striking example I like to cite is the war
between Israel and many of the Arab states in 1948. That event is referred to in
Israeli history as “The Israeli War of Independence,” while in Palestinian
history (and Arab history) it is referred to simply as “The Disaster.”

1881-82 Pogroms in Eastern Europe against the Jews
1882-1904 First Wave of Jewish settlers immigrate to Palestine
(“First Aliyah”)
1896, Feb 14 Theodore Herzl’s famous book The Jewish State is
published 1897, August 29 First Zionist Congress
launches the Basel Program with the aim of resettling
the Jewish people in Palestine and establishing the
World Zionist Organization
vii
1899-1902 Arab-Jewish tension following large Jewish land
purchases in the Tiberias region
1904-14 Second wave of Jewish immigration
1914 World War I breaks out
1915-16 Correspondence between the British high commissioner
in Egypt (Henry McMahon) and Sharif Hussein of
Mecca leads to agreement between British and Arabs on
establishment of an Arab Kingdom in exchange for an
Arab military revolt against the Ottomans; Arabs
Believe Arab kingdom includes Palestine
1916, May 16 Secret Anglo-French agreement to divide Ottoman
Middle East provinces (Sykes-Picot agreement)
1917, Nov 2 The Balfour Declaration: British support for
establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine
1917, Dec 9 Ottoman forces in Jerusalem surrender to British forces
1918 All of Palestine occupied by British forces
1922, June 3 Britain issues a “White Paper” emphasizing that only a
part of Palestine is considered the Jewish national home
and excluding East Palestine (Transjordan) from the
mandate
1929 Countrywide riots against Jews, including the massacre
of many members of the old non-Zionist community of
Hebron, following fears and rumors of Jewish intentions
to gain control over the Wailing Wall
1937, July 7 The Peel Commission publishes its report
recommending partition of Palestine into a Jewish state
an Arab state incorporated into Transjordan and British
enclaves; both parties reject the proposal; the Arab
revolt is renewed
1939, May 17 London Conference convened; talks end without
agreement; Malcolm MacDonald, colonial secretary of
state, launches a new British policy for Palestine (1939
White Paper): after ten years of a transitional period, an
independent, unitary (i.e., Arab-ruled) Palestinian state,
annual Jewish immigration of 15,000 and heavy
restrictions on Jewish land purchases; de facto
withdrawal from Balfour Declaration; House of
Commons approves the new policy
1939 World War II breaks out
1942, May 11 Ben-Gurion declares the policy of prompt creation of a
“Jewish Commonwealth” in Palestine; awareness of the
scope of the Holocaust

viii
1945 End of World War II; millions of uprooted people,
among them hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors
of the Nazi Holocaust; the Jewish leadership begins a
policy of sending ships to Palestine with unauthorized
immigrants
1945 Declaration of the “Jewish Revolt” against British by
the mainstream para-military Haganah; negotiations
with other Jewish underground organizations on
coordination among them
1945 New statement of policy (White Paper of 1945)
launched by British Foreign Secretary E. Bevin; more
restrictions on Jewish immigration
1947, Sep 1 Publication of UNSCOP report: majority recommend
partition, minority a federative solution
1947, Nov 29 UN General Assembly adopts Resolution 181,
recommending the establishment of Jewish and Arab
states in Palestine and the internationalization of the
Jerusalem area (Palestine population 500,000 Jews,
400,000 Arabs)
1947, Nov 29 The Palestinians and the Arab states reject partition; the
Zionists accept
1948 Full-scale intercommunal war breaks out in Palestine;
Israel begins to prevail
1948, May 14 The end of the British mandate in May; the State of
Israel is Proclaimed; Gaza Strip under Egyptian
administration
1948, May 15 – First Arab-Israeli War between Egypt, Transjordan and
Jan 7, 1949 Syria
1948, May 28 Creation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)
1948, Dec 11 UN General Assembly Resolution 194 recognizes the
right of the Palestinian refugees to return “and live at
peace with their neighbors”
1949 Armistice agreements between Israel and Lebanon,
Transjordan, and Syria are signed; Israel holds about
80% of the total territories of Western Palestine; the
eastern mountain area (“West Bank”) is under
Transjordan rule; the “Gaza Strip” is under Egyptian
occupation (Population in Israel – 716,000 Jews, 92,000
Arabs, 700,000 refugees)
1949, May 11 Israel admitted to UN membership
1949, Dec 9 General Assembly votes for internationalization of
Jerusalem
1950, Apr 24 Jordan annexes West Bank, including East Jerusalem
ix
1959 Fatah is created by Arafat and associates
1964 In May, the First Palestinian National Council (PNC)
convenes in Jerusalem, chaired by Ahmad al-Shuqayri;
it adopts the Palestine National Charter as the Basic
Constitution of the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO); a Palestine Liberation Army is Planned
1964, May 29 Creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization
(Ahmad al-Shuqayri appointed 1st chairman)
1965, Jan 1 Fatah launches its armed struggle for the liberation of
Palestine
1967, June 5-10 The Six-Day War
1967, post-June 11 Following Israel’s victory, the entire territory of the
former Palestine mandate comes under Israeli control,
including about 650,000 Palestinians of the West Bank
and East Jerusalem and 356,000 in the Gaza Strip; East
Jerusalem is annexed to Israel and the rest of the
captured territories, including the Golan Heights and the
Sinai Desert, are put under military administration
1967, Nov 22 UN Security Council passes Resolution 242
1973, Oct 6-26 The October War begins with a surprise Egyptian-
Syrian attack on Israel; Israel wins war
1973, Oct 22 UN Security Council Resolution 338 calls for direct
negotiations
1974, Oct 26-29 Arab Summit at Rabat recognizes the PLO as the sole
legitimate representative of the Palestinian people
1974, Nov 13 Arafat speaks to the UN General Assembly in New
York
1976 The first Land Day (March 30) includes a general strike
and protests of Israeli Arabs against land expropriations;
six Arabs are killed; in 1992 it is declared a national
holiday
1977 The nationalist right-wing party Likud comes to power
in Israel; the settlement of the occupied territories by
Jews accelerates
1978, Mar 14 IDF launches Operation Litani in Southern Lebanon
1978, Mar 19 UN Resolution 425 calls for Israeli withdrawal from
Lebanon
1978, June 13 IDF withdrawal from Lebanon after UNIFIL deployed

x
1978, Sep 5-17 The Camp David conference; Camp David accords
signed; Israel recognizes the “legitimate rights of he
Palestinians” and commits to granting them “full
autonomy” after a transitional period of five years;
Israel also commits to withdrawal from the Sinai Desert
in exchange for peace with Egypt
1979, Mar 26 Israeli-Egypt peace treaty signed in White House
1981, Dec 14 Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights
1982, June 3 Attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador in
London
1982, June Israeli troops invade Lebanon in collaboration with the
Maronite-Christian forces; Israel’s major aim is to
destroy the PLO’s quasi-state infrastructure; West
Beirut comes under siege and bombardment
1982, Aug In August, the PLO evacuates its forces and
headquarters from Beirut and Tripoli, with its fighters
carrying only their personal arms; a new headquarters is
established in Tunis
1982, Sep 16 The massacre of Sabra and Shatila
1983, May 17 Israel and Lebanon sign agreement
1984 Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
increase to about 80,000 settlers
1985, June 10 Israel withdraws from Lebanon, but forms “security
zone” in the south
1987, Dec 9 A general popular uprising, the Intifada, breaks out in
the Gaza Strip and spreads to the West Bank
1988, July 31 King Hussein announces Jordan’s disengagement from
the West Bank
1988, Aug 18 Hamas Covenant declared. Birth of Hamas (zeal) in
Gaza–acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement.
Founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a paralyzed religious
leader
1988, Nov 15 Palestine National Council in Algiers conditionally
accepts UN Resolutions 181, 242, 338
1988, Nov The 19th session of the PNC convenes in Algiers and
declares an independent Palestinian state; following
heavy pressure by the U.S. which holds out recognition
of and a dialogue with the PLO, Arafat declares in
Geneva that the PLO recognizes the rights of all parties
concerned in the Middle East conflict to exist in peace
and security, including the State of Palestine, Israel, and
other neighbors; Arafat denounces terrorism, and U.S.
opens dialogue
xi
1991 Massive Jewish immigration from the Soviet Union to
Israel
1991, Oct 30-31 Middle Eastern peace conference convenes in Madrid
1993, Aug 20 The Oslo Accords, officially called the Declaration of
Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements or
Declaration of Principles (DOP), were finalized
1993, Sep 10 Israel and PLO exchange letters formally recognizing
each other 1993, Sept 13 Israel-PLO Declaration of
Principles on Palestinian self-government is signed in
the White House
1994, May 4 Israel and PLO reach agreement in Cairo on the
application of the Declaration of Principles
1994, Oct 26 Israel and Jordan sign peace treaty
1996, Apr 11 Israel launches Operation Grapes of Wrath in southern
Lebanon
1999, May 17 Ehud Barak defeats Netanyahu in Israeli elections
2000, May 24 Israel withdraws IDF from security strip in south
Lebanon
2000, Sep 28 Sharon, then Likud Party leader, visited the Temple
Mount, sparking the beginning of the second Intifada
2000, Dec 19-21 First Herzliya conference
2001, Jan 22-28 Collapse of Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations at
Taba Summit
2001, Feb 6 Ariel Sharon defeats Barak in Israeli elections
2001, July 23 Israeli government decides to start building “security
fence,” referred to by Palestinians as “apartheid wall.”
2003, Dec 16-18 Fourth Herzliya conference
2004, Mar 22 Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader and co-founder
of Hamas, assassinated by Israel
2004, Nov 11 Palestinian Authority President Yassir Arafat dies
2005, Jan 9 Mahmoud Abbas wins Palestinian elections and
becomes president of the Palestinian Authority
2005, Jan 10-11 Release of the Zimmerman Report
2005, Aug 15-Sep 12 Israeli unilateral separation from the Gaza Strip
2005, Nov 21 Sharon quits Likud and forms the center Kadima Party;
Labor and Likud ministers of the Knesset join Sharon’s
new party
2006, Jan 5 PM Sharon suffers debilitating stroke; Ehud Olmert
becomes interim prime minister
2006, Jan 26 Hamas wins Palestinian elections and gains majority in
Palestinian Parliament
2006, Mar 28 Kadima gains majority in Israeli Knesset; Olmert
becomes Israeli prime minister
xii

1
Introduction

National narratives are literally everywhere. From the earliest moments
people can remember, they celebrate state-sponsored national holidays that
impart to them different stories about the nation. People also progress through
an education system that teaches the national history. They are surrounded by
national narratives in the arts and culture. They learn about current events that
pertain to the nation through the media. In short, “national people” (Pease
1997:3; Rose 1996) are inundated with national narratives and, as a result, are
well versed in them from the time they are quite young. This work taken in its
entirety is an attempt to trace a few of the pathways through which national
narratives travel.
My understanding of national narratives has been strongly influenced by
the ideas of Benedict Anderson (1991) about the nation and Homi Bhabha’s
(1990) conceptualization of the nation as a narration. According to Anderson,
the nation is an:
imagined political community…It is imagined because the
members of even the smallest nations will never know most of
their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in
the minds of each lives the image of their communion
(Anderson 1991:5).

Further, the nation “is imagined as a community, because, regardless of
the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is

2

always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship (1991:7).”
1
Building on
Anderson’s conceptualization of the nation as an ‘imagined community’, Homi
Bhabha wrote about “the impossible unity of the nation as a symbolic force” in
his article “Nation and Narration” (1990:1). According to Bhabha, the nation
can never be unified because of the ruptures that are caused by multiple and
often conflicting narratives of the nation. Despite the fact the nation is an
‘impossible unity,’ it is nonetheless a narrative construct that is continuously
narrated into being.
What exactly is a national narrative? Yagdar defines it as “the story that
a (national) collective tells about itself (Yagdar 2002:58).” However, it is not
the story the nation tells about itself, but an almost limitless collection of stories.
National narratives can be political, economic, religious and social in nature or
any combination of these elements. Individual national narratives can be
fundamental to the narrativizing
2
project of the nation – to the point that an
undesirable conclusion to the story can lead to a reformulation of the nation or
even, a total collapse of the nation-state. Other national narratives are of far less
significance to the nation. They might, for example, serve as a story that creates
a shared experience among national people. Compiled together, all the national

1
Throughout this work, the term “nation” as defined here will be used in contrast to the term
“state.” According to Max Weber “[i]t is possible to define the state itself only in terms of the
means which it today monopolizes, namely, the use of force (1978:65).” Another definition of
state concentrates on the issue of sovereignty. In this conceptualization “state[s are] defined in
terms of the territories over which institutional authorities exercise legitimate control (Barkin
1994:110).”
2
I use the term “narrativize” and “narrativizing” extensively throughout this work. The term means
to create a story out of experiences or events.

3
narratives tell the nation who they are, where the came from and where they are
going and serve the purpose of continuing to maintain the nation’s ‘impossible
unity.’
Anthropological works on national narratives display a wide range of
theoretical interests. Building on Bhabha’s idea about the nation as a narration,
Anagnost showed how at moments of crisis, the nation must rigorously re-
narrativize previously formed national narratives in order to maintain the
impossible unity (1997:2). Other anthropological studies have shown how
national narratives can encourage citizens to more strongly identify with the
state (Rofel 1999; Wertsch 2001) or reshape gender roles (Mankekar 1999;
Zacharias 2001). In addition, “embodying” national narratives can be a
powerful way of identifying with the state (Bruner and Gorfain 1984). A
number of these same works engage broader theoretical discussions about
nations and modernity (Anagnost 1997; Ong 1997; Rofel 1999).
My work approaches national narratives in a number of different ways
than previous studies. I do not assume that national narratives have extended
fixed periods of cohesiveness or stability. Guided by the idea of the stable
national narrative, most works problematically assume there to be a national
narrative that impacts broader trends in society such as gender roles and
identity. The few works that show national narratives to be transformable over
time still assume that there are extended periods of narrative cohesiveness. For
Wertsch (2001), the reformulation of national narratives is mostly contingent

4
upon the contemporary needs of the state. National narratives stay cohesive
until a new regime takes control of the state and reformulates them in order to
meet its own narrativizing needs. Anagnost (1997) believes that cohesive
narratives become renarrativized only during moments of national crisis. In
both of these cases, a national narrative remains cohesive and stable for long
periods of time until it is actively manipulated by state actors or the nation.
My own work departs from this notion by showing that national
narratives are inherently unstable and fluid. Many of the nation’s narratives are
in the process of formation and because of this they are constantly being
subjected to new narrative fragments which add to the larger story. Narrative
fragments are not national narratives themselves, but rather narrative
information that goes into the construction of a larger national narrative. In the
context of constructing national narratives, sometimes narrative fragments are
new bits of narrative information based on current events or personal
experiences. At other times, as a result of current political or social realities,
older narrative fragments are reintroduced or recontextualized and once again
become more salient parts of the national narrative. In their totality, all of the
existing narrative fragments can convey to audiences a partial national narrative
as it is currently constructed.
I also believe the construction of national narratives is, to a large extent,
a traceable process. Among other scholars, there is a pessimism about the
traceability of national narratives which has been best expressed by Yagdar

5
when he wrote, “a researcher endeavoring to trace a national narrative and
formulate a ‘complete’ presentation of its contents must end up with a confused
amalgam of references to the collective character, its past, its raison d’être, and
its future (2002:58).” Although I agree that tracing a complete national
narrative is impossible, this should in no way deter researchers from attempting
to construct national narratives. What I have discovered in my own research is
that it is possible to construct partial national narratives by weaving together
many of the readily available narrative fragments. Any narrative fragments not
included in the larger national narrative construction are usually of secondary
importance and would certainly not be so vital as to destroy a functioning
version of the story.
In this work, I trace the construction of national narratives in two
different kinds of processes: in the media on the national level and in small
group situations on an individual level. Since the nation is a narrative construct
(not some ‘real’ or living entity), its narratives and all the narrative fragments
contained within them are ‘somewhere out there’ in the nation-space. This is
why it is possible to speak of national narratives in the first place rather than a
completely incoherent mess of narrative fragments. On the level of the
individual, national people have limited interest, limited time and a limited
capacity to learn all the national narratives and their narrative fragments.
Therefore, national people ultimately accumulate very little information about
national narratives and narrative fragments. Importantly, having limited

6
information in no way inhibits national people from forming strong beliefs
about national narratives. These two narrative construction processes within the
media and within smaller groups have very different stakes. At the level of the
nation, the stakes are about continuing to successfully narrate the nation into
being. At the level of the individual, the stakes are about creating individual
‘beliefs tendencies’ about the nation.
In the media, newspaper articles and (television and radio) news reports,
reporters narrativize events or experiences for an audience of interested viewers
and readers. A wide variety of actors are able to participate in constructing
national narratives. These include state and non-state actors such as reporters,
politicians, academics, media pundits, opinion editorial writers as well as
ordinary citizens. Since these different actors have different interests, agendas,
and goals, each of their narrative contributions compete with one another in
shaping larger national narratives. I emphasize the contributions of a variety of
actors in contrast to those scholars who have the tendency to assume that
national narratives are primarily constructed by, and benefit only, individual
states (Borneman 1992).
The tendency to see the state as the beneficiary of national narratives
might have been born out of studies in nationalism that viewed the nation as
another tool of the state. As Bhabha wrote, there has been a “tendency to read
the Nation rather restrictively…as the ideological apparatus of state power
(1990:3).” I present the diversity of actors who contribute to the construction of

7
national narratives, then, as a way of emphasizing that national narratives are
the stories that the nation tells about itself. In reality, no one actor constructs or
necessarily benefits from national narratives and individual actors who attempt
to manipulate national narratives can be, at best, only partially successful.
This is not to suggest that states or state-actors cannot assert
extraordinary power in shaping national narratives, especially ones they
consider to be central to the nation’s continued existence. The state, after all,
“stands apart…in the level of resources and authority it can muster when
creating [national narratives]…and restricting competing efforts (Wertsch
2001:68).” However, in almost all situations, only a limited amount of the
state’s resources are deployed for narrativizing purposes. More often, because
the state cannot come to a consensus about how to shape a national narrative,
the possibility of narrativizing is opened up to individual actors within the state.
Still, even in the rare situations when the state mobilizes a great deal of its
resources in narrativization efforts, national narratives are still contested by non-
state actors.
The second process of national narrative construction that I trace occurs
in small group situations on the level of the individual (see also Wertsch 2001).
As discussed, once national narratives are in the process of being formed at the
level of the nation, individuals have only a limited amount of access to all of the
various narrative fragments. They can learn about them by themselves as they
read books, read newspapers or watch the news. They can learn about them at

8
school or in discussions with friends and family. In most of these different
private contexts, people construct their own versions of national narratives by
themselves based on this narrative information or in a situation where their
version of a national narrative goes relatively uncontested.
When people share their understanding of narrative fragments with
others who have contradictory versions, an entirely different process of national
narrative construction occurs. This occurs in public discussions when people
offer either contested narratives that try to disprove another’s narrative
fragments or competing narratives that offer a fundamentally different version
of the same narrative fragment. People employ competing and contested
narratives during discussions as a way to try and prove their construction of a
national narrative is correct or prove that another construction is problematic.
During these discussions, people’s versions of a national narrative are not likely
to change dramatically. Occasionally, though, the veracity of a competing or
contested narrative is so powerful that it fundamentally reshapes an individual’s
construction of her or his national narrative. Also, discussions about narrative
fragments can have a long-term effect by influencing how people construct their
version of a national narrative in the future.
Public discussions about national narratives can often become passionate
and dramatic. This is why I conceptualize them more as performances than as
ordinary discussions. However, these kinds of performances are different than
the symbolic or aesthetic ones most people think about when they hear the term

9
performance. Symbolic performances, which anthropologists such as Victor
Turner and Richard Bauman have made famous in their studies of ritual and
theater, purposefully create a space outside of everyday reality where
participants enter a heightened sense of awareness that allows them to become
open to highly emotional experiences or releases. Unlike symbolic
performances, performances of national narratives are smaller in scale. They:
…refer to the fundamental practices and performativity of
everyday life. The focus here is not on a type of event, but
rather on the expressive processes of impression management,
strategic maneuver and regulated improvisation through which
human beings continuously articulate their purposes and
relationships in normal social existence. (Schieffelin 1996:61)

In these kinds of everyday performances, a group or “team” tries to
avoid revealing “destructive information” that would allow its performance to
be questioned as well as maintain “information control” so that it can “keep its
secrets and have its secrets kept” from the audience (Goffman 1959:141).”
When people construct national narratives together during everyday
performances – as opposed to when a person constructs national narratives in
more private contexts – a wide range of power-related issues can dictate which
narrative fragments can be introduced, who gets to perform, and who
determines when the performance ends. This includes the power relations
found in specific social spaces where performances are conducted as well as
power relations that are external to the performance space. The reason this is so

10
important is because power relations are a vital factor in determining what kind
of narratives can emerge during a performance (Kirmayer 2000).
Regardless of whether a person learns about narrative fragments through
the media or during a performance, the process of narrative construction can
have an impact on a person’s beliefs. Determining what people actually
believe, though, can be quite challenging. As Wertsch noted, “[w]hen trying to
examine what a people ‘really believes,’ it is often the case that it seems to
believe one thing in one context and something different, and often
contradictory in another (Wertsch 2001:123).” By calling attention to the
performative nature of belief, Wertsch shows that it is not always possible to
determine what a person truly believes. I believe people have the potential to
perform national narratives in a way that expresses not only shifting beliefs (as
Wertsch suggests) but strong belief tendencies over extended periods of time.
These tendencies articulate fairly consistent belief patterns.

My Research
My research traces some of the different processes of construction,
dissemination and contestation of Israeli and Palestinian national narratives.
My interest in these processes was sparked by one aspect of the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict that I initially found so difficult to comprehend: how is it
possible that Israelis and Palestinians construct such different narratives about
the same historical events? In order to investigate the different processes of

11

construction, dissemination, and contestation, I searched for a social space
where both Palestinians and Israelis discussed Israeli national narratives as well
as a Palestinian social space where I could learn about the process of Palestinian
national narrative construction.
I conducted the first part of my fieldwork in Jerusalem between January
and November 2001, attending Hebrew classes at Beit Ha’am and Beit Hanoar
Ha’ivri. This is where I was able to observe how national narratives were
conveyed to students, how they were then reconstructed in small groups during
performances, and finally, how the performances affected people’s belief
tendencies. The second portion of my fieldwork was conducted in Ramallah,
Palestine between June and August 2004. During my research, I attended Bir
Zeit University
3
and studied Arabic in the Palestine and Arabic Studies program
(PAS). Also during this time, I lived with a group of six Palestinian men in
their twenties who were in the midst of establishing their professional careers.
They, along with many other Palestinians I got to know over the duration of my
research, were eager to share their many social suffering narratives that were the
result of the longstanding conflict with Israel. In addition, since my research
began I have closely followed the development of national narratives in the
Israeli media (and the Palestinian media to the extent possible) on a daily basis.
I conducted the bulk of my research in an ulpan, an Israeli state-
sponsored space of education that teaches new Israeli immigrants the Modern

3
Bir Zeit University is located about 4.5 miles north of Ramallah.

12
Hebrew language. I chose the ulpan as a fieldsite because I was able to witness
the process of how state-authorized national narratives were conveyed to
national people. Gellner noted the important role of education in state-making,
“[t]he task with which [the educational] system is entrusted is to turn out
worthy, loyal and competent members of the total society… (Gellner 1983:64).”
Education can often accomplish this because the state has a great deal of control
over how its narratives are produced, presented and conveyed to its citizens in
the classroom. The Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture creates many of
the course materials we used at the ulpan, including the textbook and audio
cassettes about Israeli history, culture and the Jewish religion. The Ministry is
also responsible for choosing the teachers of the class and these teachers have
far greater responsibilities than simply instructing students in Hebrew. As
Zionists, they arbitrate, advocate and negotiate the meaning of national
narratives that are presented to the students during the class. The teachers can
open and close potential avenues of discussion about Israeli national narratives
whenever they deem it appropriate. In short, the classroom provides a space
where idealized national narratives (from the perspective of the Israeli state) can
be communicated by a person who is chosen by the state and who can control
how these narratives are conveyed to students.
For this reason, one might expect the ulpan to be a place where the
construction process of Israeli national narratives goes relatively uncontested.
However, this was not always the case. Ulpan classes are almost never

13
composed of homogenous students fully intent on accepting every Israeli
national narrative presented. The new Israeli immigrant students who took the
ulpan class originated from countries all over the world and often brought with
them contradictory worldviews. The specific ulpan I attended was unique in
that, in addition to a diverse group of new Israeli immigrant students, there were
also Palestinian students who regularly attended class. The presence of multiple
worldviews in one social space created an environment that allowed for
contestation of Israeli national narratives.
At the ulpan I was able to investigate a number of the research questions
about national narratives in which I was interested. I was able to observe what
the Israeli state considered to be the ideal versions of Israeli national narratives.
I was also able to observe when less than ideal versions of Israeli national
narratives that were constructed in the Israeli media (because they were
constructed in a contested fashion) were presented in class. I witnessed how
power relations affected how these different national narratives were conveyed
to students. In addition, I was able to observe the times when national
narratives became contested. During moments of contestation, Israeli national
narratives could become reconstructed on the level of the individuals during
performances of everyday life. This occurred when students added their own
narrative fragments to the construction of the national narrative.
My primary technique of gathering information at the ulpan was by
attending classes and taking detailed notes about our discussions – in other

14
words, participant observation. When heated debates about national narratives
occurred, I would write down what individual students said as fast as I could
and then immediately fill in whatever details were missing after the class was
over. As the students’ Hebrew continued to improve, I had less time to take
notes during class. This was because the discussions became more
sophisticated and I found myself participating more.
Another technique of gathering information was by participating in
student discussions during class breaks or after classes. There were a number of
occasions when our class discussions were so contentious that students felt
compelled to continue these discussions. As a rule, students felt much freer to
discuss their “real” opinions about national narratives when the ulpan teacher
was not involved in our conversations. Student also felt far more comfortable
when expressing themselves in English rather than Hebrew. Finally, people felt
safer to discuss the contentious issues when they were in small groups of trusted
friends.
Yet another way I gathered information was by conducting semi-formal
interviews with Palestinian students, new Israeli immigrant students and the
ulpan teachers. These semi-formal interviews occurred spontaneously after
classes in the hallways of the ulpan, at a coffee shop across the street from the
ulpan, on walks to the center of West Jerusalem, at restaurants, and at people’s
apartments.

15
Finally, while conducting research in Jerusalem, I had the great benefit
of having my wife Niki, a trained anthropologist, with me. Niki went to a
different ulpan and her classes were attended primarily by Jewish students. It
was extremely useful to discuss what happened in Niki’s classes because it
served as a way to compare and contrast experiences I was having at my ulpan.
It was also beneficial having Niki with me because I was able to use her as a
sounding board for the ideas I had about what was happening at the ulpan. She
also contributed her own ideas and explanations for what I was experiencing. In
short, my fieldwork experience was largely a collaborative effort that would not
have been nearly as successful without her assistance and insights.
My fieldwork experiences in Ramallah were very different than they
were in Jerusalem. When originally applying to Bir Zeit University’s PAS
program, I was hoping to replicate the success I had in the ulpan in collecting
national narratives. However, once I started my Arabic class, it was clear that
the course materials, teacher and students at Bir Zeit were not going to inspire
many discussions about national narratives. At first, I thought this was because
we were in the rudimentary Arabic class (Colloquial Arabic I) and that
discussions in Arabic could only be on the most basic of levels. However, I
discovered this was not the case. The primary reason we did not discuss
national narratives was because the curriculum was designed to be distinctly
apolitical. The course materials avoided topics about Israel or Israeli-
Palestinian relations and focused instead on Palestinian culture only.

16

There were many occasions when the teacher, Tariq, went out of his way
to depoliticize our class discussions. Over the two months I was in the class, if
a student raised a political issue Tariq would refrain from adding his opinion to
the discussion. In fact, he almost always cut off political discussions by saying
that “this is an Arabic class, not a political class.”
4
The one time he took the
liberty to discuss something political was when someone started to discuss an
Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip. When a student asked Tariq his opinion
about what was happening he responded by saying he was biased. He told us
that the only thing that mattered to him was that Israel’s actions had prevented
him from visiting his family (Tariq was from the Gaza Strip) for over four years
since he was not allowed to travel there. Immediately after this brief comment,
he returned to the topic of Arabic.
The students in our class played an important role in why we did not
have too many political discussions also. While the students came from very
diverse backgrounds – we had a mix of Muslim, Christian and Jewish students
mainly from the United States and Britain but also from Canada, Japan, Italy
and Morocco – the fact that they attended Bir Zeit University revealed
something about their political leanings. With the exception of one student,
everyone identified themselves as pro-Palestinian and this was why whenever
we had discussions about national narratives after classes, people were usually

4
There was, however, a political course for international students called “The Palestine
Question” at Bir Zeit University. I did not attend this class.

17
in agreement. There was not much lively debate about national narratives as
much as there was agreement for and sympathy with Palestinians.
The international students in the PAS program were also strongly
influenced by local Bir Zeit university students. The Palestinian students
volunteered to show us around Ramallah so that we could become better
acquainted with the urban landscape. They offered us advice about how to
avoid the Israeli checkpoints. During breaks and lunches, they often shared
with us their personal experiences of living under Israeli occupation. Many of
the international students became very friendly with Palestinian Bir Zeit
University students and they, in turn, enjoyed introducing us to other Palestinian
friends.
While I had known that I wanted to collect Palestinian social suffering
narratives before I arrived in Ramallah, I was not exactly sure how they were
going to fit into my overall project regarding national narratives. What I knew
from my experiences with Palestinian friends in Los Angeles was that there was
a very deep connection between their social suffering narratives and their
national narratives. It was a little surprising when I arrived to discover how
willing people were to share their painful social suffering narratives with me
and the other international students. There is no doubt that the most frequent
topic of conversation for both Palestinian and international students were the
many social suffering narratives they experienced personally or heard about
from news reports or friends.

18
Over the course of my research in Ramallah, then, I discovered that I
was not going to learn about Palestinian or Israeli national narratives in our
Arabic class the same way I did in my ulpan classes. Instead, Bir Zeit offered
me a place to meet a lot of people who were interested in learning about,
experiencing and circulating social suffering narratives. Only after returning
from my fieldwork experience did I start to make connections as to how these
narratives played into larger Palestinian and Israeli national narratives.
Being a student at Bir Zeit offered me another important advantage in
collecting social suffering narratives. As a foreigner in Palestine with only the
most basic level of Arabic at my disposal, most people were not too quick to
speak with me or trust me. That is, until I said “ana tulab fi jam’at Bir Zeit” (“I
am a student at Bir Zeit University”). My association with Bir Zeit, a highly
regarded Palestinian university (and the fact that I made an effort to speak in
Arabic) was greatly appreciated by everyone with whom I spoke. As a result,
people were usually very willing to help me or talk with me about their own
social suffering experiences.
My research on the media began when I first arrived in Jerusalem. In
my ulpan class, one of our daily Hebrew exercises was to either listen to the
Israeli news in Hebrew or read Hebrew newspaper articles from the Israeli
newspaper Yediot Ahronoth. The purpose of these exercises was not only to
learn more Hebrew but to get better acquainted with Israeli politics. Over time,
careful scrutiny of these articles during these exercises led me to view

19
newspaper articles as more than just stories but as narrative fragments within
larger national narratives. After realizing this, I started reading two Israeli
newspapers per day. Once I left Jerusalem at the end of 2001, I continued to
read two or three Israeli newspapers every day on the internet. At the same
time, I also started to follow Palestinian opinion editorials in English over the
internet wherever they were available. Internet editions of Israeli newspapers
occasionally differ from the printed versions, but only slightly.
My ethnographic research in the ulpan classroom with new Israeli
immigrant students and Palestinian students, my research in Palestine, and my
close following of national narrative construction in the Israeli and Palestinian
media serve as the primary sources of information used in this dissertation.

Agency, Identity and Social Space
One of the main purposes of including a self-reflexive portion in an
anthropological ethnography is to attempt to create a personal narrative that
reveals whatever biases the author might bring to his or her research. In part,
the following section seeks to address this question. In addition to this, though,
I hope to show how place, imbued with power, had unexpected consequences
on my identity, and as a result, my positionality in relation to the people who I
got to know during my research. Brown has already noted the importance of
“place… [as] a basis for the construction of difference, hierarchy, and identity”
and that “place is a vehicle of power (Brown 2005:8).” What I hope to add to

20
this understanding of place is that it can also be a powerful force in determining
who would trust me, which in turn affected the kinds of personal narratives I
was able to collect.
The biases I bring to this study are contradictory, situational and
tentative. I offer part of my own narrative not only as a way of telling my story
so that one can understand my positioning in this research and what is at stake
for my work. It is also a way to point out how complicated the issue of agency
is as it relates to identity. There are many contexts in which people have a great
deal of agency when it comes to defining their identities. Yet there are other
times, circumstances and spaces which simply resist agency as an actor seeks to
define his or her identity. Like identity itself, agency is never stable, always
navigating through a turbulent matrix of power relations. In part, then, the
following personal narrative is an attempt to show times when I had a great deal
of agency in crafting my own identity and showing other times when identity
was defined for me.
My positioning in this study is problematic, as a pro-Palestinian, non-
practicing American-Orthodox Jew doing fieldwork in both Israel and in
Palestine. Categorizing myself in this specific way is an important move in the
greater context of my research. This is because being Jewish usually
predetermines a very particular way of understanding the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. It is usually a given that a Jew will be pro-Israel and this ideological
stance deeply affects how a person approaches the conflict. Second, and more

21
importantly, it often times predetermined the way in which the people whom I
interacted with located me. It opened up certain avenues of inquiry while
foreclosing others.
When I arrived in Israel, in the early spring of 2001, it had already been
ten years since I had become a lapsed Orthodox Jew. I considered myself to be
culturally Jewish in the sense that I had been raised Jewish and had been
influenced by this upbringing. Beyond that, though, I did not consider myself
religiously Jewish. When any Jew comes to Israel, she or he is viewed by
Israelis as Jewish and a Zionist. Other previous identity markers can become
secondary, if not altogether dropped. To Israelis one is either Jewish or
something else – Arab, Muslim, Christian, Druze, Bedouin, etc.
Being marked as “Jewish” when I lived in Jerusalem was problematic.
From the Israeli students’ and teachers’ perspectives, my pro-Palestinian
political views were considered at best idealistic and naïve. I often heard that I
would eventually become pro-Israeli after I learned more about hamatzav (“the
situation” but universally understood as the political situation between
Palestinians and Israelis). Other times, I was dismissed as not knowing enough
about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From Israelis, I would often
hear that I could not possibly know the Palestinians because I had never served

22

in the IDF.
5
Some even said that my thinking was confused by the media. In
addition, I was often accused of being a “self-hating Jew.”
Being marked as Jewish in Jerusalem also made my relationship with
Palestinians problematic. The Palestinians, East Jerusalem Palestinians and the
Palestinians citizens of Israel in the ulpan classroom often did not know how to
contextualize me. For them, first and foremost, I was Jewish. Being Jewish, at
the very least, marked me as being untrustworthy. Perhaps I was lying about
my political views. Maybe I was exaggerating how I felt to be nice or
considerate. Perhaps, like those Israelis on the political Left during the Oslo
peace process, I would be exposed as a person who believes in a peace that
serves only Israeli interests, that is, a peace that is forced upon a people who
have little, if any, say about how the process actually plays out. Or, perhaps, I
might abandon my beliefs after some time as other “good Jews”
6
had done in
the past.
In sum, while in Jerusalem, I was constructed as Jewish in a way in
which I never felt comfortable. The fact that I did not consider myself to be
Jewish in practice or ideology meant nothing to how people situated me both

5
As Palestinians have often reminded me, this is precisely the problem with Israeli-Palestinian
relations. Israelis only get to know Palestinians with their military uniforms on and their guns
drawn.
6
I heard this phrase used by Palestinians to refer to Israelis who treated Palestinians
respectfully. A Palestinian friend told me a story about a friend of hers who was a Jewish-
Israeli reporter. My friend became friends with this reporter partly because he was often
extremely critical of Israeli treatment of Palestinians. After the beginning of the second
Intifadah, his reports stopped being sympathetic towards Palestinians and my friend felt as
though her friendship had been betrayed.

23
personally and politically. For Israelis, being Jewish meant I was a Zionist,
even if I was highly critical of the ideology. For Palestinians, being Jewish also
meant I was a Zionist, though an enigmatic one. In the Israeli-Palestinian power
context in Jerusalem, it meant I could not be fully trusted by anyone. While the
Israeli-Jews and Palestinians whom I got to know well could temporarily brush
their constructions of me aside for a time, they would inevitably resurface
during the course of our relationships.
Being Jewish in Palestine turned out to be far different than what I had
been anticipating. Before I seriously entertained the idea of conducting my
fieldwork in Ramallah I had to determine “how” I would manage being Jewish
in Palestine. With the advice of a few Palestinian friends, I decided I would
never tell anyone I was Jewish under any circumstances because doing so might
be dangerous. When I told my ulpan class about my intentions to do fieldwork
in Ramallah, a number of Israeli students talked to me privately hoping to
dissuade me from my decision. “Was I so naïve about the Palestinians and their
intentions for the Jews?” they asked. This fear was first assuaged in a brief
conversation I had with Avram Bornstein at the American Anthropological
Association Conference in Chicago in 2003. As a Jew who had lived and
worked in Palestine for many years, he advised me not to worry about any
perceived dangers that I had felt.
Still, in April 2004 as I was deciding whether or not I should go to
Ramallah, I was still concerned. What if people in Hamas or Islamic Jihad

24

found out I was Jewish? Would they kill me? I certainly feared that possibility.
When I consulted a number of Palestinian friends, I was advised not to go since
it was an especially tense time between Israelis and Palestinians. Still, my
closest Palestinian friend told me not to worry. “Come to Palestine and be an
American,” she suggested. Not that this identity marker was without its own
problematics. In Palestine, the United States is seen as a blind supporter of
Israel, one that unquestionably and loyally responds to any Israeli request. Still,
I had followed the conflict closely for years and had never heard of Americans
getting injured or killed in the West Bank unless they were Jewish settlers. So
using this information as a safety net, I decided to go to Ramallah as an
American.
Once I arrived in Palestine in the summer of 2004, I realized that
identifying as an American was not completely necessary or possible. To my
great surprise, I discovered that there were many Jews living in Palestine.
Throughout my research, wherever I visited a small Palestinian village or large
Palestinian cities, I discovered that there were Jews there.
7
Also, I met four
other Jewish students at Bir Zeit University – one of whom told everyone he
was Jewish. Within a few days, I had decided to tell everyone in my Arabic

7
Almost every weekend I was in the West Bank, I traveled to different Palestinian villages or
cities with students from Bir Zeit University. On one occasion, a group of students visited a
small Palestinian village where two Jewish human rights activists from Australia had been
living for over a year. One of these people told me that fifty percent of the human rights
workers in Palestine are Jews. While I cannot attest to the veracity of this statement, I did meet
Jews almost everywhere I traveled. These people worked as human rights activists, were
members of the media, or were just there to live and learn more about Palestinians.

25
class I was Jewish in large part because I did not feel it was honest to lie to
people about something so important. After careful consideration with my
closest Palestinian friend, I also decided to tell my Palestinian roommates that I
was Jewish. In the end, I wound up telling almost all of the Palestinians to
whom I was close that I was Jewish.
Being Jewish in Palestine was in many ways far less problematic than it
had been in Jerusalem. Amongst my Palestinian friends – both new and old –
being Jewish did not matter because I was decisively aligned with the
Palestinian cause. The fact that I came to Palestine and was living with
Palestinians made them feel far more secure and trusting of me. This kind of
relationship was something I was never able to enjoy with my Palestinian
friends in Jerusalem. Over time, when I met Palestinians I did not know, I
almost completely stopped worrying about being Jewish.
Over time, I was far more fearful that my Jewish identity would be
discovered by Israeli authorities than by Palestinians. I had frequent encounters
with Israeli authorities in Palestine (as everyone does) and each time I did my
best to hide my Jewish identity. I would never speak in Hebrew or say that I
was Jewish – even if it meant having a gun pointed at me. I was worried that if
they found out I was Jewish they would interrogate me and try to find out what I
was doing in Palestine. Even though I was a student conducting research and
purposefully avoiding any political activity, I still worried that the Israeli state

26
would see me as a Jewish traitor. If I were ever caught in this situation, my
greatest fear was that I would not be allowed to enter Palestine/Israel again.
Being Jewish in Jerusalem meant something very different than being
Jewish in Palestine. In Jerusalem, Jewish-Israelis and new Israeli immigrants
took me as a misguided Jew since I was politically aligned with Palestinians.
Still, this did not noticeably affect whether they were willing to talk to me about
their experiences and tell me their personal narratives. The Palestinians I met in
Jerusalem were never able to fully trust me because the place dictated that
aspect of our relationship. This almost always made it difficult for Palestinian
friends in Jerusalem to fully open up to me. When I was in Ramallah, though,
Palestinians had almost no problem trusting me and were very open to sharing
their personal narratives with me.

Perspective and Cultural Scripts
The Palestinian/Israeli conflict is a conflict of perspective and often
one’s opinion about the conflict is directly linked to where one is positioned
physically, intellectually and emotionally. Certainly my own understanding of
the issues was affected by physically spending time in both Jerusalem and
Ramallah, living with people who identify with both sides of the conflict. In
addition, new information and experiences which I was exposed to over the
course of my fieldwork were assimilated into my ongoing personal narrative.

27
Only a few weeks after I arrived in Jerusalem, I experienced something
that would permanently guide the way I approached my research on Israeli and
Palestinian national narratives. One night as I was watching the Israeli news on
television, there was a report about a large group of Palestinian youth in
Ramallah who were throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. Despite the provocation,
Israeli soldiers, who crouched behind their military vehicles, showed great
restraint by not making any aggressive moves towards the Palestinians. There
were also a couple of soldiers standing in front of the military vehicles with
their guns in their hands, but they were being pointed at the road and not at the
Palestinian youth. As I was watching these images, I felt intimidated seeing so
many stones being thrown at the Israeli soldiers, almost feeling like a soldier
myself. The whole scene had a chaotic and riotous feel that seemed as if it
might get out of control at any moment. At the end of the news report, while
the audience was still watching these images of Palestinian youth throwing
stones, the Israeli anchorman spoke about soldiers arresting Palestinian
terrorists in Ramallah.
Later that evening, I was changing the television stations when I found
the official Palestinian Authority’s television station. It was broadcasting the
news in English which was lucky for me since I did not understand Arabic at the
time. The announcer said that the “Israeli Occupation Forces” (the Palestinian

28

terminology for the Israeli Defense Forces,
8
Israel’s military), had shot one
Palestinian and arrested six others in Ramallah at the same stone throwing
incident I had just watched on Israeli television. Images of the Israeli soldiers
pointing their guns at the Palestinian youth appeared as the reporter presented
the story. The soldiers began to move aggressively towards the Palestinians
and, then one of the soldiers started running towards the stone throwers. The
video footage showed gunshots being fired by the IDF soldiers, which sent all
the Palestinian youth scurrying away. In the end, the announcer reported, the
soldiers had caught a few of the Palestinians and arrested them. They were then
blindfolded and had their hands tied and put into an Israeli military vehicle. The
images that followed were extremely graphic for me. A Palestinian boy who
had been shot was lying on the ground. The boy was shown with a bullet-size
hole in his leg with blood running out of the wound. The injured boy was
carried off by four other boys into a waiting ambulance and then driven away.
As I watched the images of the stone throwing incident on the
Palestinian news broadcast, I was struck by the different positioning of the
Israeli and Palestinian video cameras. When I watched the Israeli news, the
camera was positioned from behind the Israeli soldiers. As a member of the
audience, I was watching the backs of the soldiers as the Palestinian youth were
running towards the soldiers and throwing stones. When I watched the
Palestinian news, the video camera was positioned behind the Palestinian youth.

8
I will refer to the Israeli Defense Forces as the “IDF” from here on forward.

29
As part of this viewing audience, I was watching the backs of the Palestinians as
the IDF soldiers looked menacingly in “my” direction. The presence of their
weapons, though not pointed at the youth at first, was extremely frightening.
The surreal effect was that from the perspective from which I was watching the
Israeli news, I had rocks being thrown at me by the Palestinian youth. Then,
when I watched the Palestinian news from another perspective, I was watching
guns being pointed and fired at me by the IDF soldiers.
One cannot fully understand a fighting sequence such as the stone
throwing incident without contextualizing it within the larger power relations
between Israelis and Palestinians. Israel has one of the most highly trained
militaries in the world, international recognition from the United Nations and
the explicit backing of the United States. In contrast, the Palestinians have
relatively small groups of people armed with guns and inaccurate short-range
rockets, volunteers who are willing to kill Israelis and themselves (“suicide
bombers”), and contingent recognition from the United Nations. Even with all
of their power, when Israelis watch Palestinians throwing stones at Israeli
soldiers, they believe the battlefield is equal between Israelis and Palestinians.
Further, when watching a scene like this, it is immediately clear to most Israelis
that the Palestinians are the aggressors. They are unable to recognize that Israel
has an overwhelming military advantage with its tanks, guns, military vehicles,
and military infrastructure. They do not think what it might mean to ordinary
Palestinians when enemy tanks roll through their streets without any regard for

30
them. Edward Said once famously wrote about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
that most westerners have a difficult time discriminating “between the violence
of the oppressor and the violence of the oppressed (1994:73).” Certainly,
perspective, with its ability to hide power relations, is a primary factor for this
difficulty.
One school of thought within narrative theory helps explain how
perspectives work. People’s perspectives are shaped by a set of “preexisting
explanatory frameworks [from] within a cultural setting (Garro 2000:72).”
These “cultural scripts” as they are called, “provide [us with] general guidelines
for interpreting particular experiences (Mattingly 1998:2).” When we have a
new experience, our range of interpretation of that experience can be limited by
the cultural scripts available to us. In the case of this fighting sequence, a
typical Israeli cultural script would allow an Israeli to interpret the IDF soldiers’
actions as an act of self-defense against Palestinian aggressors. The cultural
script also rejects any notion that power relations might be relevant to this
event. Palestinians have a different cultural script that allows them to interpret
this event as an Israeli aggression against the Palestinian youth. In this
Palestinian cultural script, unequal power relations are core to the interpretation
of the fighting sequence. Cultural scripts are extremely powerful arbiters of
meaning since they can both open up and foreclose possibilities of interpretation
for the different events and experiences people encounter.

31
People’s perspective about personal experiences and events are often
guided by cultural scripts as well as their intellectual and physical positioning.
Cultural scripts and one’s positionality often serve to hide power relations and
to foreclose the possibility of being able to learn about and understand
alternative narrative fragments. Throughout the course of my research, I
discovered that this was a pivotal factor in why Palestinian and Israeli national
narratives can be constructed in such divergent ways.

National Narratives as Narrative
Since the beginning of my research, I have often wondered why national
narratives are termed ‘narratives.’ In most studies of national narratives, the
national narratives do not always have stories, plots, beginnings, middles or
ends – at least not at the level of the nation. In the following section I review
definitions of the basic elements of a classic narrative – including plot,
beginning, middle and end – to see the extent to which national narratives can
be thought of as narratives. Before getting into an in-depth conversation about
national narratives, I show from a narrative perspective the distinction between
the subnarratives or narrative fragments that are used in the construction of
national narratives and national narratives themselves. I then discuss how
national narratives are more likely to resemble classic narratives depending
upon where the construction process is taking place. On the level of the
individual, national narratives are not always classic narratives since they often

32
have indeterminable ends. At the level of the nation, national narratives are not
fully constituted as classic narratives since they have transitional beginnings and
indeterminable ends. Still, I would argue that although national narratives do
not always contain the basic elements of a classic narrative, they nonetheless
should be considered narratives because they not only tell stories and have plots,
but they also contain other less conventional narrative elements that serve to
replace the basic elements. These narrative elements are virtual plots,
emplotment and subjunctivization.
So how are national narratives ‘narratives’? Traditionally understood, a
narrative is a story with a beginning, middle and end. Aristotle was the first to
define what is meant by these terms:
A whole [narrative] is that which has a beginning, middle, and
end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow
necessarily from something else, but after which a further event
or process naturally occurs. An end, by contrast, is that which
itself naturally occurs, whether necessarily or usually, after a
preceding event, but need not be followed by anything else. A
middle is that which both follows a preceding event and has
further consequences. (Aristotle 1995:55)

In addition to discussing the beginning, middle and end of a narrative,
Aristotle was also the first to point out the importance of plot in structuring
events in narrative (Aristotle 1995:49). Without plot, a narrative would not be
able to have a coherent story. Ricoeur, expanding on this understanding of plot,
writes that plot “‘grasps together’ and integrates into one whole and complete
story multiple and scattered events (1984:x).” It does this in order to “construct

33
meaningful totalities out of scattered events (1981:278).” Meaningful totalities
refer “to an underlying meaning or significance that inheres in the totalities, the
‘moral of the story (Ricoeur in Good 1994:145).’” In other words, plot
concurrently structures events and actions into a whole and creates a moral to
the story (see also White 1980, 1987).
While the Palestinian and Israeli news presented two extremely different
narrative versions of the stone throwing event discussed above, each clearly had
a beginning, middle, end and plot. For the Israeli audience, the narrative begins
when the Palestinians started throwing stones at the Israeli soldiers. The middle
of the narrative occurs when the soldiers showed great restraint despite the
Palestinian provocation. The end, narrated without video images, occurs when
the anchorman reported that the Israeli soldiers arrested some of the Palestinian
stone-throwers. For the Palestinian audience, the narrative began when the
Israeli soldiers engaged the Palestinian stone throwers. The middle of the
narrative occurred when Palestinian youth feebly attempted to ward off the
Israeli military and the Palestinians were shot at. The narrative ended when one
Palestinian was shot and six others arrested.
One of the main arguments in this book is that events like the stone
throwing incident are not simply narrativized in order to present the story about
a fighting sequence between Israelis and Palestinians. The events also serve as
subnarratives or narrative fragments within other larger Israeli and Palestinian

34

national narratives.
9
Each new fighting incident between the Israelis and
Palestinians serves as another plot point in each national narrative. When
Palestinians read about or watch other Palestinians getting shot and arrested by
Israeli soldiers, this is perceived as a new episode within the Palestinian
“national suffering” national narrative.
10
This Palestinian national narrative
tells the ongoing story about how Palestinians suffer as a result of the
oppressive actions taken by Israel. The moral of this Palestinian national
narrative is that as long as there is a strong Israeli presence within Palestine,
there will always be cruel and unjustified Palestinian suffering. When Israelis
watch their soldiers showing great restraint when dozens, if not hundreds, of
Palestinians are throwing stones at them, it is perceived as a new episode within
the Israeli “moral IDF” national narrative. This Israeli national narrative is an
ongoing story about how the Israeli military acts with the highest moral
standards during periods of conflict with its enemies. When Israelis learn that
Palestinians were shot and arrested, an Israeli cultural script makes it a foregone
conclusion that the Palestinians who were throwing the stones were the
instigators of the fight. The moral of this Israeli national narrative is that since
the IDF is always acting in self-defense, it is almost never responsible for any of
the violence it commits.

9
They also serve as subnarratives within other nation’s narratives, as can be seen in many of the
surrounding Arab countries, but that is outside the scope of this text.
10
Throughout this book, I name national narratives as a way to refer to a story each nation tells.
Whenever possible I employ/assign a name using commonly used discourse. In this particular
example, there is no such terminology in use.

35
The fighting sequence described above has at least two clear classic
narrative structures (depending upon one’s positionality), including two
different beginnings, middles, ends and plots. These, however, are
subnarratives and not actual national narratives. The greater question is to what
extent can we consider national narratives such as the Palestinian “national
suffering” narrative and the Israeli “moral IDF” as classic narratives? Unlike
events such as the stone-throwing incident which takes place over a quantifiable
period of time, national narratives often take place over a much more extended
period of time. This often makes determining a fixed beginning and ending
more complex. National narratives clearly do exhibit middles, though, and it is
these middle portions that form the bulk of the national narrative.
As stated earlier, according to Aristotle, a “beginning is that which does
not itself follow necessarily from something else, but after which a further event
or process naturally occurs (Aristotle 1995:55).” A simple example of a classic
narrative would be a fictional novel. Taking the novel as a model, consider the
beginning to be page one when a reader is dropped into the world of the writer’s
creation. Looking into Aristotle’s definition of a beginning in more depth,
though, one can question whether page one in a novel can really be considered
“that which does not itself follow necessarily from something else.” Page one
in a novel is not the beginning of a narrative as Aristotle suggests, but an
artificially imposed starting point to a story that is selected by the author for
dramatic and aesthetic purposes. All narratives have background to characters

36

and events which are revealed later in the narrative but occur before page one
chronologically. Further, authors require readers to impose their own
interpretations of background information such as a character’s personality or
motivation. These narrative details, too, precede page one in narrative time.
The fact that there is vital background information about a narrative that is
learned after the artificially imposed beginning of the story suggests that
beginnings of narratives need to be thought of as transitional rather than fixed.
In a different context, scholars of nationalism have formulated a similar
kind of critique about the beginning of a nation’s most important narrative – its
origin narrative. Anderson wrote that a nation-state tries to project its origin as
“loom[ing] out of an immemorial past (Anderson 1991:11; also see Balibar
1991:93),” so that it can purposefully ignore “the large cultural systems that
preceded it, out of which – as well as against which – it came into being
(1991:12).” Part of the process of declaring the origin, or the beginning, of a
nation-state, then, is to ignore and erase what preceded it.
11
Building on
Anderson’s thesis, Bhabha wrote that despite a nation’s desire to mark this kind
of pure beginning point, “the cultural temporality of a nation inscribes a much
more transitional social reality (1991:1).” It is cultural temporality, then, that
betrays a nation’s attempt to create a beginning point to its narrative. For

11
The Israeli origin narrative begins precisely with such an immemorial past of Palestine. This
is needed in order to legitimate the nation’s moral claim to the land. The sentiment about the
immemorial past of Palestine was best summed up by the famous Jewish saying coined by
British Zionist Israel Zangwill in 1901. Despite the fact that many native people were living in
Palestine, the place was “a land without a people for a people without a land (Zangwill
1901:627).”

37

Anderson and Bhabha, the point of the discussion about a nation’s origin was to
show the problematic nature of the nation. In the context of this discussion, I
am interested in their ideas to better understand why the beginning of a narrative
is transitional.
The contemporary Israeli origin narrative is very much marked by a
transitional beginning.
12
The first set of events that led to the beginning of
Israel were the pogroms against Jews in Eastern Europe between 1881 and
1882. This led to the “first wave” of Jewish immigration into Palestine. In
1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer, was unjustly accused of treason
because of wide-ranging anti-Jewish sentiments in France. This led Theodore
Herzl to organize and spread the Zionist doctrine in Europe during the late
1890s.
13
The Zionist doctrine essentially asserted that all Jews need to return to
their homeland in Israel to avoid worldwide anti-Semitism. In 1917, after the
Ottoman forces surrendered Jerusalem to Britain, the British, in the “Balfour
Declaration,” supported the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
14
The
Holocaust was the impetus for hundreds of thousands of other Jews to move to
Palestine. The beginning of the Israeli origin narrative culminates when Jewish

12
This is not to be confused with the origin narrative of the ancient Israelites of biblical times.
13
The term ‘Zionism’ was coined by Australian publicist Nathan Birnbaum in 1891. BILU
(Beit Ya’akov Lechu Venelcha) and Hibbat Tziyon (Love of Zion) were established in reaction
to pogroms that swept across Russia. Herzl’s famous book The Jewish State was published in
1896 and the First Zionist Congress convened in Basel, Switzerland on August 29, 1897.
14
The Balfour Declaration was a letter sent from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to
Lord Rothschild (a leader of the British Jewish community) on November 2, 1917. The letter
stated that the British government officially supported the Zionist leaders’ plans to create a
Jewish state in Palestine (see Appendix A)

38
leaders declared an independent Israeli state in Palestine on May 14, 1948. It is
a conglomeration of these events, and countless others, which mark the
transitional beginning of the Israeli origin narrative.
While the beginning of a national narrative can be considered a
somewhat problematic category, the same cannot be said for the middle of a
national narrative. The middle of a narrative, going back to Aristotle’s
definition, is the part that follows a preceding event and has further
consequences. Different events, like the fighting sequence I described, serve as
one event in the middle of the Israeli “moral IDF” national narrative and the
Palestinian “national suffering” narrative. It was preceded by many other
fighting sequences (events) and each one of these had future consequences for
the plot of each national narrative. Consequences are one of the most important
features in the middle of a narrative. When there are consequences to events
and actions, there is something important at stake for the reader/viewer and this
keeps the narrative compelling.
The middle of a narrative is also when people are actively engaged in
making sense of a story by continually trying to work out a “virtual plot.” Good
(1994) describes how this process of “emplotment” works during the middle of
a narrative:
From the perspective of readers or hearers of stories that are in
process, plot is less a finished form or structure than an
engagement with what has been told or read so far in relation to
imagined outcomes that the story may bring – outcomes that
are feared, longed for, or seem ironically or tragically

39
inevitable…The reader is engaged imaginatively in
constructing a “virtual plot,” in attempting to extract
configuration from what has been heard, in determining the
nature of relationships among events and characters, separating
the related from the irrelevant, conceiving potential outcomes
in the world. (Good 1994:145)

Virtual plot is a defining narrative characteristic of national narratives
since they are almost always in the middle of the story. Each time a new event
like the stone-throwing incident occurs, people are forced to reconcile the event
within the larger context of the evolving virtual plot. When Israelis or
Palestinians learn about an event such as the fighting sequence I have described
above, they emplot that event in the larger virtual plots of the “moral IDF” and
“national suffering” national narratives. In this situation, the fighting sequence
only serves to reinforce the virtual plots of these narratives.
In other situations, though, new events can dramatically alter the
direction of the virtual plot in a national narrative. For example, a major plot
turn in the Israeli “moral IDF” narrative occurred in September 1982 when then
Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon allowed Lebanese Phalange militiamen to
massacre between 700-3,500 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee
camps in Lebanon. The plot of the “moral IDF” narrative took a clear turn
because some 300,000 Israelis demonstrators, or nearly one-tenth of the total
Jewish population in Israel, assembled in Tel Aviv to demand an inquiry into
the massacre. The conclusion of the inquiry by the Israeli Kahan Commission
determined that Sharon (and by extension, the IDF) bore “personal

40

responsibility” for the massacre and recommended stripping Sharon of his
ministry.
15
Another plot turn in the “moral IDF” national narrative occurred
when Muhammad al-Durrah, a twelve year old Palestinian boy, was murdered
by Israeli soldiers in his father’s arms on September 30, 2000.
16
The powerful
image of a father trying to protect his son – both of them crouched behind a
concrete cylinder trying desperately to avoid a firefight between Israeli soldiers
and Palestinian militants – very much put the “moral IDF” narrative into
question for me personally and for many other supporters of Israel. After these
stunning events, the virtual plot of the “moral IDF” narrative was permanently
altered. For many, it was no longer always possible to believe that the IDF
acted morally in all of its battles with its enemies.
In yet other situations, new events can set into motion a complex
reconfiguration of the virtual plot by forcing past events to become
renarrativized. This is precisely what happened as a result of the October 1973
Arab-Israeli War as Israeli intellectuals “encouraged an ideology critical of
Zionism (Pappé 1997:29).” Led by the Israeli “new historians” and “critical
sociologists” in the late 1970s and early 1980s, “post-Zionism” became the first
Israeli intellectual movement that sought to reinterpret past Israeli national
narratives and ideologies. The resulting works problematized a broad range of

15
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Israel's Foreign Relations Selected Documents. Volume 8:
1982-1984. 104. Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the events at the refugee camps in
Beirut- 8 February 1983
16
Regardless of which side a person takes in the ongoing a controversy of whether the IDF did
in fact kill Muhammad al Durrah, the initial shock of believing the story created a plot turn in
the “moral IDF” narrative for many people.

41
Israeli national narratives (Benvenisti 2000; Kimmerling 2002; Kretzmer 1990;
Shafir 1989; Shalev 1989). For example, a number of the Israeli new historians
showed how Palestinians were forced out of their homes and villages during
Israel’s War of Independence/Palestinian Disaster in 1948 (Morris 1987; Pappé
1994, 2004; Shlaim 1988, 2000). This national narrative can be starkly
contrasted to the commonly accepted officially-sanctioned narrative that existed
beforehand which asserted that Palestinians left their homes because the
invading Arab armies asked them to do so (Kimche 1960; Schectman 1952;
Syrkin 1966). This example shows how new events can have the unintended
consequence of changing the direction of a virtual plot in a national narrative.
As for the end of a national narrative, fixed endings are often difficult to
determine. According to Aristotle, an end of a narrative is that which itself
naturally occurs after a preceding event (the middle of the story), but need not
be followed by anything else (Aristotle 1995). Returning to the classic example
of a fictional narrative, this occurs on the last page of a book immediately after
a transformation and resolution have taken place in the story. As was the case
with the beginning of a national narrative, though, there is no author to impose
an end to a national narrative. What might at one moment seem like an end to a
national narrative might actually turn out to be just one more event in the
middle of the plot; a continuation of the story. For example, if the Palestinians
and Israelis were to be able to forge a peace agreement, and thus give an ending
to the “Israeli-Palestinian peace process” national narrative, new events on the

42
ground could problematize that ending. What if, for example, small-scale
hostilities continued after the peace agreement? These events would rekindle
the “Israeli-Palestinian peace process” national narrative, making the former
“ending” just another plot turn in the continuing narrative. This is not to
suggest that endings do not occur for all national narratives – they do. Still, it is
not always certain that what seems to be an end of a story will remain its fixed
end.
For the purpose of national narratives, though, fixed endings are far less
important than the potential endings people speculate about while in the middle
of the narrative. As emplotment continues in the middle of a narrative, not only
are people interpreting current events and reconfiguring past events, but they are
also engaged in trying to determine possible endings to a narrative. This
process is called “subjunctivizing reality (Bruner 1986:26).” Subjunctivizing
reality is a narrative feature that allows a narrative to remain open to “multiple
readings and potential outcomes…outcomes that are feared, longed for, or seem
ironically or tragically inevitable (Good 1994:144-5).” As is the case with
emplotment, the reason multiple endings are so important to narrative structure
is that they keep people emotionally involved during the middle of the story.
For example, in contemporary Israel, Jewish-Israelis imagine a number of
possible endings for the “Israeli-Palestinian peace process” national narrative.
Many Jewish-Israelis currently imagine a two-state solution where Palestinians
live in a separate state side-by-side with an Israeli state. Others imagine the

43
complete defeat of the Palestinian people via transferring the population to other
Arab countries (Zureik 2003). With hostile Arab countries surrounding Israel
and the Palestinian enemy within, other Jewish-Israelis, to their own chagrin,
imagine the complete destruction of the Israeli state. Yet a few others imagine a
binational state with Israelis and Palestinians sharing a democratic government.
When events such as the stone-throwing sequence are narrativized, they
almost always exhibit plots with clear beginnings, middles and ends. However,
in and of themselves, these events are not national narratives. Rather, they are
narrative fragments or subnarratives within larger national narratives. The
beginning of a national narrative needs to be thought of as less fixed and more
transitional than a classic narrative. While it is difficult to say precisely when a
national narrative begins, we know it has begun because we can recognize when
we are in the middle of the national narrative. There can be little question about
the existence of the middle of a national narrative since it follows previous
events and the events have consequences. Fixed ends of national narratives are
also difficult to determine, though they do sometimes occur. More often the
narratives are subjunctivized, leaving the end always yet to come in the
indeterminate future.
I would argue that even though national narratives have no fixed
beginnings and often indeterminable ends, they are nonetheless narratives.
Transitional beginnings are a feature of all narratives – not just national
narratives. During the middle of a national narrative, emplotment produces new

44
and unpredictable stakes for the virtual plot. Also, far more important than a
fixed end to a national narrative are the possible endings available to people
which produce feelings of fear, longing, and resignation as they are in the
middle of the narrative. Virtual plots, emplotment and subjunctivization keep
people deeply involved in the national narrative during the middle of the story.
Without these narrative conventions the national narrative would likely cease to
exist.

Narratives of the Nation
From here on forward I will be referring to national narratives as
narratives of the nation. I make this move with great hesitation because the
term ‘national narratives’ is already so well established in the academic
literature. I have two primary reasons for doing this. First, whereas other
scholars pay only scant attention to the various narrative elements of narrative
structure, I want to call attention to the narrative dimension of narratives of the
nation. As I have already shown, narratives of the nation act similarly to other
kinds of narratives. They have beginnings, middles and ends, plots, resolution,
transformation, suspense, etc. Second, like Bhabha and others who have
employed the term national narrative, the term is meant to highlight the
importance of the nation, in sharp distinction to the state, when discussing
narratives. The adjective form of “national” in national narratives might
somehow lose the emphasis on the nation – that is, in distinction to the state.

45
All too often when people are talking about national narratives, it seems as
though they are really speaking about the state’s official narratives. The term
“narratives of the nation” is meant to be understood as a more literary reading of
these narratives as well as to emphasize the importance of the nation.

Sketch of This Work
The next chapter in this work, chapter one, will trace in the Israeli
newspaper Haaretz one of the Israeli nation’s most important narratives of the
nation. The Israeli “demography” narrative tells the unfolding story about how
well Jewish-Israelis are doing in maintaining a favorable demographic balance
between them and the Palestinians. To show how narratives of the nation are
“in-process,” I follow the evolution of the “demography” narrative closely as it
progresses over the course of a five-year period between January 2001, when I
first began my fieldwork, and December 2005. By tracing the “demography”
narrative, I show how actors attempt to affect an outcome for a core narrative of
the nation that means the continued existence of the Israeli nation-state.
The second chapter will examine a number of the different power
relations that affect how narratives of the nation that are constructed at the level
of the nation are transmitted to individuals within groups. An individual does
not simply learn about narratives of the nation and their narrative fragments in a
vacuum. Power relations can dictate whether people have access to narratives
of the nation. A narrative of the nation is conveyed in a particular social context

46
and the power relations in a given social context directly impact the kinds of
narrative information that is permitted to be conveyed. By examining the
specific social contexts of two ulpans in Jerusalem, I show how power impacts
narratives of the nation before they are performed and during performances.
The third chapter will consider how narratives of the nation are
performed in the ulpan classroom. In the ulpan, new narrative fragments and
national subnarratives are introduced into the classroom discourse. At times,
the introduction of these narrative elements generates ulpan performances.
During ulpan performances, new narratives fragments and national
subnarratives are introduced by the students. The resulting new narratives of
the nation being produced in the performance offer belief structures to the
students. By tracing what people say they believe about narratives of the nation
over the course of different performances, we can see how these belief
structures affected student’s beliefs tendencies.
The fourth chapter traces how personal social suffering experiences in
Palestine are transformed in the Israeli media to Israeli narratives of the nation.
Part of the purpose of tracing this process is to show that narratives of the nation
can be formed in very different ways at the level of the nation. As opposed to
the “demography” narrative which was constructed largely by various actors
among the Israeli elite, the Israeli “moral IDF” narrative of the nation is
constructed using the experiences of ordinary people in Palestine. The fact that
Israel can appropriate social suffering experiences in Palestine and transform

47
them to tell a story about the high level of morality of the IDF shows how
powerful the narrativizing process can be. What is similar about the “moral
IDF” narrative and the “demography” narrative is that they both need successful
ends (from an Israeli perspective) in order for the nation to continue narrating
itself into being.

48
Chapter 1

The Israeli “Demography” Narrative of the Nation

Over the duration of my fieldwork in Jerusalem, I could not help notice
how much more important the daily news was in Israel than in any of the other
places I had previously lived. Almost everywhere I went, at the beginning of
each hour people would turn up the volume on their televisions or radios and
listen to the news. When taking buses or sitting in cafes, it seemed that
everyone was reading a newspaper. When watching television, it seemed that
many of the programs were analyses of the news. Israelis say they are serious
about the news because they believe a lot is at stake every day. At any moment,
an Israeli soldier can die, a suicide bomb can explode or the IDF can capture or
kill a Palestinian terrorist. Israelis say that since life and death is part of every
day, life in Israel is more serious than in other regions of the world.
Each morning when I went to my ulpan class to study Hebrew, the
students listened to, watched or read the Israeli news with the teacher. Teaching
the news was a good way for new Jewish Immigrants to get accustomed to the
more formal Hebrew language used in the media and it also indoctrinated
students into this very important Israeli ritual of keeping up with current events.
I soon realized that the news exposed people to a wide range of Israeli
narratives of the nation. At first I thought these narratives of the nation were

49
only important for the sake of the Israeli state. Narratives of the nation such as
the “Palestinian-Israeli conflict” or “United States-Israeli relations” were
presented every day in the media and effectively conveyed an Israeli-centered
perspective on the story. Soon thereafter, however, it became clear that Israeli
narratives of the nation went far beyond the interests of the Israeli state. Nearly
every Sunday the news would discuss how many Israelis had died in road
accidents during the previous weekend. Many details of the accidents were
reported in these stories and a tally of how many Israelis had died over the
course of the year was an obligatory ending to each of these news stories.
While these road accidents did not seem to be crucial to the Israeli state – they
were more social stories than political stories – one still had the sense that they
were a fundamental part of the Israeli national personhood.
In many of the scholarly works on national narratives (Anagnost 1997;
Rofel 1999) there is an implication that narratives are introduced by the state
and then employed by citizens for purposes of the state. Since I was witnessing
the construction of narratives of the nation from the perspective of actors other
than the state, I felt compelled to investigate whether there were more holistic
conceptualizations of national narratives. Yadgar’s (2002) explanation of
national narratives offered a good jumping off point and captured a number of
features I believed could be useful:
In its simplest sense, the national narrative is the story that a
(national) collective tells about itself. It tells the individuals
constituting the nation (and anybody else who is interested)

50
who they are, what comprises their past (the national, common
one), the structure of their characteristics as a collective, and
where they are heading – that is, how they should act in the
political realm. This story is constructed from a set of
secondary narratives, myths, symbols, metaphors and images;
it is too complex a tale to be treated as one concise unit.
Unlike a specific ‘local’ myth, the national narrative answers
too broad a range of questions to be repeated at once. Thus, a
researcher endeavoring to trace a national narrative and
formulate a ‘complete’ presentation of its contents must end up
with a confused amalgam of references to the collective
character, its past, its raison d’etre, and its future. (Yadgar
2002:58)

The feature I find most useful about this understanding of national
narrative is its conception of who is telling the nation’s stories. A narrative of
the nation is told by the national collective, not exclusively by the state. As we
already know, the national collective is an “imagined community,” (Anderson
1984), not some homogenous entity whose actors have the same beliefs,
agendas and political goals. The national community, or collective, is a
conglomeration of many different actors and these people are, at certain times,
called upon to help shape a narrative of the nation. Still, there are particular
contexts in which a state can exert a great deal of control over the shaping of a
narrative of the nation. The process of constructing history, for example, is
heavily influenced by the state (Frietag 1999; Wertsch 2001). In most other
contexts, though, the media plays a far greater role in telling the nation’s
narratives than does the state.
There are several reasons for this. In part, this is because narratives of
the nation are never static. On a day when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

51

meets with United States President George Bush and the results of that meeting
are reported in the media, only a small element of the story is being introduced
into the much larger narrative about United States-Israeli relations. Even when
associates close to the prime minister or president try to shape how the day’s
story is told by the media, they can only be somewhat successful in their
attempts because their stories are often contested by various actors.
1
Further, to
the extent that these people are successful at getting their version of the story
publicized, it is still impossible to predict how their story will be contextualized
within the larger narrative of the nation over time.
Another reason why the state does not have full control in shaping
narratives of the nation is because the idealized “state,” an entity that always
acts in unison and in harmony, simply does not exist. When Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert decides to order an attack on Palestinians that
simultaneously kills militants and civilians, his close associates get the first
opportunity to explain and justify the action in the media and thus start to shape
how this event fits into the larger narrative of the nation about Israeli-
Palestinian relations. However, this initial version of the story is quickly
contested by other politicians who also represent the Israeli state. Some
politicians will claim the actions did not send a strong enough message to the
Palestinians while others will say the killing of innocent civilians is not

1
Still, the importance of being able to set the terms for a narrative’s debate should not be
overlooked and these actors do have that power.

52
justified. In other words, there are almost always going to be internal divisions
within the state about how a narrative of the nation should be shaped. Any hope
of constructing a unified narrative of the nation by the state, therefore, becomes
impossible.
Added to this is another layer of complexity. While individuals within
the state apparatus usually have the first opportunity to shape how the media
represent daily events, they are by no means the only actors in the narrativizing
process. The media provides a variety of non-state actors a venue in which to
participate in the shaping of a narrative of the nation and they play a crucial role
in their construction. These people – media pundits, opinion editorial writers,
opinion piece-makers hired by the media, public intellectuals and academics –
are all invited to participate in a debate that shapes narratives of the nations.
Sometimes, these people support state narratives while at other times they
provide alternative narratives that various state officials would not necessarily
authorize. Beyond these people, ordinary people can contribute to the debate
about a narrative of the nation. This happens when they submit opinions that
get published in the “letters to the editor” section of a newspaper. The media,
then, provides a political space where all of these state and non-state actors can
participate in constructing a narrative of the nation.
With all of this in mind, I am still a bit more optimistic than Yagdar
when it comes to tracing a narrative of the nation. What follows in this chapter
is an attempt to trace one version of an Israeli narrative of the nation, the

53

“demography” narrative, over the course of five years (2000-2005) as it is
presented in Israel’s most widely distributed liberal newspaper, Haaretz.
2

While I am well aware that there is no single Israeli “demography” narrative, I
suggest that Haaretz does create a version of the “demography” narrative. I
also readily concede that a person cannot know all the various elements of the
“demography” narrative that Haaretz provides. People forget details they might
have once known. They also do not always read the newspaper or they skip
over articles that have to do with demography. However, people can become
familiar with many of the important details that shape the narrative. As with all
national narratives, the “demography” narrative is constantly evolving and
extends over a long period of time.
3

The Israeli “demography” narrative is a complex story with a history
going back further than the establishment of the state of Israel. At its root,
Israel’s “demography” narrative is about the existential problem of whether
Israel can remain a democratic and Jewish state given its evolving population
dynamics with the Palestinians. First, I will explain my interest in this narrative
and its construction. I will then briefly sketch the history of the “demography”
narrative from 1947 until the end of the 1967 War between Israel and Egypt,

2
While I have read many of the Haaretz articles from the online Hebrew version, I take most of
these quotes directly from the online English version of Haaretz. There are minor differences in
how the stories are presented in the two different version of the newspaper.
3
Zureik’s article (2003) takes a very similar approach to this chapter in looking at how
demography was represented in the Israeli media between 2001 and 2002. The focus of his
work was not on the narrative aspect of demography but on how demography concerns were
being used to justify the transfer of Palestinian populations to Jordan.

54
Jordan and Syria. It was this historical moment that would contextualize the
“demography” narrative for Israelis until this day. I then present how the
“demography” narrative was articulated in the media after the collapse of the
Oslo peace process in 2000. Next, I explore the interdependent relationship
between the “demography” narrative and Israeli policymaking. I then identify
three sub-narratives – “natural growth,” “immigration/emigration” and
“unilateral separation” – within the larger “demography” narrative and explain
how these have evolved over time.
After this, I take a chronological look at how the “demography”
narrative and the “natural growth,” “immigration/emigration,” and “unilateral
separation” subnarratives have been debated in Haaretz between December
2003 and August 2005. There were two pivotal events that contributed to
reframing the demography debate during this time period and I will explore
each of them separately – the fourth Herzliya Conference in December 2003
and the release of the Zimmerman Report in December 2004.
After the 2003 Herzliya Conference, a debate arose about the larger
“demography” narrative regarding which Palestinians should be considered a
demographic threat to Israel. The first part of the debate asked whether it is
ethical for an Israeli official to discuss this idea publicly, knowing that
Palestinian citizens of Israel had access to the discussion through the media.
The second part of the debate considered a number of different solutions to the
“natural growth” subnarrative. This included discussions about how to

55
successfully limit Palestinian immigration into Israel, encourage Palestinian
emigration, and encourage Palestinian modernization as a way to lower
religious sentiment and Palestinian citizens of Israel’s childbirth rates. The
third part of the debate, concerning the “demography” narrative, asked whether
it is good for Israel to try to find solutions to demographic concerns knowing
that this will alienate the Palestinian citizens of Israel even more than they
already are. The fourth part of the debate, in the context of the “unilateral
separation” subnarrative, discussed the possibility of a Palestinian-Israeli
binational state. The Israeli fear of this possibility, it is argued, is the most
important reason why there is support for unilateral separation.
Following the presentation of the Zimmerman Report in December 2004
(Zimmerman and Seid 2005), the debate addressing the larger question of the
“demography” narrative resurged. The Zimmerman Report questioned whether
there really was a Palestinian demographic threat within Israel, the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip. The debate in the media quickly shifted away from this
question and asked whether previous Israeli policies aimed at curbing
Palestinian natural growth had been effective. This led to assertions that
demographic strategizing is racist. As the debate drew to a close, it provided
some new (and some old) solutions to the Israeli demographic problem.
The debate over the details of the “demography” narrative, and the
various details about the subnarratives within the “demography” narrative, work
together to create a complex Israeli narrative of the nation about Palestinian-

56
Israeli demography. By analyzing a great number of articles published in
Haaretz in-depth, I will show how one version of the “demography” narrative is
presented to the reading audience over an extended period of time. In order to
understand the full complexity of the “demography” narrative as well as the
debates about it in the media, I rely on a large amount of primary source
material from Haaretz newspaper articles. The particular wording of the article
authors reveals much about Israeli culture, and this information would be lost
were I to paraphrase or shorten the cited quotations.

Introduction
The first time I began to understand the importance of the “demography”
narrative in Israel was early in my fieldwork when the ulpan class I participated
in discussed an article that dealt with the “Herzliya Conference on the Balance
of National Strength and Security in Israel” that took place at the
Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya between December 19-21, 2000. This
conference was the first of a planned annual series of conferences at the
Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya whose goals were to produce ideas and
policies that would help Israel become stronger and more secure. Almost all of
Israel’s most important Jewish political and military leaders as well as some of
Israel’s intellectual leaders were assembled to consider, in large part, the

57

question of how to ensure a continued Jewish majority within Israel.
4
In March
2001, a 52-page conference report, called “Policy Directions,” was written by
the conference chairman Uzi Arad (2001) along with a number of the other
participants. Most relevant to my discussion here is that the report discussed a
series of potential policies that could be implemented in order to counteract
negative Jewish demographic trends. The article we read in the ulpan class
stated that:
…the birth rate of Muslims in Israel (4.6 children per woman)
is nearly double that of Israeli Jews (2.6 children per woman).
Today, approximately one of every five Israeli citizens is a
Muslim Arab. Within 20 years, the ratio will be one to three.
5

The article continued:
The [“Policy Directions”] document makes a number of
significant recommendations, among them institution of a
policy that encourages three or four children per family…
[and] to encourage Jews to settle in areas that are
demographically problematic…‘in order to prevent a
contiguous Arab majority that will geographically divide the
country.’
6

What struck me after reading this newspaper article, and many of the
other articles that deal with the “demography” narrative, is how Haaretz

4
All the major Israeli politicians were in attendance: Ehud Barak (Prime Minister of Israel);
Moshe Katsav (President of Israel); Binyamin Netanyahu (former Prime Minister); MK Shimon
Peres (former Prime Minister); MK Ariel Sharon (future Prime Minister); MK Yossef Lapid
(Head of Shinui political party). From the Israeli military and intelligence communities – Shaul
Mofaz (Chief of General Staff, Israeli Defense Forces), Amos Malka (Head of Intelligence
Division, Israeli Defense Forces) and Ephraim Halevy (Head of the Mossad) were in attendance.
A number of academics were also in attendance, most notably Arnon Sofer (Vice Chairman of
the National Security Center, Haifa University). An expert in demography, he was extremely
influential in the government and also quite cataclysmic with his population projections.
5
“A Very Moving Scenario,” Haaretz, March 23, 2001
6
Ibid.

58
regularly reports statistics that are collected by the Israeli Central Bureau of
Statistics. According to Foucault, one vital tactic of governmentality is the
“science of the state” where facts such as statistics and demography are
generated by the state in order to “identify problems specific to the population
(Foucault 1991:99).” Tactics of governmentality such as these are vital to the
state’s emergence and survival. In addition to Foucault, other scholars have
discussed the various ways in which statistics have been deployed by the state
(Asad 1994; Hacking 1990; Kalpagam 2000; Leibler and Breslau 2005; Porter
1986). In Israel, the state uses statistics in order to identify the problem of the
ever-worsening population dynamics between Palestinians and Jewish-Israelis.
The statistics then justify policies that will allow Jewish-Israelis to maintain a
population majority over the Palestinians – both in Israel and in East Jerusalem,
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. While statistics are clearly used as a tactic of
Israeli governmentality, their use goes well beyond this. In the “demography”
narrative presented in Haaretz, statistics are one of the main protagonists in the
story of whether Israel will be able to maintain a Jewish majority. Each time
updated statistical data is reported, people learn if the Palestinian “demographic
threat,” as represented by the statistics, is becoming greater.

59

We read another article about demography a few months later, in a
higher level ulpan course, which elicited a quick but contentious discussion.
7

The article discussed a meeting between Professor Arnon Sofer, an Israeli
demography expert and key contributor to the Herzliya Conference in 2000, and
the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in July 2001:
Professor Sofer told the committee Israel would stand on the
brink of an existential crisis if the final borders of the country
and a clear separation from the Palestinians were not
established. “I am very concerned. If this is the process, and
the problem is not dealt with, our country is finished in 17
years and there will be a collapse,” he said…At the outset
M[inister of the] K[nesset] Hashem Mahameed (United Arab
List) said he was not going to take part in “a meeting that
encourages racists, right wingers, and fascists, and which will
be a red light to bridging the two nations in the country for
renewed understanding and coexistence.” In a letter to the
committee chairman, MK Dan Meridor (Center), Mahameed
expressed disappointment and protested against raising the
issue. “It is clear such discussion is damaging to democratic
and humanistic principles because the discussions revolve
around “demographic dangers” or the “demographic genie”
which causes many racists in the country, who see every child
of the Arab minority in the country as “a ticking bomb,” to lose
sleep,” Mahameed wrote. Meridor rejected Mahameed’s
arguments and said “there is no basis to the charge of MK
Mahameed that holding this discussion constitutes a blow to
democracy.” Meridor said the committee also dealt with the
issue of future borders and the demographic issue is a
determining factor on the question of borders. He said Arab
Israelis are citizens of the country and deliberations on
demographics do not harm them.
8

7
For the purposes of this chapter, I am tracing out how the “demography” narrative evolved
over time. For a discussion about how narratives are performed in the ulpan classroom, see
chapter 4.
8
“Population Estimates Cause Knesset Storm over Demography,” Haaretz, July 17, 2001.
These quotes are taken from the English version of Haaretz.

60

It is clear that demography is of great importance in Israel and Palestine.
The very existence of the Jewish state is at stake for Israeli-Jews and the right to
live as a minority with equal rights is at stake for the Palestinian citizens of
Israel. As for the Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the
issue of demography is relevant to the kind of future Palestinian state that will
emerge. Most Palestinians hope that a separate Palestinian state from Israel can
exist. However, as Palestinians find this increasingly unlikely, some Palestinian
academics and politicians have begun to consider the merits of allowing the
West Bank and Gaza Strip to merge with Israel, thus forming a binational state
with Israel (in this scenario there would be an equal amount of Palestinians and
Jews).

A Brief History of the “Demography” Narrative in Israel
[W]e shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab] population across
the border by procuring employment for it in the transit
countries, while denying it any employment in our
country…The removal of the poor must be carried out
discreetly and circumspectly.
9
Theodore Herzl June 12, 1895

Even before the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the question
about how many Jews and Palestinians lived in historic Palestine was a serious
concern for the Jewish elite. Israel’s soon to be first Prime Minister, David
Ben-Gurion, talked about this before the state of Israel had been established.

9
This is a quote from the diary of Theodore Herzl – the founder of political Zionism taken from
The Guardian. Benny Morris, “A new exodus for the Middle East?” The Guardian, October 3,
2002.

61

According to Morris (1987), while addressing the Central Committee of the
Histadrut on December 30, 1947 and discussing the United Nations partition
plan for Palestine
10
four days after the plan had been approved, Ben-Gurion:
…starkly outlined the emergent Jewish State’s main problem –
its prospective population of 520,000 Jews and 350,000 Arabs.
Including Jerusalem, the state would have a population of
about one million, 40% of which would be non-Jews. “This
fact must be viewed in all its clarity and sharpness. With such a
[population] composition, there cannot even be complete
certainty that the government will be held by a Jewish majority
… There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it
has a Jewish majority of only 60%.” (Morris 1987:28)

The original concern about demography might be seen as pragmatic. If
the Jews did not have an overwhelming demographic majority over the
Palestinians, there could be no assurances that they would be able to maintain
control of the future government or even maintain a Jewish state. Despite this
concern, the Jewish leadership decided to officially accept the United Nation’s
partition plan and put off demographic concerns to the future. The Arab states
surrounding Israel, who were strongly opposed to the creation of an Israeli state,
resolutely rejected the partition plan.
Immediately after the Jewish leadership formally declared the
establishment of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, the 1948 Arab-Israeli war
began between Israel and Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. The war was
won by Israel and, in addition to Palestinian land Israel had captured prior to the

10
This was formally known as United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (see appendix
B for the full text of this resolution). The Resolution was aimed at dividing historic Palestine
into two countries – one for “The Arab State” and the other for “The Jewish State.”

62

war, Israel succeeded in capturing even more territory than originally designated
by the United Nations partition plan. After the hostilities ended, an agreement
with all the countries was reached and it gave control of the West Bank
(including East Jerusalem) to the Jordanians and the Gaza Strip to the
Egyptians.
11
As a result, the new demographic reality was far more favorable
for Israel than it would have been had Israel also retained control of East
Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. According to the Israeli Central
Bureau of Statistics, the result was a very comfortable demographic population
figure of 1,013,900 Jews to 159,100 Palestinians.
12

The “demography” narrative became far more complicated after Israel
took control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip at the end of the 1967 war
between Israel and Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Taking control of the Palestinian
population had potentially devastating effects on the Jewish-Palestinian
population balance. In Israel proper during 1967, the ratio between Israeli-Jews
and Palestinians was 2,383,600:324,443. The addition of 598,637 Palestinians
living in the West Bank, 356,621 Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip and
65,857 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem (Bachi 1974) would greatly shift
the demographic balance away from the Jewish-Israelis.
13
With these numbers,
Israel had to carefully choose which parts of the captured lands it would annex

11
This was the result of the 1949 Armistice Agreement between Israel and Egypt, Jordan,
Lebanon and Syria.
12
Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. “Statistical Abstract of Israel, No. 55,” 2004
13
The new demographic balance did not include those Syrians who became part of Israel when
the Syrian Golan Heights were annexed by Israel on December 14, 1981.

63

since the Palestinians living in these areas would have to be permanently
counted as part of Israel’s population. The end result was that Israel decided to
annex only certain parts of East Jerusalem because of its central historical role
in the biblical Jewish state. The Palestinians living in East Jerusalem were
immediately given “permanent resident” status and, soon thereafter, were
offered Israeli citizenship. Although most of the Palestinians rejected the Israeli
citizenship offer because they would be viewed as betrayers of the Palestinian
cause (Davis 1997:52), they have still been counted in official Israeli census
figures. The Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were
treated very differently than those living in East Jerusalem. According to
Kimmerling (2003), the Israeli government did not want these Palestinians to
get Israeli citizenship because this would endanger the demographic balance.
14

Therefore, their lands were not annexed and, as a result, the Palestinians living
there are considered by the United Nations to be under Israeli occupation.
15

These people are not counted as part of Israel’s population in the Israeli census.

14
Palestinians in the West Bank carried Jordanian passports between 1967 and 1988 and during
this time were still considered Jordanian citizens. After 1988, Palestinians from the West Bank
could still use their Jordanian passports for traveling but were no longer considered citizens of
Jordan. Over the next six years, Palestinians were a stateless people. In 1994, the Palestinian
National Authority, created during the Oslo peace process, took responsibility for issuing
identity cards and passports to Palestinians.
15
Even though the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are considered occupied territories, there is a
dispute about how much of the land should be legally considered occupied by Israel. United
Nations Security Council Resolution 242 on November 22, 1967 called for the “withdrawal of
Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.” The French version of this
resolution, based on the original English version, includes the definite article “the” between the
words “from” and “territories.” The English version, which purposefully left the wording
ambiguous, allows a possible reading of this law as “some territories” as opposed to “the
territories.” (see Appendix C for English and French versions)

64
Demography as Articulated in the Jewish-Israeli Media
The decisions made after the 1967 war have left Israel with two different
kinds of demographic concerns. The first is over the population ratio between
Jewish-Israelis and Palestinian citizens of Israel in Israel proper and the second
is over the population ratio of Palestinians and Jews in Israel, the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip combined. Since 1967, the demographic ratio within Israel
has remained relatively steady with a very large Jewish majority. Still, many
Israeli demography experts are predicting that this ratio will soon begin to
change in favor of the Palestinian citizens of Israel. As for all the Palestinians
and Israeli-Jews living in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the ratio has
slipped dramatically in favor of the Palestinians since 1967. These two
demographic concerns are what have regularly been referred to in popular
Israeli discourse as the Palestinian “demographic threat,” “demographic genie”
or “demographic danger.”
While Israel’s two demographic concerns are both articulated in the
Israeli media, population figures of Jewish-Israelis and Palestinian citizens of
Israel within Israel proper are more regularly reported than population figures in
Palestine/Israel combined. In large part this is because the Israeli government
only collects data about population figures within Israel proper – it does not
consider Palestinians outside of Israel (the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and
Palestinian refugees) their legal responsibility and therefore does not collect
data there. The way demographic information reaches the Israeli public is when

65

statistical data produced by the Israeli state’s Central Bureau of Statistics is
reported by the Israeli media.
Since being exposed to Israeli news articles related to demography in the
ulpan class, I have tracked as many articles as I could from the daily Haaretz
newspaper. The sheer quantity of articles related to demography over a
relatively short period of time is striking. The following excerpts demonstrate
the varying ways in which population figures within Israel proper have appeared
in Haaretz:
Jews and immigrants arriving under the Law of Return
constituted 81.3% of the population, growing to 5.24 million
from 4.95 million. Jews registered by the Interior Ministry
were 77.8% of the total population…The Arab population
reached 1,215,000, 18.7% of the total. This includes Muslims
(15.2% of the total population), Druse (1.6%), and Christians
(2.15%), and has remained constant for the past few years.
16

The rate of growth of the Jewish population in Israel continued
to drop in 2001, largely due to dwindling immigration…The
number of people living in Israel at the end of 2001 was 6.592
million, 77.2 percent of them Jews…Israel’s Arabs made up 19
percent of the population, the same figure as when the state
was created in 1948.
17

Israel’s population grew by 2 percent in the past 12 months to
6.7 million…The proportion of Jewish residents of the state -
81 percent - has remained the same in the past 55 years. About
5.4 million Jews now live in Israel…Of the 1.3 million non-
Jewish Israelis, 82 percent are Muslim, nine percent are
Christian and nine percent are Druze.
18

16
Tal Muscal, “On eve of 5762, population reaches 6,458,000,” Haaretz, September 17, 2001.
17
Moti Bassok, “6.592 Million People in Israel at End of 2001, 77.2% Jews,” Haaretz, March 9,
2002.
18
Moti Bassok, “Population Rises to 6.7 Million,” Haaretz, May 5, 2003.

66

At the end of 2002, Jews were 76.8 percent of the population
compared to 77.2 percent the previous year…On the other
hand, during the years of Israeli statehood, the percentage of
the Arab population has remained constant. In 2002 Arabs
were 19 percent of the population, roughly the
same percentage as when the state was founded.
19

There were 6,716,000 Israelis - 5,425,000 Jews, or 81 percent
of the population and 1,291,000 Arabs, making up 19 percent –
on the eve of the new year.
20

Israel’s total Muslim population stands at 1.7 million, 16
percent of the overall population, at the beginning of
2004…According to data released by the CBS on the occasion
of the Eid al-Adha festival, the Arab sector’s growth rate over
the past number of years stands at 3.4 percent. This figure is
2.4 times larger than the Jewish sector’s growth rate, which
stands at 1.4 percent.
21

On the eve of Independence Day, Israel’s population stands at
6,780,000, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. Of
these, about 81 percent are Jewish - 5,180,000 are registered as
Jews and 290,000 are immigrants who are not registered as
Jews with the Interior Ministry - and 19 percent of the
population is Arab.
22

Israel’s population on the eve of Rosh Hashanah 5765 stands at
6.8 million people - 5.5 million Jews, comprising 81 percent of
the total, and 1.3 million Arabs.
23

Israel’s population stands at 6,862,000, according to the
Central Bureau of Statistics…The CBS reported that 76 percent
of the population, or 5,235,000 people, are Jewish; 20 percent,

19
Amir Teig, “Population Growth Slips Below 2% in 2002 as Jewish Majority Grows Grayer,”
Haaretz, September 24, 2003.
20
Moti Bassok, “Israel's Population at 6,716,000 on Eve of New Year,” Haaretz, September 27,
2003.
21
Moti Bassok, “Census: One quarter of Israel's children are Muslims,” Haaretz, February 2,
2004.
22
ITIM [News Agency], “Israel's population on Independence Day is 6.8 Million,” Haaretz,
April 26, 2004.
23
Moti Bassok, “On Eve of Rosh Hashanah, Population Stands at 6.8 Million,” Haaretz,
September 14, 2004.

67

or 1,337,000 people, are Arabs; and 4 percent, or 290,000
people, belong to other ethnic groups.
24

In addition to these general population figures, more specific figures are
used to show how Jewish-Israelis are progressing in the demographic
competition between Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Natural growth
figures – the rates of birth and death of Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian families –
are also reported regularly:
There were 3.8 people in the average family in 2002 - an
average of 3.6 in the Jewish population and 5 in the Arab
population. More than one-third of Arab families had six or
more people. Families that included children had an average of
2.3 children in 2002 - an average of 2.2 in Jewish families and
3.1 in Arab families. In 36 percent of Arab families, there were
four or more children under 17, three times as many as in
Jewish families.
25

In the past year 144,000 babies were born in Israel and 21,000
people immigrated to the country.
26

Some 145,000 babies were born in Israel in 2003, with 68
percent of the mothers being Jewish, 25 percent Muslim, 2
percent Christian, 2 percent Druze and 3 percent women whose
religion was not defined by the Interior Ministry.
27

A 6-percent increase in infant mortality was registered this year
among Israeli Arabs, compared to a 13 percent drop among
Jews, according to an annual Ministry of Health report
published Thursday. In 2004, 143,956 babies were born in
Israel. Of them, 681 died - 331 Jews and 350 Arabs.
According to the report, the overall infant mortality rate in
2004 was 4.73 per 1,000 live births. There were marked
disparities between Jews and Arabs: the rate among Arabs was

24
Moti Bassok “Israel's Population Crosses 6.8m Mark,” Haaretz, December 31, 2004.
25
Moti Bassok, “Israel Has 1.5 Million Families, Average Size 3.8 People,” Haaretz, February
23, 2004.
26
ITIM, “Israel’s population on Independence Day is 6.8 Million,” Haaretz, April 26, 2004.
27
Moti Bassok, “145,000 Babies Born Here in 2003,” Haaretz, August 31, 2004.

68

2.8 times higher than among Jews. Deaths among Jews were
3.17 per 1000 live births, while among Arabs the rate was 8.87
per 1,000.
28

Like all other demographic reports produced by states, people get broken
down into every conceivable racial, ethnic and religious category. In Israel,
these categories include Israelis, Arabs, Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druse, and
non-Jewish Israelis. This ‘data’ then becomes further manipulated when facts,
figures, numbers, statistics and percentages are produced about these various
categorized peoples. What is unique about Israel is the regularity in which this
demographic information is presented in the Israeli media. The details of these
articles serve as the latest narrative thread that contributes to the evolving Israeli
narrative of the nation about Jewish-Palestinian demography. Each article tells
a small part in the larger story of how Israel is currently doing in maintaining its
Jewish majority.
Some articles contribute to the fear that the Israeli-Jews are losing, or
will soon no longer have, a clear majority within Israel. When the percentage of
Israeli-Jews declines in any given time period, the newspaper headline is quick
to articulate a sense of pessimism. For example, “Population Growth Slips
Below 2% in 2002 as Jewish Majority Grows Grayer.”
29
A different way of
articulating the fear of losing the majority within Israel is by projecting future

28
Ran Reznick, “Infant Mortality Gap Widens Between Jews and Arabs,” Haaretz, August 26,
2005.
29
Amir Teig, “Population Growth Slips Below 2% in 2002 as Jewish Majority Grows Grayer,”
Haaretz, September 24, 2003.

69

population figures. Professor Sofer, the Israeli demography expert mentioned
earlier, presented his population projections for 2020 in an Haaretz article
entitled “Population Estimates Cause Knesset Storm over Demography.”
Another Haaretz article entitled “Jewish Majority Seen Dropping by Some 10%
by 2025”
30
presents some extremely pessimistic projections: “Inside the Green
Line,
31
he [Arnon Sofer] forecasts a Jewish population of 6.4 million (68
percent of the total), and an Arab and non-Jewish population of three million.”
32

Seventy percent, or 6.5 million, of Israel’s residents in 2025
will be Jewish. The average annual population growth rate in
2001-2025 will be 1.5 percent, compared to 1.8 percent in
2001-2005, and 2.6 percent in 1995-2000. According to the
forecast, the Jewish population will grow in 2001-2025 by 1.1
percent annually, or 60,000 people.
The Arab population is expected to reach 2.3 million, or 25
percent, of Israel’s population in 2025, compared to 19 percent,
or 1.2 million, today. The Arab population will increase at a
rate of 45,000 per year, a growth rate of 2.7 percent.
33

There have also been occasional moments when there are positive
demographic figures. The following article entitled “Arab Birthrate Drops for
First Time in Years” discusses optimistic news for Israel:
The Israeli birthrate dropped last year for the first time in years,
from 144,936 births in 2003 to 143,538 in 2004, according to
figures Haaretz has obtained. The average growth of the birth
rate until 2004 was 2.5 percent a year.

30
“Jewish Majority Seen Dropping by Some 10% by 2025,”Haaretz, June 4, 2005.
31
The Green Line refers to the 1949 Armistice Line that separated Israel from Syria, Jordan,
Egypt, and after 1967 the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This line is what most parties in the
international community consider to be the basis for the eventual border between Israel and the
future Palestinian state. Inside the Green Line, then, indicates inside Israel proper – not
including the West Bank and Gaza.
32
“Population Estimates Cause Knesset Storm over Demography,” Haaretz, July 17, 2001.
33
“Jewish Majority Seen Dropping by Some 10% by 2025,” Haaretz, June 4, 2005.

70

The drop results chiefly from a decline in the number of births
in the Arab sector, as opposed to a trend of many years of
growth. The birthrate among Arabs declined by 3.4 percent,
between 2003 and 2004, from 41,337 to 39,938 births…In the
Jewish sector, on the other hand, there was no change in the
number of births in 2004, compared to 2003. Both years
registered 103,600 births.
34

And here is some more good news: People live longer in Israel.
The longevity of Israeli males is one of the highest in the
world. What an ironic twist of demography: Although they live
in one of the most dangerous places on earth, Israelis have a
very high life expectancy. Local women have it even better
than men in this category, with 81 years as opposed to 77 for
men
35

While Haaretz more regularly reports the population figures in Israel
proper, the overall population of Israel/Palestine is also of great concern. This
is because there is always the underlying fear that the Western world (e.g. the
United Nations or, worse, the United States) will apply political pressure to
include the uncounted Palestinian people as part of the Israeli population. Since
the ratio between the Jews and Palestinians living in Palestine/Israel is roughly
close to even, this would delegitimize the Jewish-Israeli democracy and perhaps
lead to the collapse of the Israeli state. All of the articles below address this key
issue. The first news article below projects a clear Palestinian majority by the
year 2020 using more demographic forecasts by Professor Sofer. The next
article shows a less pessimistic projection but one that still clearly shows a clear

34
Nehemia Straller and Ruth Sinai, “Arab Birthrate Drops for First Time in Years” Haaretz,
January 24, 2005.
35
Daniel Ben Simon, “The Majority Rules – But Which Majority?” Haaretz, Septermber 3,
2004.

71

Palestinian majority by 2021. The final article discusses how a slight
Palestinian majority has already become a reality:
The Jewish population living west of the Jordan river
36
will
constitute a minority by 2020, according to calculations by
Professor Arnon Sofer of Haifa University and presented
yesterday to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense
Committee.
Sofer said in 19 years Arabs will be 58 percent of this
population and Jews 42 percent. He said by 2020 there will be
15.2 million people living between the Jordan river and the
Mediterranean… by 2020 there will be 5.8 million Palestinians
living in the West Bank and Gaza - 3.3 and 2.5 million
respectively.”
37

According to the Palestinian Statistics Bureau, Gaza’s
population numbered 1.3 million in 2002. According to the
numbers in Moshe Sikron’s new book: “Demography Trends
and Characteristics in Israel’s Population,” the number of
Gazans will reach 2.69 million by 2021. Together with the
population of the West Bank in that year - 3.58 million,
according to Sikron - and the 1.97 million Israeli Arabs
(including East Jerusalem) he’s forecasting for 2021, that’s
7.65 million. According to Sikron’s projections, the Jews will
number 6.69 million in 2020. In other words, Arabs will be
53.4 percent of the population of 14.35 million between the sea
and the river.
38

For the first time since the establishment of Israel, the
proportion of Jews living in territories under the country’s
control has dropped below 50 percent, standing slightly more
than 49 percent…Some 5.26 million Jews and 1.35 million

36
The phrase “west of the Jordan River” implies the land which includes both Palestine and
Israel. Another commonly used phrase, “between the sea and the river,” refers to
Israel/Palestine geographic borders of the Mediterranean Sea on the West and the Jordan River
on the East.
37
“Population Estimates Cause Knesset Storm over Demography,” Haaretz July 17, 2001.
38
Akiva Eldar, “It's Still the Same Old Story, A Tale of Missed Opportunity,” Haaretz, April
21, 2004.

72

Arabs, live in Israel today... Some 3.8 million Palestinians,
including 1.4 million in the Gaza Strip, live in the territories.
39

All of these articles about population figures and projections play a
crucial narrative role. Like any compelling narrative, the “demography”
narrative maintains the Israeli interest because of its indeterminate future.
There is something crucially important at stake in this narrative and not
knowing the end of the story provides Israelis with a sense of suspense. In
addition to suspense, narratives are successful when readers are
“subjunctivizing reality” (Bruner 1986:26) – when people get inspired by the
“indeterminacy of reality” (Good 1994:53) in a narrative to project a number of
possible endings. In the case of the Israeli “demography” narrative, these
numbers are used by the media to portray a variety of different endings.

The “Demography” Narrative and Israeli Policymaking
Reports that contain negative demographic trends for Israel’s majority
have had broad ramifications for the Israeli state’s policymaking. In December
2000, the “Policy Directions” report from The Balance of National Strength and
Security in Israel Conference in Herzliya helped shape a number of the most
important policy decisions in the ensuing years. Before making any specific
recommendations, though, the report stated the Israeli state’s current threshold
for the Jewish to Palestinian demographic ratio:

39
Amiram Barkat, “For First Time, Jews No Longer a Majority in Pre-Pullout Israel,” Haaretz,
November 8, 2005.

73
[For] those who support the preservation of Israel’s character
as it was when it was founded – a Jewish state for the Jewish
nation – and they still constitute a majority among the Jewish
population in Israel, are forced to proffer a counterstrategy that
will provide an effective response to the aforementioned
[demographic] trends, while recognizing that in a democratic
country, the Jewish character of Israel can only be preserved if
the Jewish population does not dip below approximately three-
quarters of the total population… (my italics)
The following are possible components of a [demographic]
containment option:
· A birthrate and development policy
· An accelerated policy of encouraging and absorbing
immigration
· A policy of demarcating the future borders of the country that
will take into consideration the preservation of the Jewish
majority
· A position on the issue of [Palestinian] refugees enabling,
maximally, their return to Palestinian Authority territories
[instead of Israel]
· Adopting a policy of distribution of the Jewish population in
Israel in a manner that will guarantee a Jewish majority in the
various regions of the country… (JPS 2001:53-4)

This document outlines a number of different strategies that can be
implemented in hopes of shifting Israel’s demography back in a direction that
ensures a long-term Jewish-Israeli majority. The development of a number of
these strategies has spawned new Israeli narratives of the nation. The following
three sections in this chapter discuss how the first three components proposed in
the “Policy Directions” report at the Herzliya Conference have altered the
“demography” narrative. These components include the advancement of “a
birthrate and development policy,” “an accelerated policy of encouraging and
absorbing immigration,” and “a policy of demarcating the future borders of the
country that will take into consideration the preservation of the Jewish

74
majority.” I will refer to these from here on forward as the “natural growth,”
“immigration/emigration” and “unilateral separation” subnarratives.

The “Natural Growth” Narrative
One of the key factors in population growth is the rate of reproduction in
a given community. Since the Palestinian population in Israel has had a
significantly higher level of births than Jewish-Israelis, the Israeli state has been
forced to produce strategies that might curb the Palestinian rate of reproduction.
One strategy employed in the 1990s by the Israeli state was to deploy discourses
of modernization, in the form of family planning, as a way to convince
Palestinian citizens of Israel that high rates of reproduction are “backward.”
The effect of this policy within communities of Palestinian citizens of Israel in
the Galilee has been that Palestinian “women’s bodies are deeply inscribed as
reproducers of the nation, whether by bearing few or many children (Kanaaneh
2002:22).” Some Palestinian families who were aware of the politics of
demography refused Israel’s modernization discourse and continued to have
more children than Israeli families. Other Palestinian families who subscribed
to the modernization discourse have chosen to have fewer children. According
to official Israeli statistics, the strategy has been somewhat effective in lowering
the rate of Palestinian birthrates:
In northern Israel [where the Galilee is located] the average
birth rate for Muslim women is 3.9; in the Jerusalem district -
4.3; in the central region - 4.9; and in the south (whose

75

Muslims are mostly Bedouin) the figure leaps to an average of
nine births per woman - the highest in the world (higher than in
the Gaza Strip).
40

Still, the policy did not prove to be successful enough since the overall
Palestinian birthrate in Israel continued to be significantly higher than the
Israeli-Jewish birthrate. The continuing demographic problem was one of the
reasons that led people in different sectors of the Israeli elite to convene the
Herzliya Conference in 2000. The result of the conference was the emergence
of an Israeli policy that would further discourage high birth rates within the
Palestinian population of Israel:
41

As for the birthrate and family planning policy in Israel proper:
It is feasible to move toward the implementation of a family
planning policy that will encourage three to four children per
family, while canceling subsidy payments to families with
many children.
42
Of course, the outlawing of polygamy should
be enforced…[Controlling the birthrate of the Palestinian

40
Yair Sheleg, “The Demographics Point to a Binational State,” Haaretz, May 27, 2004.
41
Though it should not be understated the extent to which this new policy impacted some of the
ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities that also have very high birth-rates. Before the birthrate
argument was applied to the Palestinians, secular Jews had demographic concerns about the
ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities.
42
Israel’s National Insurance Institute is responsible for a wide range of social services
including dispensing child allowances. Child allowances were first introduced in 1959 and
benefits were expanded in 1965. “Under the emergency economic-stabilization plan introduced
on July 1, 1985, child allowances were eliminated for the first child of families with up to three
children, except for low-income families, who were compensated for the cancellation of the
allowance. In August 1990, payment for the second child in three-child families was eliminated,
except again for low-income families. In March 1993, all child allowances were restored,
irrespective of income, making the allowance system universal once again (IMFA 1998).” As
of January 1999, the child allowance benefit was New Israeli Shekels (NIS) 169 for one child,
NIS 338 for two, NIS 676 for three, NIS 1,359 for four, NIS 1,933 for five, and NIS 2,566 for
six. The new rate of allowance after the policy change was NIS 120 for one child, NIS 240 for
two, NIS 396 for three, NIS 756 for four, NIS 1,157 for five, and NIS 1,558 for six. The new
allowances dramatically decrease the percentage of benefit for the third child. Before January
1999, there was a hundred percent increase in benefit for the third child. The new policy
reduced the benefit to just sixty-five percent. It was clear that the state maximized the benefit
for Jewish citizens since they average just above two children per family.

76

population] “would be in line with the explicit goal of
contributing to Palestinian prosperity and easing the economic-
political pressure stemming from high birthrates.” (JPS
2001:53-4)

At the end of this quote, we see a different form of modernization
discourse being used by the Israeli state against the Palestinian citizens of Israel.
According to this newly deployed logic, reducing subsidies for children will
ensure Palestinian economic prosperity.
43
About two years after the Herzliya
Conference, a policy was implemented that made severe cuts in child
allowances. Updated statistical data seemed to suggest that the policy was
successful because birthrate trends amongst Palestinian citizens of Israel were
slowly reversing:
The data is impressive. Over the past five years, the number of
births per thousand in Israel’s Muslim community has dropped
13 percent, from 38 to 33. During the same period, the number
of births per thousand in Israel’s majority Jewish community
has risen. The merger of these two facts is, at least on the
surface, of great interest. The gap between the number of births
per thousand in Israel’s Muslim community and in the Jewish
community has narrowed from 110 to 70 percent. Do these
figures mark the end of Israel’s “demographic headache”?
Bottom-line answer: No.
The births-per-thousand figure, all demographers concur, is of
very limited importance. It cannot be used to gauge fertility.
Nonetheless, other figures bearing greater statistical
importance point to the beginning of a change.
…The figure to which demographers attach the greatest
significance is the decline in the average number of children
per female. According to Devorit Angel, the Central Bureau of

43
This is not the first time modernization has been used to promote the interests of Israel.
Israeli social scientists have recently reexamined the deployment of modernization theory in
studies during the 1950s on Jews who immigrated to Israel from Arab countries. For a
discussion of this debate, see Shokeid’s article “On the Sins We Did Not Commit in the
Research of Oriental Jews” (Shokeid 2001) and Deshen (1997).

77

Statistics’ official responsible for the analysis of childbirth
trends, after 15 years during which the fertility rate in Israel’s
Muslim population remained stable at 4.7 children per female,
a slight decline has emerged in recent years and the figure in
2003 was 4.5.
44

The following statistics have encouraged guarded optimism in the Israeli
government that the policies are working:
According to the Finance Ministry, the drop in birthrate is a
clear result of the cutbacks in child support allocations over the
past two years, although the cutbacks were driven by
economic, not demographic reasons…
45

A senior Finance Ministry official said Israel is subject to an
internal demographic threat, and that now “we are reversing the
graph, to defend the Jewish majority in the country.”
46

Senior treasury officials, some say the finance minister himself
[Netanyahu], were anonymously proud this week that the cut in
child allowances not only saved a lot of money, but also, they
said, caused a 3.4 percent decline in the birthrate among Israeli
Arab citizens.
47

What this example has shown is that Israeli state policies and the Israeli
“demography” narrative have had a powerful influence on one another. The
unfavorable birthrate trends reported in the 1990s served as an infusion of
information into the evolving “demography” narrative. The updated
“demography” narrative created a greater sense of urgency within the state to
more aggressively address the problem of negative demographic trends. Soon,
new state policies were implemented to try and reverse the trends. After two

44
Tamara Traubman, “Education as Contraception,” Haaretz, Septermber 15, 2004.
45
In actuality, as will be shown shortly in the Herzliya Conference report, the cutbacks were
primarily for demographic reasons.
46
Nehemia Straller and Ruth Sinai, “Arab Birthrate Drops for First Time in Years,” Haaretz,
January 24, 2005.
47
Ruth Sinai, “Arab Kids Aren’t A Joy,” Haaretz, January 27, 2005.

78

years, new statistical data was released and the “demography” narrative was
once again transformed. This generated a newfound Israeli optimism about
reversing birthrate trends and this was expressed in the newspaper articles.
Still, while birthrate trends might be improving for Jewish-Israelis they are not
improving enough to permanently reverse the trends. This will likely lead to a
time where new statistical data is released that shows Palestinian citizens of
Israel birthrate trends not changing rapidly enough. When this happens, new
Israeli policies about curbing Palestinian birthrates and increasing Jewish-Israeli
birthrates are likely to be produced and implemented.

The “Immigration/Emigration” Narrative
Another important component of the “demography” narrative is the
immigration and emigration rates of Israelis and Palestinians. ‘Olim,’
48
or
Jewish immigrants
49
have always been thought of as a vital resource that has
helped offset other Palestinian demographic advantages such as rate of births.
In keeping track of these trends, the yearly immigration and emigration numbers
are also released by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics via the Israeli media.

48
Oleh, meaning to rise up (in this sense, meaning to be raised in a spiritual sense), refers to a
new Jewish immigrant to Israel. Olim is the plural form of the singular oleh – immigrants.
49
Israel’s immigration policy stems from the 1950 Law of Return 5710-1950 which states
“Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh.” In the 1970 Law of Return
amendment (Amendment No. 2) 5730-1970, addition 4A, states “The rights of a Jew under this
Law and the rights of an oleh under the Nationality Law… are also vested in a child and a
grandchild of a Jew, the spouse of a Jew, the spouse of a child of a Jew and the spouse of a
grandchild of a Jew.” Also, addition 4B states a Jew is defined as “a person who was born of a
Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another
religion.”

79

As part of the overall Israeli demographic issue, the 2000 Herzliya Conference
“Policy Directions” report strategizes how to promote Jewish immigration:
Regarding immigration: The general demographic strategy and,
in part, the demand for workers in the advanced technology
sector both warrant the intensification of promoting
immigration from the Diaspora to Israel. It is important to
remember that Diaspora Jewry has always constituted a
traditional human reserve in preventing the creation of a
Palestinian majority in Israel. (JPS 2001:54)

This report clearly had an influence on the incoming Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon. Almost immediately after assuming the premiership in
2001, he set a national goal of trying to attract one million new Jewish
immigrants to Israel over the upcoming ten years.
50
Given this renewed
emphasis on Jewish immigration, the media began to regularly publish
immigration numbers: “In the past year…21,000 people immigrated to the
country. Of the new immigrants, 11,000 came from the former Soviet Union,
2,600 from Ethiopia, 1,800 from France, 1,600 from the United States and 1,200
from Argentina.”
51
Also, “[s]ince the last Independence Day…about 26,000
new immigrants arrived here. About 9,500 newcomers came from Russia and
former Soviet states, while 4,400 arrived from Ethiopia.”
52

Unfortunately for those interested in maintaining a Jewish-Israeli
demographic majority, the reserves of Jewish “resources” in the diaspora are
slowly becoming a scarcer commodity. The subtext of these numbers is that the

50
Raffi Berg, “Israel’s Modern Immigrants,” BBC News, May 18, 2002.
51
ITIM, “Israel's Population on Independence Day is 6.8 Million,” Haaretz, April 26, 2004.
52
“Israel’s Population Hits 6.9 Million,” Haaretz, October 5, 2005.

80

one demographic advantage Jewish-Israelis have had in the past will slowly
diminish in the upcoming decades:
In immigration, the Jews have a clear advantage, but
DellaPergola says this advantage is gradually diminishing.
According to his forecasts, the first decade of the 21st century
will bring to Israel a net immigration increase (the number of
arriving immigrants minus the number of departing ones) of
only 105,000 people. In the second decade the number will
drop further, to 49,000, and in the third decade it will fall to
28,000. According to this prediction, even where immigration
is concerned, Jews are not certain to maintain their edge.
53

Also, “[b]arring any earth-shattering developments in Western nations,
immigration to the Jewish state might hit the point, for the first time in Zionist
history, where all its potential sources in the Diaspora have been exhausted.”
54

The numbers published by the media are not simply immigration totals.
The numbers are broken down into national categories. This is because certain
countries are thought of as more likely to yield new immigrants than others:
Potential sources for immigration to Israel are slowly
dwindling. Most Diaspora Jews (more than 5 million) continue
to live in the United States, but American Jews are not
considered natural candidates for immigration here. The same
can be said about British Jewry (approximately 300,000) and
Canadian Jewry (approximately 350,000).
55

Another important consideration for demography is what kinds of people
are immigrating to Israel. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, over 800,000
‘Jews’ immigrated to Israel. Their Jewish identity was problematic since a

53
Yair Sheleg, “The Demographics Point to a Binational State,” Haaretz, May 27, 2004.
54
Daniel Ben Simon, “The Majority Rules – But Which Majority?” Haaretz, September 3,
2004.
55
Daniel Ben Simon, “The Majority Rules – But Which Majority?” Haaretz, September 3,
2004.

81

significant portion of these people were not considered Jewish according to
Jewish law. This presents the difficult issue of understanding how these non-
Jewish immigrants are going to impact the demographic ratio:
At the end of 1999, upon the conclusion of a decade of the
great wave of immigration from the countries of the former
Soviet Union, the figures of the Liaison Bureau - the body
responsible for determining the right to immigrate from the
CIS - show that about one-quarter of the 820,000 immigrants
who came to Israel are not Jews. And there was another figure:
in recent years the rate of non-Jews among the immigrants has
been growing. In 1999, 53 percent of the immigrants were not
Jewish according to halacha (Jewish law) - that is, children of
non-Jewish mothers; 38 percent of the 1999 immigrants do not
even have a Jewish father.
56

In addition to the number of people who immigrate into the country,
another demographic concern is how many Israeli-Jews become “yordim,”
57
or
people who emigrate out of Israel. While a substantial number of Jewish-
Israelis have already emigrated, the more disturbing sign is how many young
people are interested in emigrating: “[m]ore than 650,000 Israelis - equal to
about a tenth of the country’s population - live abroad, according to a Foreign
Ministry study.”
58
Also:
…[s]ome 35 percent of Jewish youths who identify themselves
as secular Israelis say they don’t want to live in Israel… They
are sobering statistics, especially when considered together
with the fact that the birth rate among Jews is steadily and
sharply falling and any decrease in the birth rate among Arabs

56
Yair Sheleg, “Much Ado about Non-Jews: About One-Quarter of the Immigrants Who Have
Come to Israel during the Past Ten Years are Non-Jews,” Haaretz, January 31, 2000.
57
“Yordim” means people “who go down,” while “olim” means people “who go up.”
Embedded in the Hebrew word “yordim” is an extremely negative connotation for Israelis who
emigrate out of Israel.
58
“A Half Million Israelis Live in the U.S.,” Haaretz, July, 21, 2003.

82

in Israel is negligible…if more than a third of native-born,
secular Jews in the country do not believe they have a future
here (among new immigrant Jewish youths, the figure is 49
percent), it’s not difficult to imagine what the future holds for
the Jewish state.
59

In addition to Jewish-Israeli immigration and emigration numbers, there
are also Palestinian immigration and emigration numbers that must be factored
into the demography equation. Israel has never allowed Palestinians (including
those living abroad) to immigrate into Israel unless it was for the purpose of
family unification.
60
Since May 2002, Palestinian men under the age of thirty-
five and Palestinian women under the age of twenty-five living in the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip have not been allowed to immigrate into Israel to
reunify with their wives and children living in East Jerusalem or Israel. On May
12, 2002, a freeze on applications for family reunification was ordered for
Israeli citizens and Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. On July
31, 2003, the Israeli Sixteenth Knesset passed the “Citizenship and Entry into
Israel Law (temporary provision) 5763-2003, Limitation of Citizenship and Stay
in Israel.” The law stated:
During the period in which this law shall remain in force…the
Minister of Interior shall not grant the inhabitant of an area
citizenship on the basis of the Citizenship Law, and shall not
give him a license to reside in Israel on the basis of the Entry
into Israel Law… (Knesset Document 2003a)

59
Israel Harel, “We Are All in the Same Boat,” Haaretz, May 27, 2004.
60
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, as of March 31, 2005, there were
4,255,120 registered Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria and
Jordan. Israel has refused to consider repatriating these refugees during peace talks with the
exception of a small symbolic number.

83

On July 27, 2005, The Israeli Knesset approved “The Nationality and
Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) (Amendment)” that allowed
Palestinian men over the age of 35 and Palestinian women over the age of 25 to
request family reunification. All other Palestinians would not be able to enter
Israel and live with their spouses.
The Law shall remain in effect until 31 March 2005; however,
the government may, with the approval of the Knesset, extend
the validity of this Law by order, from time to time, for a
period that shall not exceed one year each time. (Knesset
Document 2005)

Another issue that impacts how many Palestinians immigrate into Israel
is Palestinian illegal workers. These people might marry Palestinian citizens of
Israel and eventually attain Israeli citizenship. Though an extremely sensitive
political topic, Palestinian family unification is addressed in the media as it
relates to the larger question of demography:
A week ago, the National Security Council in the Prime
Minister’s office held a discussion about a sensitive subject:
the naturalization of Palestinians from the territories who
married Arab Israelis. Most of the speakers were legal experts
who analyzed the right to acquire citizenship. But the council
also invited experts on demography to present the impact of
family unification on the numerical ratio between Jews and
Arabs in Israel.
61

A research project recently conducted at the Israel Defense
Forces National Defense College shows that the number of
Palestinians that have entered sovereign Israel in the decade
since the Oslo Accords (whether illegally or through legal
marriages and family unification) is around 240,000. Family
unification permits have been almost entirely suspended since

61
Aluf Benn, “Demographic Politics,” Haaretz, February 2, 2005.

84

the beginning of the intifada in September 2000, but
Palestinian immigration to East Jerusalem has increased,
reaching 70,000-100,000 people during this period, the
researchers estimate.
62

The other important demographic consideration is how many
Palestinians emigrate out of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This number
impacts the ratio of Israeli-Jews and Palestinians ‘between the sea and the
river.’
The ABC [Demographic Project] document claims data from
Israeli Border Police indicates consistent negative emigration
from the territories of about 10,000 departures annually…They
support the claim by quoting Norwegian research institute
Fafo, situated in Ramallah, that found negative Palestinian
immigration of 100,000 in 2001-2002.
63

While the rate of immigration and emigration has historically been
demographically advantageous for Jewish-Israelis, new numbers and
projections show that this advantage is likely to gradually diminish over time.
Israel’s first demographic strategy is to attempt to affect this negative trend by
implementing various policies, such as encouraging greater Jewish immigration
or severely limiting the number of Palestinians who can immigrate into Israel,
that they think will be effective in slowing down the trend. Given the reality
that these policies will only forestall the inevitable decline of this advantage,
though, Israel must shift its focus towards other policies that are more effective
at maintaining their demographic advantage.

62
Yair Sheleg, “The Demographics Point to a Binational State,” Haaretz, May 27, 2004.
63
Yair Ettinger, “Critics Slam Report Debunking Demographic Threat,” Haaretz, January 10,
2005.

85
The “Unilateral Separation” Narrative
Israel’s unilateral separation plan was an attempt to draw new borders
between Israel and the future Palestinian state that would preserve a Jewish
majority in Israel. The basic storyline of the “unilateral separation” narrative is
that Israel must act alone to create its own borders if the Palestinian government
is unwilling to negotiate with Israel. As will be shown later in this chapter, the
implementation of “unilateral separation” and the evolving narrative about it has
had an important impact on the “demography” narrative.
Before Israel created an official unilateral separation strategy, it had
hoped that exchanges of land could be accomplished within the framework of
an overall peace agreement with the Palestinians. As part of peace negotiations
with the Palestinians, Israel wanted to cede to the future Palestinian entity
certain areas within Israel that were heavily populated by Palestinian citizens of
Israel. Israel also wanted to annex certain parts of the West Bank that were
heavily populated by Israeli-Jews. These moves were designed to positively
affect the demographic ratio within Israel (as well as to allow Israel to hold onto
more territory). As opposed to unilateral separation which only was concerned
with Israel’s interests, this plan was meant to be enacted bilaterally with the
Palestinians. In its earliest incarnation, unilateral separation was officially
conceptualized as a last resort strategy to be implemented only if Israel felt
threatened by the Palestinians. The first unilateral separation plan was

86

authorized by then Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the leader of Israel’s politically
left Labor Party:
Barak determined that the separation plan would go into effect
only in the event of one of the following three scenarios: as a
response to a unilateral declaration of statehood on the part of
the Palestinians; under a severe security threat; or as part of an
agreement with the Palestinian Authority… The objective of
the plan is to preserve the Jewish identity of Israel by means of
a demographic separation from the Palestinians… The plan
was originally formulated as the foundation for a permanent
settlement with the Palestinians, based on a political,
demographic and economic separation. After the failure of the
Camp David summit, however, Barak ordered to prepare also
for a unilateral separation in response to a possible Palestinian
declaration of independence. The underlying instruction was
that the conflict would be solved only through diplomatic
means and therefore, the plan should not block the path to the
negotiating table in the future.
64

Barak’s unilateral separation plan emerged only after it became clear at
Camp David in July 2000 that the seven-year Oslo peace process was near total
collapse (though negotiations would still continue at the Taba Summit between
January 21-27, 2001). With hope for peace quickly fading, both the Israeli and
Palestinian public support for continued negotiations were declining rapidly.
Many Israelis thought that if peace negotiations stalled with the Palestinians
(which they did), Israel would have to implement a plan unilaterally in order to
address security and demographic concerns.
65
When the plan first became

64
“No ‘Irreversible Steps’ Included in Barak’s Unilateral Separation Plan,” Haaretz, January
15, 2001.
65
As of the writing of this dissertation, Israel’s unilateral separation from the Gaza Strip has
been completed. A new narrative is emerging in Israel presently called “convergence.” This
narrative, also shaped in large part by the “demography” narrative, calls for more unilateral
Israeli moves. Instead of withdrawal from designated Palestinian lands, “convergence”

87

public, it was rejected by most members of the politically-right Likud Party
since it had historically rejected conceding any land to the Palestinians under
any circumstances.
Two and a half months after the second Palestinian intifada began on
September 28, 2000,
66
and just four months before Ariel Sharon became prime
minister of Israel on February 6, 2001, the first Herzliya Conference was
convened on December 19, 2000. This conference seemed to mark a key
moment in the “demography” narrative as people on the political right first
began considering the pragmatism of unilateral separation. The report from the
conference seemed to accentuate slightly more strongly the unilateral dimension
of Barak’s separation plan:
...In the framework of a future [peace] agreement in which
permanent borders will be agreed upon and drawn, it may be
possible to include within the State of Israel Jewish population
blocs west of, and adjacent to, the Green Line, and to include
Arab population blocs east of, and adjacent to, the Green Line
in a sovereign Arab state. Thus, the territorial exchanges might
include parts of the “small triangle” and East Jerusalem. These
exchanges will be feasible through agreement in the context of
a comprehensive and final settlement between the Palestinian
Authority and Israel. In the absence of agreement, it will be
possible to implement some of the above-mentioned steps as
part of a unilateral redeployment…(my italics) (JPS 2001:54)

essentially annexes Palestinian land for the purpose of fortifying large and well-established
Israeli settlements in the West Bank while removing only isolated settlements.
66
In large part, the second intifada was sparked by Ariel Sharon’s highly controversial visit to
the al-Aqsa mosque. The al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third most holy site, is situated right next to
the “Dome of the Rock” where Muslims believe the Prophet Muhmmad ascended to heaven
after his death.

88
This report was a significant step in lowering the standard for when
Israel would act unilaterally against the Palestinians. Whereas Barak’s first plan
articulated three conditions for separation – only two of which were meant to be
enacted unilaterally and, then, only if Israel felt threatened by the Palestinians –
this new plan recommended Israeli unilateral action if peace was not going to be
achieved. At that historic moment, conflict between Israelis and Palestinians
had already been escalating and peace seemed highly unlikely. After Sharon
won the Israeli elections and it became increasingly clear that Israel and
Palestine were headed for a period of intensive conflict, unilateral separation
quickly became a popular strategy. For some Israelis, unilateral separation
would lower violence by limiting the number of friction points between
Palestinians, Israeli settlers and the IDF. For others, including an increasingly
larger portion of the Likud Party, separation would offset deeply problematic
demographic realities.
Soon after the 2000 Herzliya Conference, Sofer, the Israeli demography
expert who spoke at the Herzliya conference, was invited to present his
demographic projections to members of the Knesset. It was these events that
led to the creation of Sharon’s unilateral separation plan.
The Israeli “unilateral separation” narrative asserts that Israel must act
unilaterally without consultation with the Palestinians – by both appropriating
and withdrawing from Palestinian lands that Israel deems strategically necessary
– in order for it to achieve peace and security with the Palestinians. Israel must

89

act unilaterally, according to the narrative, because it has done everything
possible to achieve peace with the Palestinians but the Palestinians have rejected
all of the Israeli peace proposals. While there were internal debates about how
effective unilateral separation would be for peace and security, there was near
unanimous agreement that it would benefit Israeli demographic concerns.
Separating from Palestinians meant that Israel would no longer be responsible
for the welfare of the Palestinian people. Perhaps more importantly, it meant
Israel would no longer have to fear having Palestinians be included in future
Israeli demographic figures.
67

Israel has now come to the conclusion that it needs to act aggressively in
three primary areas in order to win the battle of demography with the
Palestinians. The first is implementing policies that encourage the natural
growth of Jewish-Israelis and concurrently discourage natural growth of the
Palestinian citizens of Israel. Although these policies can only be aimed at
controlling rates of birth, Israeli and Palestinian rates of death are also closely
observed. The second is implementing policies that are favorable for Jewish
immigration/emigration trends, while at the same time having a different set of
policies for Palestinians that encourages emigration and discourages
immigration. There are two related unresolved issues that can greatly impact

67
When Israel unilaterally separated from the Gaza Strip, they did not relinquish control of
Palestinian airspace or ports. Israel also had a large amount of control in how security
arrangements were made at the border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. In other
words, unilateral separation from the Gaza Strip allowed Israel to maintain a great deal of
control over the area but at the same time successfully relinquish any responsibility it had
toward the occupied Palestinian population.

90

Israel’s future demography concerns: 1) how Israel can stop Jewish emigration;
and 2) where to place the millions of Palestinian refugees that wish to return to
their homes in Israel/Palestine. In peace negotiations, Israel has insisted that the
vast majority of refugees cannot be allowed to return to their homes within
Israel proper but the Palestinians have not agreed to these conditions.
68
The
third is implementing a series of geopolitical policies that are favorable to
Israel’s demography concern. There are certain areas within Israel and the West
Bank that are either demographically beneficial or problematic for Israel. Israel
wants to act unilaterally by ceding certain lands and annexing others in order to
maximize its demographic benefits.
While each of these three areas of focus might appear to be simple to
grasp, they are actually extremely complex. For example, when considering
why Palestinian citizens of Israel have higher birthrates than Jewish-Israelis,
one must consider a wide range of social, economic, religious and biopolitical
factors. Understanding how these various factors influence individual
Palestinians is also difficult. Once all of these factors are considered (if this is

68
Whether this Israeli stance is justified by United Nations resolutions depends upon one’s
interpretation of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194. UNGAR 194, passed on
December 11, 1948, stated in Article 11 that “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.” First, as Israelis who reject the
Palestinian right of return like to point out, UN General Assembly Resolutions have the legal
status of a recommendation and not a binding obligation. Further, all Israeli governments have
rejected the idea that Palestinian refugees would be willing to “live at peace” with Israelis.
Palestinians argue that once a peace agreement is reached with Israel – including dealing with
the right of return for Palestinian refugees – Palestinians will, in fact, be living at peace with
their Israeli neighbors.

91
even possible), state officials must then use this information to figure out ways
to change the birthrate trends. Government officials, media pundits and
intellectuals attempt to do this when they develop different policies that fit their
personal beliefs and political agendas. After a number of ideas are created and
debated, a policy can emerge. Still, birthrate trends are only one part of the
larger “demography” narrative. An equal degree of complexity can also be seen
in each of the other areas of focus.

Debating the “Demography” Narrative in the Media
I will now explore the “demography” narrative as it evolved between
late 2003 through Israel’s unilateral separation in August 2005. Two separate
spikes in interest about demography occurred as a result of the fourth Herzliya
Conference between December 16-18, 2003 and a demographic report
published at the end of 2004 called “Arab Population in the West Bank & Gaza:
The Million and a Half Person Gap (Zimmerman and Seid 2004),” known as the
Zimmerman Report. The 2003 Herzliya Conference was to start a debate about
the bounds of the demographic problem while the 2004 Zimmerman report was
to problematize accepted notions about Palestinian-Israeli population dynamics.

2003 Herzliya Conference
Israel’s unilateral separation plan had been debated at various times in
the Israeli media between 2000 and 2003. Before Prime Minister Sharon

92

officially presented his plan for unilateral separation at the fourth Herzliya
Conference in 2003, however, unilateral separation did not spark substantive
debates about demography in the Israeli media. In anticipation of the
demographic discussions that would occur at the upcoming 2003 Herzliya
Conference, a number of media pundits and politicians interjected their opinions
about various Israeli demographic concerns. Much of the public discourse at
this particular historic moment expressed an agreement that Israel had a
demographic problem. The debate was about whether the demographic problem
was in Israel proper or in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In Haaretz,
the two different poles of the debate were represented by Ehud Olmert and
Moshe Arens. On December 5
th
, Olmert, then the Deputy Prime Minister and a
close associate of Prime Minister Sharon, said that the demographic “status
quo” was “destroying Zionism”, and that Jews would have to make “hard and
fateful decisions sooner than later because later could be too late.” Olmert
further warned that Israel “must choose either to retain the territories and
consequently risk losing its Jewish majority, or leave the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip and therefore sacrifice dear parts of the land of Israel.”
69
This
position about unilateral separation focused on the demographic concerns in
Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The other position, outlined by

69
Nahum Barnea, “Olmert Gets Out of the Territories” (interview with Ehud Olmert), ”Y-NET
(the internet site of Yedioth Ahronoth), December 5, 2003. www.ynet.co.il/articles/ 0,7304,L-
2831596,00.html

93
Haaretz reporter Israel Harel, focused on the demographic problem within Israel
proper:
The truly critical demographic problem is inside the State of
Israel. The overall number of Israeli Arabs - some of whom
clearly demonstrated in October 2000 and afterward, by means
of the dozens of terror cells that have been uncovered, the
extent of their loyalty to the Jewish state - represents about 20
percent of Israel’s population. The percentage of Arab pupils in
the first grade, a crucial indicator for what can be expected in
the near future, is 32.5. Moreover, about 58.8 percent of
Israel’s Arabs are under the age of 24, while among Jews the
proportion is only 38 percent. These figures clearly show that
the Jewish population is growing older and its fertility is
declining. The Arab population, on the other hand, is young
and its fertility is on the rise - and is certainly not declining.
The average Israeli Arab family has 5.26 members while the
average Jewish family has only 3.13 members - and if not for
the ultra-Orthodox and Orthodox families, the Jewish figure
would be even lower.
And when the Arab population has become an even more
significant minority, say 40 percent of the population, the State
of Israel will no longer be able to be a Jewish state. So
temporarily, until the Arabs become the majority, it will
become – de facto – “a state of all its citizens.” As a result,
many Jews will want to flee from such a state…
And when the Arabs have become the majority in the state, the
status of “a state of all its citizens” will quickly change,
because the Arabs, unlike the Jews, will not give up what they
consider to be their homeland, the source of their roots and the
foundation of their national pride. And the moment they can,
they will turn Israel into a Palestinian state, in addition to
Jordan-Palestine (after the Palestinians have established a state
in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and perhaps even beforehand, they
will take over Jordan, which is already comprised of an
overwhelming majority of Palestinians), and ultimately, Israel
will find itself part of an Arab-Palestinian state stretching from
Iraq to the Mediterranean…
None of those now preoccupied with fleeing from the
imaginary “demographic problem” in Judea, Samaria and Gaza
are taking the trouble to analyze the problem of the conquest of
the State of Israel from within, without a battle, and they are

94

certainly doing nothing about it. Not even those who are
opposed to the pile of self-styled initiatives currently on
Israel’s political agenda. They are either powerless to do
anything or they believe in miracles.
But Zionism, including the religious brand, never relied on
miracles. It created them…That is how we produced the
solutions to our greatest difficulties. But that was when we still
had faith in our capabilities and the justice of our cause.
70

Harel’s article gives one a sense of the tone of the demographic debate.
The most striking detail here is the suspicion and fear expressed about Israel’s
Palestinian citizens. Palestinian citizens of Israel are conceived as disloyal to
the state – they are assumed to be complicit in terrorism – and this threatening
group is quickly outnumbering the Jewish population. The second and third
paragraphs discuss how Israel is rapidly approaching the point of critical mass
where it will no longer be possible to be a Jewish state. Harel presents his
readers with the ultimate doomsday demographic scenario where a newly
emergent Palestinian state would overcome Jordan (with Jordan’s large
Palestinian population) and then completely overwhelm the Jews. The point of
Harel’s article is that any discussion about the merits of the unilateral separation
plan is pointless since the plan does not address Israel’s primary demographic
concern about Palestinian citizens living in Israel.
At the 2003 Herzliya Conference on December 17
th
, then Finance
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly took a position similar to Harel’s when
he said, “[w]e have a demographic problem, but it lies not with the Palestinian

70
Israel Harel, “Being Driven Out by Demography,” Haaretz, December 11, 2003.

95

Arabs, but with the Israeli Arabs.” Further, “if Israel’s Arabs become well
integrated and reach 35-45 percent of the population, there will no longer be a
Jewish state.” Even before this demographic proportion is reached, “this will
also undermine the [state’s] democratic fabric.”
71
As part of the solution,
Netanyahu said that the “separation fence”
72
would help prevent a
“demographic spillover” of Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip.
73

Netanyahu’s statements had two profound impacts. The first was to
change the direction of Isaeli politics by breaking open an ideolgocial rift within
the Likud Party about unilateral separation. This would eventually lead the
Likud Party to split.
74
After the Herzliya Conference in 2003, two of Likud’s
most prominent ministers talked about the demographic threat of Palestinians
from opposite perspectives. Netanyahu rejected unilateral separation because
he considered the greater demographic threat to be posed by the Palestinian
citizens of Israel. Olmert advocated unilateral separation from the Palestinians

71
Haaretz Opinion Editorial, “Sowing Conflict and Division,” Haaretz, December 19, 2003
72
The separation fence is a physical barrier of fences and concrete walls erected by Israel. The
separation fence, also known to many Palestinians as the “apartheid wall,” is a source of great
tension between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Supporters of the security fence argue that
it is needed in order to prevent Palestinian terrorism. Opponents of the apartheid wall argue that
its main purpose is to annex Palestinian land and to unfairly influence future peace negotiations
on borders. The apartheid wall also greatly restricts the freedom of movement of many
Palestinians both within the West Bank and from the West Bank to Israel (for Palestinian
workers).
73
Aluf Benn, “Netanyahu: Israel's Arabs are the Real Demographic Threat,” Haaretz, December
18, 2003.
74
This change of belief was to lead to Ariel Sharon’s ‘unilateral separation’ from the Likud
Party in 2005. After, Sharon had a difficult time implementing Israel’s separation from Gaza
because of internal divisions within his own party, so he left the party and formed the Kadima
(Onward) Party.

96
in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The reason the Likud Party’s split is so
vital to the “unilateral separation” narrative is that it was partly responsible for
Olmert becoming the prime minister of Israel. Had the Likud Party not split,
there is a good chance Netanyahu would have emerged as the leading candidate
to succeed Sharon after his debilitating stroke on January 4, 2006. Instead,
Olmert running as the head of the newly formed Kadima Party (formed by
Sharon), ran his 2006 campaign on a platform that advocated a second unilateral
separation from the West Bank. Olmert initially called this plan “convergence.”
The other impact Netanyahu’s controversial statements had was far more
immediate. It would instigate a contentious debate by politicians and media
pundits about whether it was ethically appropriate for a public official to talk
about the demographic threat of a minority group. The intial reactions to
Netanyahu’s comments from some Israeli politicians were quite harsh. The
politicians who made the following comments were either left-leaning Israelis
or Knesset ministers who were Palestinian citizens of Israel:
“A leader who considers 20 percent of the population of Israel
to be a demographic threat and treats them as an existential
problem is himself a racist danger to democracy, sanity and the
rule of law, and he should be disposed with immediately for the
good of both peoples,” said MK Makhoul Issam Makhoul
(Hadash).
MK Talab a-Sana (United Arab List) asked: “How would
Netanyahu react if someone in the West or the U.S. said that
the reproduction rate of the Haredi Jews was a demographic
problem? Netanyahu has double standards.”
Yossi Sarid (Meretz) said Netanyahu set in motion an
irrevocable deterioration of relations between Israeli Jews and
Israeli Arabs.

97

Sarid said it was amazing to see how “great leaders are
exposed as small bigots. The Palestinian problem in the
territories has not yet been solved, and already some insist on
creating a new problem with Israeli Arabs.” According to
Sarid, “Netanyahu at Herzliya poured a fuel tanker on the
bonfire of relations between Jewish and Arab citizens in Israel,
and a thousand firemen won’t be able to put out a fire that one
light-hearted man ignited.”
75

“Netanyahu’s demographic time bomb is a stink bomb and a
racist one,” said Ahmed Tibi (Hadash). “The day is not far off
when Netanyahu and his followers will set up roadblocks at the
entrance to Arab villages to tie Arab women’s tubes and spray
them with anti-spermicide.”
Azmi Bishara, of Balad (National Democratic Alliance) said:
“Describing the original residents of this land as a demographic
problem would be considered racism in any normal, or even
abnormal, country.”…
Labor whip Dalia Itzik described Netanyahu as “a serial
pyromaniac.” She said: “He has already lit the flames between
rich and poor, and now he is trying to do the same between
Jews and Arabs.”
76

Another reaction to Netanyahu’s comments came from “the public.”
The public is constructed by the media when it presents the findings of polls
about people’s positions on political trends.
77
A poll that came out a few weeks
after the Herzliya Conference attested to the Israeli public’s ambivalence about
Netanyahu’s statements:
Seventy-one percent of the Jews agree with Netanyahu’s
statement that the Israeli Arabs constitute a demographic
danger, although 52 percent feel it is improper for a

75
Aluf Benn, “MKs Slam Netanyahu's Remarks about Israeli Arabs,” Haaretz, December 17,
2003.
76
Aluf Benn, “Netanyahu: Israel's Arabs are the Real Demographic Threat,” Haaretz December
18, 2003.
77
While it is clear that “The media can transmit public opinion to public officials” (Paletz,
Short, Baker, Campbell, Cooper, and Oeslander 1980:511) by using polls, it is less clear what
kind of impact the public has on public officials’ decisions.

98

government minister to express himself in this way about a
group of citizens of the state (42 percent think the statement
was proper and 6 percent do not know).
78

While a majority of the Israeli public believed that the Palestinian
citizens of Israel are a demographic problem, more than half were
uncomfortable with the idea that this belief was being articulated by a public
official. This statistical data showed a strong support for taking steps to curb
the Palestinian population problem but simultaneously registered a tone of
discomfort with the public discussions about the topic.
After these initial reactions, a slew of media pundits greatly expanded
the terms of the debate of the demographic problem. One of the first opinions,
arguing along the same lines as Harel and Netanyahu, showed why Israelis
concerned about demographics should not be worried about Palestinians living
in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip:
Past conjectures about demographic trends that affect the
numerical relationship between Jews and Arabs have generally
turned out to be wrong. But even if they turned out to be
accurate this time, they do not add up to a demographic threat
and are not relevant to preserving a Jewish majority in the
Land of Israel.
It makes no difference how many Palestinian babies are born in
the Gaza Strip, in Nablus or in Jenin, if Israel has no intention
of annexing those areas. The Jewish majority in Israel is not
affected by the number of Arabs who live outside the
country.
79

78
Professor Ephraim Yaar and Dr. Tamar Hermann, “Demographic Fears Favor Unilateral
Separation,” Haaretz, January 7, 2004.
79
Ephraim Inbar, “Time Is On Israel’s Side,” Haaretz, December 28, 2003.

99

Using a more civil discourse to reject unilateral separation, this article
argues that Israel is not responsible for Palestinians unless it annexes Palestinian
lands. Until that happens, the people who live on that land cannot be counted
towards Israel’s demographic ratio.
While Netanyahu’s and Sofer’s discourse was branded racist by some
Israeli politicians, other discourse in the media seemed to be even more
inflammatory. In the following opinion, the Palestinians are referred to
metaphorically as a “disease”:
Recently, the demographic issue has become - and rightly so -
the central argument justifying Israel’s withdrawal from the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The rightist camp’s counter-
argument is that the demographic problem will continue to
haunt Israel even within the new borders. The counter-
argument’s rebuttal is that no mortally ill person would oppose
the removal of an organ on the grounds that later the disease
might spread to other organs.
But a rational patient forced to undergo an organ removal
would make serious lifestyle changes to ensure that the disease
would not reappear. Thus, Israel’s withdrawal from the
territories must not be the only measure taken to ensure that
Israel will have both a Jewish majority and a Jewish character.
Other measures must be taken, such as drawing up a
constitution - or, at least, the passage of several rigid Basic
Laws - to ensure the attainment of these two goals.
Furthermore, an effort must be made to limit the ability to
acquire Israeli citizenship other than through the Law of
Return.
80

At the end of the article, the author presents a familiar argument about
how to deal with demographic concerns. Israel must take a multi-layered

80
Yair Sheleg, “Ideological Compensation,” Haaretz, December 19, 2003.

100

approach to solving the issue, including limiting Palestinian immigration into
Israel.
Other media pundits offered different kinds of solutions. The first
article below advocates Palestinian emigration. A policy that promotes this is
justified, according to the author, because of the wider concerns about
population control and economic issues. The author of the second article below
discusses how people are less likely to have a lot of children when they are less
religious and better educated. The implication of this article is that Israel should
find ways to promote more education while deemphasizing religion for
Palestinian citizens of Israel:
In many parts of the world, states with rapidly growing
populations have been concerned about it. The concern is that
the country’s infrastructure - housing, health care, jobs,
pensions - would not keep pace with the growing
population…China took Draconian measures to curb
population growth, restricting each family to one child. Egypt
promoted birth control measures. Whatever the future political
settlement for the area will be, no government will be able to
provide a proper infrastructure for this burgeoning population.
It is truly a time bomb that only emigration can defuse…We
must realize we are dealing with human problems and the
challenges they pose to governments and societies - not with
“demographic dangers.”
81

Prof. Naomi Carmon says that in Haifa, the Israeli city with the
lowest fertility rate, the average number of children in 2001 per
Muslim female was 3.08 and per Christian Arab female was
1.91. For comparison’s sake, the average number of children
per Israeli Jewish female is 2.7. “One reason for the city’s low
fertility rate is Haifa’s lower rate of religiosity and its
educational level, which is the highest in Israel,” explains

81
Moshe Arens, “Demography and Demagoguery,” Haaretz, December 23, 2003.

101

Carmon who heads the Center for Urban and Regional Studies
in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.
82

Other media pundits try to understand how to best deal with demography
by getting at the root causes for high and low levels of fertility. The following
article rejects economic factors as the primary cause of high rates of childbirth
and instead focuses on birthing as an act of national-identity. Using the
expertise of two Israeli demographers, the argument posed is that high birth
rates can be fought through education and modernization:
From this DellaPergola concludes that factors other than the
standard of living shape Israel’s fertility levels - primarily, he
claims, “the national conflict, which pushes both groups to
increase birth rates.” DellaPergola even identifies a kind of
vicious cycle: the conflict pushes up birth rates, and the rise in
fertility in turn amplifies the conflict. Or, in another
paradoxical formulation, “the intense concern with
demographics boosts fertility.”… Sofer, in colorful language, is
happy to attribute the dramatic gap between north and south to
“my university, Haifa University. The fact that so many Arabs
from northern Israel come to study here, including Muslim
women, creates the low birth rates. If that is the result, I don’t
mind being called ‘the PLO’s university’ a thousand times
over. To me, involving Arabs in the university at Haifa is the
ultimate Zionist act.”… These analyses yield further
refinement of the factors that might influence the demographic
balance in the long run. DellaPergola and Sofer agree that the
central factor is the level of modernization and education
within Arab society.
83

In response to articles such as these, and echoing the public’s discomfort
with Netanyahu’s statements, other media pundits provided a variety of reasons

82
Tamara Traubman, “Education as Contraception,” Haaretz, September 15, 2004.
83
Yair Sheleg, “The Demographics Point to a Binational State,” Haaretz, May 27, 2004.

102

why concerns about Jewish-Palestinian demography are problematic. The first
opinion presented below asserts that a truly democratic country cannot make
one of its minority groups feel as though it is being incited against. The second
opinion asserts the need to be pragmatic about being a non-native state in the
middle of Arab countries. It uses the issue of demography as a way to promote
the author’s political agenda of ending the Israeli occupation. The third opinion
talks about the irreconcilable harm to future relations between Israelis and
Palestinian citizens of Israel as a result of discussions about demography. The
author concludes that Palestinian citizens of Israel will not want to integrate into
Israeli society as a result of this discourse:
Damage to the democratic fabric does not stem from any
particular demographic proportion of an ethnic majority in a
national state, but from incitement, the likes of which was
expressed by Netanyahu. The Arab residents of Israel are
citizens with equal rights, and not the enemies of the Jewish
state. Viewing any population through the womb and its
birthrate makes the population’s legitimate aspiration to
integrate fully into society and the state irrelevant, and presents
it as a threat to the Jewish majority… The State of Israel is the
national home of the Jewish people, and the home of its Arab
citizens. Its Jewish identity will not be consolidated in fear, but
only in an atmosphere of peace and liberty, out of integration
into the regional expanse and prosperity for all its residents -
the Jews and the Arabs.
84

The aspiration for a Jewish majority sounds like the
hallucination of someone locked in his room with his back to
the window. Israel is part of the Arab Middle East. Its only
reason to exist as an independent and democratic state is not
dependent on its Jewish majority, but on the just and moral
base that it will formulate vis-à-vis the Palestinians and Israel’s

84
Haaretz Opinion Editorial, “Sowing Conflict and Division,” Haaretz, December 19, 2003.

103

Jewish and non-Jewish citizens. Which is why Israel should
end the occupation, leave all of the territories without delay,
and embrace a revamped agenda.
85

The obsession with demographics and its definition as a
“problem” have an adverse effect that should not be
underestimated. They deepen the abyss between the two
peoples and signal to both that life and procreation are a threat,
that they need to be demeaned and even prevented. Has no one
considered the reverse-psychological effect of treating the
Arabs in Israel this way? This attitude pulls the rug out from
under the already-faint call to Israel’s Arab citizens to be an
integral part of Israeli society - that is, to be “Israeli.” The real
message is: Be Israeli, just as long as there aren’t too many of
you.
86

For some Israelis, the inevitable conclusion of the “demography”
narrative is that Jews will one day be living in a binational state with
Palestinians. At that time, the Jewish nation-state will cease to exist and power
will have to be shared with Palestinians. The first pundit cited below explains
that the fear of a binational state is at the core for the strong Israeli support for
unilateral separation. The second author considers what a lead up to a
binational state might look like in Israel proper if current demographic trends
continue. Palestinian citizens of Israel will demand more than civil rights.
They will want “collective [national] expression.” The final article uses the fear
of a binational state as a justification for unilateral separation. Without this
policy, Israel might soon be viewed as a national outcast in the international
community – similar to how apartheid South Africa used to be viewed:

85
Avirama Golan, “Enough of this Demographic Panic,” Haaretz, February 17, 2004.
86
Antoine Shalhat, “The Demographic Bomb,” Haaretz, May 26, 2004.

104

The strong desire for a separation, even a unilateral one, is
connected to a fear among the overwhelming majority of the
Jewish public regarding the emergence of a de facto binational
state, if Israeli control over the territories continues and the
Palestinians change from a minority to a demographic majority
west of the Jordan [River]… The broad support for separation
apparently stems from the very widespread fear (73 percent)
that if a solution to the conflict is not found in the near future
and Israeli control of the territories continues, the Palestinians
will eventually become a demographic majority west of the
Jordan and a de facto “binational state” will emerge.
87

Even DellaPergola, given to low-key predictions, estimates that
by 2050 Israel’s Arab sector may grow to nearly 30 percent of
the population, “and although the Jewish majority remains
stable with such a ratio, such numbers are more typical of a
binational state, with all that the term implies. When those are
the numbers, the minority no longer settles for individual civil
rights, but demands a collective expression. Cyprus, for
example, broke up when the Turks amounted to only 18
percent of the population.”
88

Yonatan Bassi, head of the disengagement administration,
justified the pullout plan (in Globes, July 29) by saying that in
Gaza, “there used to be 600,000 Arabs. Now there are 1.4
million people there ... in a few more years what happened to
South Africa will happen to us. The UN will decide that either
we give the right to vote to everyone or we will be outcasts
from the family of nations. Absurdly, the greatest danger that
could befall us ... is that the intifada would end – because then
we would fall asleep and wake up to a binational state.”
89

A great variety of opinions contributed to the larger shaping of the
“demography” narrative. All of the opinions quoted above were made in the
year between the December 2003 Herzliya Conference and the end of 2004.

87
Professor Ephraim Yaar and Dr. Tamar Hermann, “Demographic Fears Favor Unilateral
Separation,” Haaretz, January 7, 2004.
88
Yair Sheleg, “The Demographics Point to a Binational State,” Haaretz, May 27, 2004.
89
Uzi Arad, “Demography and Demagoguery,” Haaretz, August 6, 2004.

105

The following section of this chapter explores a second wave of interest in the
“demography” narrative. It was set off by a controversial report that challenged
long standing agreed upon methodologies and conclusions from Israel’s Central
Bureau of Statistics about Palestinian demography in the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip.

The Zimmerman Report
The next major event that set off a renewed and invigorated debate about
the “demography” narrative was a demographic report called “Arab Population
in the West Bank & Gaza: The Million and a Half Person Gap (Zimmerman and
Seid 2004).”
90
The “project leader” of this report, Bennett Zimmerman, was a
businessman who put together a team of scholars in hopes of proving that the
Palestinian population in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was not
nearly as high as Palestinian census makers at the Palestinian Central Bureau of
Statistics had estimated and the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics had
accepted. Zimmerman, a staunch critic of Sharon’s unilateral separation plan,
used this report as a basis to argue that Israeli separation from the Palestinians
was not necessary from a demographic perspective. According to one of the

90
The report’s team was comprised of Bennett Zimmerman (project leader), Dr. Roberta Seid
(Historian) and Dr. Michael Wise (expert in mathematics modeling techniques) in the United
States. In Israel, Yoram Ettinger (demographer), Brig Gen. (Ret. David Shahaf, former Head of
the Civil Administration in the West Bank), Prof. Ezra Sohar (published several research papers
on demographics in Israel), Dr. David Passig (expert in forecasting), and Avraham Shvuot
(tracked Jewish and Arab population in the West Bank).

106

leaders of the project, the report set out to prove three things about the
demographic ratio in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip:
1. Today, the Palestinian-Arab population of the West Bank
(1.4MN) and Gaza (1MN) totals 2.4 million, rather than the
3.8 million reported by the Palestinian Central Bureau of
Statistics (PCBS).
2. A solid Jewish majority of 60% has been sustained –
between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean – since
1967. A solid 80% Jewish majority has been maintained
within the “Green Line”.
3. Long-Term demographic trends re-entrench the Jewish
majority. (Ettinger 2004)

In January 2005, the day before the first public presentation of this
report at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C., Haaretz
published an article discussing the contents of the report:
An extra-academic document that debunks one of the
foundations of the disengagement plan,
91
“the demographic
bomb,” will be presented in Washington today to a prestigious
academic institution with substantial influence on the Bush
administration. The document, which Haaretz has obtained,
argues that 2.4 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip today, and not the 3.8 million claimed by the
Palestinian Authority. In sharp contrast to population studies
conducted in Israel by professors Arnon Sofer and Sergio della
Pergola, the document argues that Jews continue to maintain a
solid 60 percent majority between the Jordan River and the
Mediterranean Sea.…A great deal of the interest in the
document stems from the seal of approval it received from U.S.
demographers which paved the way for the invitation to its
authors to present their findings to influential conservative
think tank American Enterprise Institute in Washington…The
document claims the updated 2004 statistic presented by the

91
Though it is difficult to precisely trace, at some point before the Zimmerman Report the
phrase “unilateral separation” was replaced with “disengagement” in Israeli political discourse.
The political message of this new terminology seemed to be that instead of Israel acting
unilaterally against the Palestinians, Israel was disengaging from the Palestinians for the benefit
of both.

107

Central Bureau of Statistics on the Palestinian population in the
territories - 3.8 million people - is unreliable. It doesn’t
incorporate emigration from PA territory, which they estimate
at hundreds of thousands, a drop in fertility, or tens of
thousands of deaths, and it includes about 200,000 residents of
East Jerusalem, who are also counted in the Israeli
census…The ABC document claims data from Israeli Border
Police indicates consistent negative emigration from the
territories of about 10,000 departures annually. Its authors
allege that 300,000 Palestinian expatriates living in the U.S.,
Arab countries, Europe and Latin America appear in the
population registry. They support the claim by quoting
Norwegian research institute Fafo, situated in Ramallah, that
found negative Palestinian immigration of 100,000 in 2001-
2002.
92

This report was the first work to openly challenge universally accepted
statistical data about Palestinian population figures in East Jerusalem, the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip. The release of the report just eight months before
Sharon’s plan of unilateral separation was to be implemented seemed to be a
political attempt to stop the political momentum towards unilateral separation.
Later in January 2005, after its introduction in the United States, the report was
presented to the Israeli Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. The
presentation of the report in Israel caused many people in the Israeli media to
join the debate about the “demography” narrative. Interestingly, though, the
report did not generate a debate about unilateral separation as the authors of the
report might have hoped but instead about many of the other issues related to
demography. One of the first issues in the media addressed the controversy of

92
Yair Ettinger, “Critics Slam Report Debunking Demographic Threat,” Haaretz, January 10,
2005.

108

whether the Zimmerman Report had academic credibility. This question was
debated by the now familiar demography actors Della Pergola [Israeli
demographer] and Ettinger [project leader]:
Della Pergola called the document “groundless,” politically
slanted and baseless from a research perspective. None of the
signatories to the document is a professional in demographic
research… Yoram Ettinger said, “The demographic issue has
great importance in shaping the approach of the administration,
the press and the public on a critical matter to the future of
Israeli society. These positions should be determined based on
facts and not distortions.”… He [della Pergola] added, “The
authors seek to prove the political theory that the status quo is
good for us and time is on our side. They are trying to attach
some demographic claims to that thesis.” The demographer
claims there are distorted figures in the document, in addition
to a lack of familiarity with professional literature and accepted
research methods.
93

For the first time, it was possible to enter a debate about demography
from the perspective that the Israeli-Jews were not losing ground to
Palestinians. This reframed the debate about disengagement in the media. The
following article discusses what is at stake if the new report turns out to be true.
As the end of the opinion below indicates, it is possible that this could also
influence policy decisions about disengagement:
These statistics are political dynamite. The “demographic
problem” is the cardinal justification for supporters of Israeli
separation from the territories. It has become a truism of the
public and political discourse that within a few years the Jews
will become a minority “between the Jordan River and the
Mediterranean” and that if the Israeli occupation continues,
Israel will find itself in the midst of an unavoidable explosion
between its Jewish identity and its democracy. Either it will

93
Ibid.

109

become a binational state with an Arab majority or it will be
reviled, like South Africa in the apartheid period…However, if
the Jewish majority is large and stable, and there really is no
demographic problem, there is also no rush to get out of the
territories…Zimmerman…says that if 50,000 Jews immigrate
to Israel every year it will be possible to preserve the 60:40
Jewish majority over time. So who’s right? Both sides show in
their reports that demographic forecasts tend to be proved
wrong, especially in unstable areas such as the Land of Israel.
But despite the crucial importance of demography to the
political debate and the shaping of Israeli policy, the
government has flinched from undertaking a thorough
examination of the data… The new study, even if its findings
are controversial, will undoubtedly generate a reexamination.
94

This potentially favorable demographic news for Israel coincided with
another newly evolving demographic trend – a decline in birthrates in the
communities of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Credit for the decline was being
given to the Finance Ministry’s cuts in child allowances. While government
officials were taking credit for this success, some media pundits questioned
whether this policy really was effective. The following article reveals the
convoluted nature of Israel’s birthrate policies:
Anyone taking an in-depth look into the State of Israel’s
policies with regard to matters of birthrates and children would
soon be at his wit’s end in the maze of contradictions. For
example: All governments encouraged Jewish births to counter
Arab reproduction, and then came complaints about the large
number of children in the ultra-Orthodox sector, with the
argument that they were an economic burden.
95

There are often unintended consequences when new government
policies, such as cutting child allowances, are implemented. If the cutbacks had

94
Aluf Benn, “You Can Count on Them,” Haaretz, January 28, 2005.
95
Avirama Golan, “Please, Think of the Child,” Haaretz, February 3, 2005.

110

an impact on childbirth rates, this would not only affect the large families of
Palestinian citizens of Israel. Ultra-Orthodox Jewish families also tend to have
large families and any negative impact that resulted from decreasing childbirth
allowances would affect both communities equally. The following article does
an effective job of disproving the Finance Ministry’s assertion that there is a
correlation between child allowances and birth rates:
The truth about the cuts in the child allowances came out in the
form of the “demographic bombshell” last week. It turns out
that “senior government officials” tried to persuade Shas
leaders on their way into the coalition that cutting the child
allowances was not meant to hurt the ultra-Orthodox
(Haredim), “only” the Arabs.
To that end, distorted statistics were enlisted, ostensibly
showing that there has been a change in the birthrates of Israeli
Arabs in the wake of the cutbacks. Those same senior officials
in the government or treasury opened the dam, and a sea of
hatred and incitement began to sweep over us all, accompanied
by rhetoric that was reminiscent of the darkest of regimes.
There is quite a bit of racism in the positions taken by the
“senior sources.” The charge that the birthrate of Israeli Arabs
threatens the existence of the state is racist. The argument that
child allowances in their pre-cutback form are worse than
terror is racist. The incitement of one minority group
(Haredim)
96
against another (Arabs) is racism. The declaration
that Israel’s Arab citizens are deliberately multiplying to harm
the state is racist. The declaration that reducing the birthrate
among the Arabs of Israel is a national goal is racism. And the
attempt to incite the secular public against the ultra-Orthodox
and Arab minorities is a form of racism. Saying that the other
and the different, the Haredim and the Arabs, are parasites
living and multiplying at our (beautiful and enlightened)
expense is racism.
The highest birthrates in the world are in Gaza, Egypt and other
Arab countries, where there are no child allowances. The

96
Haredim are ultra-orthodox Jews who reject modern secular culture. They are considered the
most theologically conservative group within Orthodox Judaism.

111

lowest birthrates among Muslims are in Israel and other
Western countries, where there are child allowances or tax
breaks according to the number of dependents a taxpayer has.
There are effective and humane ways to influence birthrates.
It’s well known that the more educated the parents, the
birthrate declines. But the Israeli government neglects the
education in the Bedouin community. Instead of reducing
allowances, it should invest more in education of the oppressed
minorities.
97

After the Herzliya Conference in 2003, media pundits were critical of
demographic discussions because they would have a negative impact on Jewish-
Israeli and Palestinian citizens of Israel relations. After the Zimmerman Report,
media pundits escalated the critique by calling demographic discourse racist.
Interestingly, even as this author writes “[t]he declaration that reducing the
birthrate among the Arabs of Israel is a national goal is racism,” just a few
paragraphs later he writes, “[t]here are effective and humane ways to influence
birthrates.” The author seems to advocate not declaring that Israel is trying to
reduce birthrates but still trying to accomplish it through greater education (this
reemphasizes the point of an earlier poll where Israelis believed that
demography is a great concern but they felt uncomfortable about officials
discussing the subject publicly).
In addition to this last article, many others articles that were written after
the Zimmerman Report deployed an argument about racist discourse and
policies that surround demography as a way to get across different points:

97
Yitzhak Kadman, “A More Effective Birth Control” Haaretz, February 1, 2005.

112

Every now and then, with inexplicable timing, we suddenly
encounter rumors that the demographic demon - the one that
lies in the recesses of the Arab woman’s womb - has raised its
head once again and is threatening to wipe out, God forbid, the
entire Zionist enterprise…Soon, when the demographic demon
demands reference that will finally connect the head count (the
statistics) to the hand count (the democracy), and it becomes
impossible to evade the dilemma of a Jewish or democratic
state, the ultimate charm will be written, and it will exorcise
the demon from the womb of the Arab woman and denounce
the touting of the demographic scarecrow as an act of racism.
98

“Demography,” meaning anxiety about an Arab majority, has
lately taken over the shaping of national policy. On the right,
the slogan goes, “no Arabs, no terror,”
99
and they preach for
mass expulsions. On the left they speak about “a Jewish
minority between the sea and the river,” which means escaping
the territories to save Zionism. Arab birthrates are higher than
Jewish ones, immigration is at a trickle, and experts compete
with gloomy forecasts whether the “moment of the
demographic tie” will arrive in another five years or in fact it
already happened without anyone noticing…
The latest hit is the report by a rightist group from Israel and
the U.S. that says there are far fewer Palestinians in the
territories than was previously believed. Its findings are
controversial and debatable, but it smashed the monopoly over
the data and forecasts, held by a handful of researchers.
The disciples of the “demographic rationale” enjoy all possible
worlds. They support withdrawal from the territories like the
left, and appear to be Arab haters like the right. The “security”
left turned into the “demographic” left during the
intifada…One can only hope that the calmer atmosphere
Mahmoud Abbas has brought will also moderate the domestic
debate in Israel and at least prevent its deterioration into even
worse forms of racism.
100

The difference between the opponents and supporters of the
disengagement is in the measure of transparency of their

98
Meron Benvenisti, “Beware the Demographic Demon,” Haaretz, January 27, 2005.
99
“No Arabs, No Terror” is a highly visible slogan often seen in graffiti all over Israel. The
meaning of this phrase is if Israel transfers the Palestinians out of Israel, there will be no more
terror.
100
Aluf Benn, “Demographic Politics,” Haaretz, February 2, 2005.

113

hostility toward the Arabs and mastery over them. The
discourse of the disengagement supporters presents the Arabs
as a threat and tries to frighten the listener by speaking of the
“demographic danger.” The disengagement opponents simply
ignore the human existence of the Palestinians…
That is not a democratic state with a Jewish character and
culture, but a discriminatory regime that grants more rights to
Jews, and denies equal rights to Arabs. No democracy in the
world has one nation deciding what is good for another nation.
Such a regime has been called by Prof. Oren Yiftahel an
“Ethnocracy” and it is the wish of “the nation in Zion”: to be
the masters of the entire land.
Every discussion of the Palestinians as equal human beings
born in the image of God is termed “treasonous,” the language
of “Arab lovers.” Therefore, there is no language or democratic
discourse that supports disengagement and rejects a
referendum.
The racist view that ignores the existence of occupied peoples
or represents them as inferior, wild and dangerous emerged in
Europe of past centuries to justify the white man’s takeover of
land and natural resources he did not own in Africa, America
and Asia. That’s how they sought to legitimize their acts of
plunder, looting, repression and killing. In Europe, that racist
approach was applied to “the Semitic” nations “invading”
Europe, starting with the Jews. We were the victims of that
racism, and history - or divine intervention - has now given us
a difficult test.
In the attempt to escape anti-Semitism, we built a colonialist
reality in the Promised Land that negates the humanity of the
“natives.” After the occupation in 1967, that view became the
exclusive discourse, so much so that it was frightening to
dispute it in public.
101

While there were many dissenting Israeli voices in the Israeli media, the
following article is one of the rare examples of a Palestinian voice being
permitted to enter the debate. Perhaps this person’s opinion was palatable

101
Lev Greenberg, “Democracy versus Demography” Haaretz, February 9, 2005.

114

enough because of his ‘enlightened’ views about birthrates and the Palestinian
need for education:
Goodness knows why there hasn’t been a drastic decline in the
percentage of Arab children. I am angry with my people, who
continue to bring children into the world and, consciously or
not, shoot themselves in the foot… As a consequence of our
family decision, that education is the only weapon we can use
in your state, which is incidentally my homeland. We opened
savings plans for our children for higher education, so they will
be able to pursue academic study without being dependent on a
variety of factors…Mr. Netanyahu, perhaps you will be
surprised by my stand on the issue, which is not exactly
popular in the Arab sector, to say the least. Nevertheless, I am
demanding that the leaders of the Arab public embark on an
aggressive campaign to persuade members of the national Arab
minority living in Israel to take a critical decision - to limit
childbirth of their own free will. This campaign must be
initiated now, without connection to allowances your ministry
distributes to citizens from the taxes they pay. I firmly believe
that we, the “Israeli Arabs,” must transform ourselves from a
ticking demographic bomb, as you term us, to a ticking
intelligence bomb [meaning getting more education].
102

Along with the renewed debate about demography spurred by the
Zimmerman Report came new ideas along with the rearticulation of old ideas
about how to keep an advantageous population ratio between Jewish-Israelis
and Palestinian citizens of Israel:
First and foremost, not annexing East Jerusalem and its
250,000 Palestinian residents. Without East Jerusalem, the
Arab population in Israel drops from 20 percent to 15 percent.
Caution must be used in annexing blocs of settlements, which
may bring large Palestinian groups with them; on the other
hand, annexation must be done on the basis of land exchange
for territories with large Israeli Arab populations. We must
continue to oppose the “right” of return, and persist in our

102
Zoheir Andrewous, “Ticking Intelligence Bomb” Haaretz, January 26, 2005.

115

efforts to prevent the creeping return both of illegal aliens and
of other people through family unification. The amendment to
the Citizenship Law withholding residency status and
citizenship from the Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens isn’t
“pretty,” and is a matter of concern for civil rights advocates.
But considering the demographic threat, civil rights and liberal
considerations must be suspended in an effort to act according
to the rules: Jews have the right to marry and settle their land,
Arabs have the right to marry and settle in a land that
represents their national identity. Even Western states,
proponents of liberalism and civil rights, have been forced to
surrender to the demographic threat and impose limits on the
import of foreign citizens.
103

The [Jewish People Policy Planning Institute – Avinoam Bar-
Yosef] report recommends a series of steps by the government,
aimed at ensuring Israel’s Jewish majority. The
recommendations are based on recent research, initiated by the
Jewish Agency, which indicates that most Jews in Israel would
like to have another child but do not do so, primarily due to
financial necessities. The main recommendation is “to lift
restraints” preventing families with two and three children to
have a third or fourth child. Among other things, the report
calls upon the government to recognize kindergarten
expenditures for tax purposes to encourage working women to
give birth. The report also recommends developing new
methods for promoting immigration, including “partial aliyah”
that would encourage Jews to divide their time between Israel
and other countries, bolstering ties with Israelis and children of
Israelis residing abroad. In addition, the report’s authors
propose formulating a lenient conversion policy, and caution
that “prudence is recommended with proposals to amend the
Law of Return, which could easily cause much more damage
than benefit.”
104

Another article revisited the idea of territorial exchange with the
Palestinians to ensure the Jewish character for Israel and help Palestinian
citizens of Israel realize their national aspirations in a future Palestinian state.

103
Avraham Tal, “The ‘Demographic Scarecrow,’” Haaretz, January 24, 2005.
104
Amiram Barkat, “Ensuring Israel’s Jewish Majority,” Haaretz, July 12, 2005.

116

Territorial exchange had not been considered since the end of the Oslo peace
process:
There are those who justify the disengagement plan with
demographic reasoning: It is necessary to make sure Israel
remains a Jewish democratic state. But in effect there is
nothing in the disengagement plan that has anything to do with
demography. On the other hand, there is a direct connection
between the demographic issue and the territorial exchange
plan.
The use of the demographic key for the purpose of determining
the borders of the Jewish state is not new. It shows up in the
various partition plans of history and in the plans of the last
decade for a final agreement. However, the plan for territorial
exchanges, which is explicitly derived from the demographic
consideration, has been sidelined and not yet become a
principal element in Israel’s official policy…
Fulfillment of the populated territorial exchange plan will
allow Israel to hold onto unpopulated areas in Judea, Samaria
and the Jordan Valley as needed for its security as well as areas
populated by Jews, while preserving its Jewish democratic
character. Therefore, it would be proper for Israel to put the
territorial exchange plan onto the agenda, now, as an
inseparable part of the future final agreement if it wants
defensible borders for a Jewish and democratic state.
105

Just one month before the implementation of the disengagement plan
from the Gaza Strip, the following article appeared in Haaretz. Trying to make
their cases about disengagement, “the people of the Israeli-American team and
della Pergola, Sofer and the CBS [Israeli Central Bureaeu of Statistics] people
have been going from event to event, conference to conference, symposium to
symposium” to debate disengagement. While there had been an enthusiastic
debate about disengagement in the media, the central focus had not been on

105
Uzi Arad, “The Demographic Key,” Haaretz, February 16, 2005.

117
demography but rather on the moral and humanitarian concerns about forcing
Jewish settlers to leave their homes and livelihood.
The claim that far fewer Palestinians are living in the territories
than usually thought serves those who argue that the
disengagement is unnecessary…
…Over the years, says Ettinger, a former diplomat and a
strategic adviser, they never raised an eyebrow in the [CBS]
bureau at the contradictions between their figures and the
Palestinians’. “Now they are prepared to cut off the branch on
which they are sitting in order to explain away their
impotence.” According to him, “The bureau’s document is an
unprofessional response of the sort that gets scrawled on a
napkin in a restaurant.”
Today the issue will come up for discussion for the second
time in the State Control Committee. “There are claims and
there are counter-claims, and I want to hold a face-to-face
confrontation,” says Stern. He does not conceal his
dissatisfaction with the CBS document. According to him, the
bureau did not examine the Israeli-American team’s document
but rather decided the Palestinians had done a better job,
“without any proof.” At the CBS they say that they could not
check the Zimmerman-Ettinger document because “we did not
receive an orderly research report but rather a PowerPoint
presentation.” In the terms of academic discourse, this can be
considered an insult.
At a conference held by Haifa University about two weeks ago,
Prof. Arnon Sofer of that university presented a series of
alternative estimates, but said he tends to support the
population estimate that is based on Israel Defense Forces
figures - a total of 3 million, of which 2 million reside in the
West Bank and 1 million in Gaza…
“They are lying brazenly,” says Prof. Sofer, “and are beginning
to give advice to our bureau of statistics, which is one of the
best in the world.”
“To cry out that the king is not wearing any clothes you don’t
need to be a tailor,” says Ettinger. “It is a matter of very simple
actions of addition and subtraction.” He says the work was
reviewed and he claims that it has won the backing of several
leading demographers in the United States. “We are basing
ourselves on figures between which there is a very clear
correlation. The other school has only now discovered that

118

there is data.” Ettinger also says that on their team there are
three people who are experts on what is occurring in the PA,
such as former Civil Administration head Brigadier General
(Res.) David Shahaf.
There are, of course, many charges of political motives. “The
document you have written is political, lying and impertinent,”
said Sofer to Ettinger at the conference at Haifa University.
Ettinger runs an Internet site called “Hatikvah” against the
disengagement. According to Sofer, the timing of the
publication before the disengagement is not coincidental and
derives from the fact that the Israeli right has begun to discover
that the use of demography is a two-edged sword and is now
working to its detriment. “They have stuck in the arrow and
drawn the target around it,” says della Pergola. But Sofer
himself is a leading supporter of the separation fence, and the
people of the team are displaying documents in which he
supports different figures, according to them to suit his political
aims.
106

The Zimmerman Report created a second wave of interest in Israel’s
demography issue. While the report itself was meant to persuade Israelis that
the disengagement was unnecessary, its release sparked debates about other
parts of the “demography” narrative and kept the issues alive up until unilateral
separation officially began.

Conclusion
This chapter depicts Israel’s “demography” narrative as presented in the
Israeli newspaper Haartez between 2000 and 2005. At its core, this narrative is
about the ability of Israeli-Jews to maintain a permanent population majority
over the Palestinians. What is Israel’s basic demography story? The

106
Shahar Ilan, “Demographically Correct” Haaretz, June 7, 2005.

119
“demography” narrative first became vital near the establishment of the Israeli
state. At that time, Jewish leaders were concerned that the Jews did not have
enough people to maintain a Jewish state. After the 1948 war, many of the
Palestinians living in Palestine before the war became refugees in other
countries in the Middle East. Major Palestinian population centers that
remained in pre-war Palestine were not part of Israel and concerns about
demography temporarily subsided. After the 1967 war, Israel took control over
all the major Palestinian population centers in East Jerusalem, the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip. While Israel still maintained a relatively comfortable
demographic majority, by the 1990s this majority had shrunk dramatically.
The Oslo peace process was the first attempt to address Israel’s
demographic concerns with the Palestinian leadership as partners. This was
going to be done by shifting Jewish and Palestinian populations in a geopolitical
way that was demographically beneficial for maintaining a Jewish majority in
Israel. Also during the 1990s, by employing techniques of modernization – in
the form of family planning centers – Israel attempted to slow down the
Palestinian citizens of Israel birthrates (Kanaaneh 2002). After the collapse of
the peace process and the release of increasingly alarming population reports
and demographic projections, the Israeli state made it a priority to deal with
what was perceived as negative demographic trends. The Herzliya Conference
of 2000 was convened and new policies were created in order to counteract
these negative demographic trends. The successful implementation of these

120
policies would affect the natural growth of both Israeli and Palestinian citizens
of Israel communities, the ratio of Israeli and Palestinian immigrants/emigrants,
and the geopolitical situation in Palestine/Israel (the most dramatic of which
was unilateral separation) in ways that would ensure a long-term Jewish
majority within the state of Israel.
The demography debate was reinvigorated immediately before the
convening of the Herzliya Conference in 2003. At first, various politicians and
media pundits debated the various merits of the state’s attempts at demographic
manipulation. The key issue in the debate was whether there was a
demographic problem within Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, or
existentially worse, in Israel proper. The answer would lead to the appropriate
decision about unilateral separation from the Palestinians in the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip.
After the conference, some pundits insisted that calling Palestinian
citizens of Israel a “demographic threat” created irreparable tensions between
two already alienated communities. Other pundits came up with various
justifications for the state’s policies. For birthrates in communities of
Palestinian citizens of Israel, various modernization arguments were deployed.
Employing a different modernization argument, if the Palestinian citizens of
Israel were less religious and better educated, they would benefit economically,
socially and politically. At the same time, decreasing Palestinian birthrates
would benefit Israel’s population ratio. In addition, it seemed that the

121
implemented policy of reducing the child allowances was impacting the
birthrates of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the way that the state intended. As
for the geopolitical strategies, not only would unilateral moves benefit Jewish-
Israelis, it would benefit Palestinians since they will eventually be able to
realize their own national aspirations. Finally, while it was difficult to measure
Palestinian immigration/emigration trends, the trends for Israel were becoming
more negative.
In January 2005, a new interest over demography in the media was
generated by the release of the Zimmerman Report. The report problematized a
number of the key data that determined population figures in the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip. The authors intended the report to play a pivotal role in
stopping the disengagement from the Gaza Strip (and a few isolated settlements
in the West Bank). While the report was unsuccessful in this task, it did
reinvigorate the debate about demography. Some media pundits called
demographic discussions racist, while others continued to find new
justifications and plans for policies aimed at demographic manipulation. As
Israeli disengagement grew closer, demography became increasingly less of a
concern in the media. The media, instead, focused on the inevitable suffering
disengagement would cause to the Israeli settlers who were forced to move from
their homes and communities. After disengagement, discussions about
demography were once again limited to the occasional population reports
released by the Israeli Bureau of Statistics.

122
As has been shown in this chapter, the “demography” narrative is an
extremely complex story whose meaning is in constant process. While this
particular Israeli narrative of the nation was not written about every day in
Haaretz, a substantive debate was generated regularly after the Israeli Central
Bureau of Statistics released a new demographic report, the Herzliya
Conference was convened, or the Zimmerman Report was released.
For the average person, access to the complex construction process of
the Israeli “demography” narrative is through the media. While each Israeli
newspaper provides a fairly cohesive “demography” narrative over time, the
reader will usually only get a somewhat fragmented understanding of the whole
demography story. This is because even the most loyal reader might not always
read every article or remember all the details written in each article. Also, each
article rarely contextualizes its discussion within the various subnarratives of
the “demography” narrative. Finally, subnarratives within the “demography”
narrative such as “unilateral separation,” often become narratives of the nation
themselves. When this happens, the connection between these subnarratives
and the larger “demography” narrative becomes obfuscated. So while each
Israeli newspaper presents a fairly coherent version of the “demography”
narrative over time, individuals can only take in a certain portion of the entire
narrative. Still, over time, a story emerges for each individual of the reading
audience.

123
The “demography” narrative is part of the matrix of other core Israeli
narratives of the nation. Israel has a “peace process” narrative that asserts why
peace has not yet been achieved with the Palestinians and what is needed in the
future for peace to be achieved. The “demography” narrative is largely
responsible for shifting the “peace process” narrative towards the direction of
unilateral separation.
Israel also has a “democracy” narrative. As has been hinted at in a
number of the articles above, strongly embedded in Israel’s “democracy”
narrative is the idea that Israel must remain a legitimate democracy (regardless
of how Israel has chosen to define the term democracy). The “demography”
narrative greatly impacts and shapes how Israel understands the legitimacy of its
democracy. It is clear that there needs to be a Jewish majority, which lies
anywhere between the range of 50-75 percent, or else Israel the nation can no
longer imagine itself as a legitimate democracy. At this point the Jewish state
would collapse leaving a Palestinian-Israeli binational state. The possibility of
this occurrence is why we see so many Israeli resources – political, intellectual,
social, economic and religious – poured into avoiding this doomsday scenario.
There is also the “State of Israel” narrative that underlies the entire
foundation and justification for the state’s existence. The strong reaction we see
to demographic trends shows the great potential for this narrative to undermine
the “State of Israel” narrative. Out of the many articles I read in Haaretz
between 2000 and 2005, I believe the following lines best capture the

124

importance of the “demography” narrative to Jewish-Israelis and its larger
“State of Israel” narrative:
The key phrase in the Israeli experience is “a Jewish majority.”
Israelis will do anything - wage war or make peace - to
maintain a Jewish majority and preserve the Israeli tribal
bonfire. After all, Jews came here to establish a Jewish state
and they will not allow anything to undermine its Jewish
character. In the race to this lofty ideal, there is no difference
between secular and religious Jews - they all aspire to
perpetuate Israel’s Jewish character. And how do you do that?
By perpetuating Israel’s Jewish majority. Demography is
emerging as the central force behind the Jewish majority: Ideas
evaporate, beliefs collapse and ideologies become more
moderate in order to meet demographic constraints.
107

107
Daniel Ben Simon, “The Majority Rules – But Which Majority?” Haaretz, Septermber 3,
2004.

125
Chapter 2
Power Dynamics and Performances at the Ulpan

Most people in Israel learn about the Israeli “demography” narrative –
and any other Israeli narrative of the nation – in private where they read
newspapers, listen to the radio or watch the news on television. In this private
context, there is a unidirectional flow of narrative information from the
authoritative position of the media to listeners and readers. As a result, the
narrative information often goes uncontested. Once the narrative information
is conveyed, listeners and readers often incorporate the narrative information
into their preexisting beliefs about a narrative of the nation fairly
unproblematically. This is because in private there is no one to contest the
readers’ or listeners’ interpretation processes of the narrative information.
When a person learns about narratives of the nation in public, though, a
very different process occurs. The narrative information no longer only flows
in a unidirectional manner. There are often multiple sources of narrative
information with each source having different levels of authority to convey the
narrative information. In this context, people are forced out of the passive role
of reader or listener and become more active participants in the production of
meaning of a narrative of the nation – both for themselves and others. This
process has two important effects. Multiple and often contradictory sources of

126
narrative information cause narratives of the nation to become highly contested
in public discussions. These discussions make assimilating narratives of the
nation into preexisting belief systems a far more problematic process.
How this process plays out within individual discussions is highly
dependent upon the particular power relations within each social context. In
the specific context of the ulpan classroom, many power dynamics –
institutional and others specific to my ulpan class – impact how narratives of
the nation are constructed, conveyed and assimilated.
As part of a broader study of institutional power, Foucault discussed the
importance of education institutions. Foucault saw teaching and standardized
education as a way of attempting to coerce people to become “Normal”
subjects of society (Foucault 1977:184). In order to accomplish this, education
institutions use their power to authorize what students are supposed to learn. In
the specific case of Israel, the Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture is the
institution responsible for creating a curriculum for the ulpan program that
effectively teaches students the Hebrew language. Beyond the Hebrew
curriculum, though, The Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture produces
what Apple (1979) termed a “hidden curriculum” that not only attempts to
educate the new Israeli immigrant students but to socialize them into Israeli
society (Doleve-Gandelman 1989:128). The Ministry of Education and Culture
then hires specific ulpan teachers who can transmit all of this information
effectively to the students. Once in the classroom, the ulpan teacher has an

127
asymmetrical power relationship with his or her students (the teacher leads
discussions, authorizes what can and cannot be discussed, is deemed an expert,
etc.). The most important way power is deployed by the ulpan teacher is by
controlling discussions about Israeli narratives of the nation.
In addition to these more institutionalized forms of power found at all
ulpanim, there was a unique power dynamic that existed in the specific ulpan
that I attended. There were not only new Israeli immigrant students in our
ulpan but Palestinian students as well. This meant that the various kinds of
information that the Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture was hoping to
transmit about Israel had a higher likelihood of becoming contested. Further
adding complexity to the power dynamics in the ulpan classroom were the
preexisting power relations between Palestinians and Israelis outside the
classroom.
Previous anthropological works on ulpanim have not explicitly focused
on issues of power, however, some have made reference to the varying power
dynamics. In Doleve-Gandelman’s (1989) article, institutional power forced
new Jewish Ethiopian immigrants to attend their ulpan course and live in the
same compound as the ulpan in order to collect their stipends. Golden’s (2001)
article showed how Russian students were subverted by the ulpan teacher when
they attempted to present a competing narrative about the Israeli government’s
role in the Israeli-Lebanese conflict in 1982. Golden’s article is of particular

128
importance to my work because it subtly called attention to the fact that ulpan
teachers deploy power during performances of Israeli narratives of the nation.
One might wonder exactly what is meant by the term “performance” in
the context of ordinary ulpan classroom discussions. The kinds of rhetorical
performances that occurred at the ulpan were not the symbolic or aesthetic
performances to which Turner (1979) was referring – those that we more
commonly think about when we witness rituals or theatrical performances.
Instead, they are the kinds of performances that Goffman (1959) thought of as
performances of everyday life. In these everyday performances, the focus is on
“the expressive processes of impression management, strategic maneuver and
regulated improvisation through which human beings ongoingly articulate their
purposes and relationships in normal social existence” (Schieffelin 1996:60).
As opposed to ritual and aesthetic performances, these performances of
everyday life begin as ordinary conversations and then undergo “a
breakthrough into performance” (Hymes 1975) as they shift to a performance
that calls attention to itself as an object of appreciation (Schieffelin 1996:61).
When Israeli narratives of the nation enter the ulpan discourse, they are
most often discussed without extending into the sphere of performances. In
these situations, the ulpan teacher introduces an Israeli narrative of the nation
as part of the Hebrew lesson, the narrative goes uncontested, and the class
continues forward into the next discussion. On some occasions, though, the
Israeli narratives of the nation become more fully engaged when a student

129
contests the narrative. When this happens, the discussion is transformed into a
performance. Whether it is a class discussion or performance, power plays a
tremendous role in shaping the conversations in the ulpan classroom. As will
be shown, the varying power dynamics serve to control performances and
discussions so that they are most likely to yield favorable interpretations of
Israeli narratives of the nation.
Kirmayer’s (2000) article about a contentious psychotherapy session
serves as an instructive way to approach the question of how power works
during performances. Kirmayer examines how various ”voices,” or what he
refers to as “a heteroglossia” (2000:157) – such as institutional power,
language, and the inherent power differential between therapist and patient –
limit the construction of a narrative during performances in therapeutic
sessions. Similar power dynamics are at work in institutions of education. For
example, institutional power, in the form of the Israeli Ministry of Education
and Culture’s curriculum, imposes control over the kinds of narratives of the
nation that are permitted to be discussed during classroom performances.
Further, since the students’ language proficiency in Hebrew is not nearly as
good as the teachers’ proficiency, the teacher has an overwhelming advantage
over students when it comes to constructing narratives of the nation. Finally,
the power differential between teacher and students allows her to be the default
authority when constructing (or authorizing) narratives of the nation during
performances in the classroom.

130

This chapter is an exploration of these and other power dynamics that
impact performances of narratives of the nation in the context of the ulpan. I
first explore the ethnographic scene at the ulpan by presenting a wide variety of
structural and functional aspects of the ulpan program, in addition to details
about the specific program I attended. I then examine how various power
dynamics outside the setting of the ulpan impact performances before they
begin. Issues external to the ulpan, such as economic security and Palestinian-
Israeli relations, greatly impact a student’s ability to perform at the ulpan. In
the next section of the chapter, I look at the various power dynamics at work
inside the ulpan classroom that impact performances. To do this, I examine the
complex power dynamics between the Israeli ulpan teacher, the new Israeli
immigrant students, and the Palestinians, Palestinians from East Jerusalem and
Palestinian citizens of Israel. Finally, I will consider how Palestinians deploy
the strategies of silence and secrets during performances as a form of resistance

The Ulpan
An Israeli ulpan is a course designed to teach new adult Israeli
immigrants the Hebrew language.
1
There are four different kinds of ulpanim
(plural for ulpan) found throughout Israel: a residential ulpan where people live
and study Hebrew; a kibbutz ulpan where people not only live and study
Hebrew but also work; a youth ulpan designed for younger immigrants who

1
Ulpan is a term that is derived from the Hebrew root alef, meaning to instruct or train.

131

cannot attend Israeli schools; and a daily ulpan where students attend classes at
prescribed times on a regular basis (Haramati 1966:527-528).
There are four levels of the ulpan curriculum – “alef,” “bet,” “gimmel,”
and “dalet-hey.”
2
Each level runs for eight to ten weeks (depending upon
whether Jewish holidays take away from class time) during which students are
required to be in class twenty-five hours per week. In the first level, students
learn how to read Hebrew letters and basic vocabulary that relates to day-to-
day life as well as basic communication skills. During the second level, a focus
is placed on studying Hebrew’s complex verbal system. In the third and fourth
levels “communication in writing is taught…In this stage, too, the ‘latent
vocabulary’ (words understood from hearing and reading) is greatly enriched
(Haramati 1996:530).” Alternatively, one can take a five-month, twenty-five
hour per week course that encompasses everything that is taught in ulpan alef,
bet and gimmel (Woolf 2005).
Ulpanim are not simply places where students are taught the Hebrew
language. They are also used by the Israeli state to indoctrinate new Israeli
immigrants into Israeli society by teaching them about its history, economy,
social norms, politics, and basics of the Jewish religion. According to the
Ministry of Education in Israel, “[t]he declared aim of the ulpan is to impart a

2
“Alef” is the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. “Bet” the second, “Gimmel” the third,
“Dalet” the fourth and “Hey” the fifth. Similar to the Roman numeral system, Hebrew letters
also have a numerical value. “Alef” is one, “Bet” two, “Gimmel” three, “Dalet” four and “Hey”
five.

132
knowledge of the Hebrew language, disseminate Jewish cultural values and
educate towards good citizenship (Haramati 1966:526).” The ulpan contributes
“to the process of national consolidation – molding the newcomers from many
and different lands into a united homogenous society (Haramati 1996:534).”
The Ministry’s desire until the 1970s to create a “melting pot” at the ulpan
(suggested by the statement “homogenous society”) eventually gave way to the
idea of “cultural pluralism” as it became more clear that ethnic groups wanted
to maintain some part of their native identity as they assimilated into Israeli
society (Adler 1997). Either way, the ulpan has always been a place where the
Israeli state is interested in creating “national consolidation” for the new Israeli
immigrants. The ulpan, as a place that teaches Hebrew, is an ideal place to
promote Israeli national consolidation because language, as Eriksen has pointed
out, is “a powerful symbol of cultural unity” (Eriksen 1993:103). Most of the
ethnographic studies conducted on ulpanim (Doleve-Gandelman 1989; Golden
2001; Katz 1982; Selwyn 1986) emphasize this process of national
consolidation.
Approximately fifty percent of ulpanim are funded by the Jewish
Agency, a worldwide Jewish organization founded in 1922 that collects funds
for the development of Israel. Even though the Jewish Agency provides half of
the money for ulpanim, the Division of Adult Education within the Ministry of
Education and Culture takes full responsibility for supervising the pedagogical
elements of the program – “hiring and supervising instructors, development of

133
curricula and learning materials, evaluation of student achievement, and
awarding graduation certificates (Aviad and Peretz 2003:30)” – as well as the
collection of tuition from students. To help ensure that as many new Israeli
immigrants as possible attend the ulpan, a fellowship is provided that includes
full tuition for 500 hours of Hebrew study as well as a modest living stipend for
half a year. For many new Jewish citizens, these incentives are not only useful
in assisting them to learn Hebrew, they provide needed financial support while
they are looking for jobs and establishing their lives in their new home country.
Since the state of Israel was declared in 1948, many new Israeli citizens
have attended ulpanim. It is estimated that 100,000 new Jewish immigrants
attended ulpanim courses between 1949, when the first ulpan was started, and
1955 (Avidor 1957:123). Between 1990 and 1995, an estimated 65,000-80,000
new Israeli immigrant adults attended ulpanim every year (Horowitz and
Leshem 1998:308-309). In all, over one million new Israeli immigrants have
attended ulpanim (Aviad and Peretz 2003:30). With such large numbers of
people studying at the ulpan, it is clear that the Israeli Ministry of Education
and Culture has great potential to influence how new Israeli immigrants view
many different aspects of Israeli society.
Most new Israeli immigrants know little to no Hebrew upon their
arrival in Israel. The new Israeli immigrants who do have some background in
Modern Hebrew generally do not have enough of a command of the language
to communicate with any sophistication. In addition to teaching Hebrew, the

134

ulpan is a space that allows Jews with diverse cultural backgrounds to become
educated about Israeli culture, religious norms and social norms. In
discussions at the ulpan, new Israeli immigrants learn how they are generally
perceived by Jewish-Israelis. In Israel, Jews from the West, referred to as
Ashkenazim,
3
generally have higher status than Jews from the East, referred to
as Sephardim or Mizrahim
4
(Dominguez 1989). Jews who immigrate for
idealistic purposes – meaning they are deeply committed to the project of
Israeli state-building – are generally more appreciated than Jews who
immigrate primarily for economic reasons.
In addition to learning about Israeli cultural norms, religious Jews from
different parts of the world need to learn how the Jewish religion is practiced in
Israel. Jewish practices around the world vary greatly from one country to
another and immigrants must learn the specifics about the practice of Orthodox
Judaism in Israel.
5
Many new Jewish immigrants actively seek to learn these
Israeli cultural and religious practices and therefore embrace the attempts at
assimilation that occur at the ulpan.

3
Ashkenazim refers to Jews who originated from central and Eastern Europe. They are
officially referred to as “Kehilot Ashkenaz, ‘the communities of Central/Eastern Europe (Lavie
1996:58).’” Today, the term refers to Jews from Western countries such as the United States,
Canada, and the European countries.
4
Mizrahim means “Easterners” or “Orientals” in Hebrew. “The official government term for
them is ‘descendents from Asia-Africa’ (Yotzei Asia-Africa), or ‘Edot Hamizrah, ‘bands of the
Orient’ (Lavie 1996:58).” Sephardim, literally meaning Jews from the Sephard [Spain] in
Hebrew, is the apolitical term employed by this group of people.
5
This is not to suggest that there is one homogenous form of Judaism in Israel. Still, there are
some Jewish practices taught at the ulpan which are highly specific to Judaism in Israel.

135
Another important reason why new Jewish immigrants take the ulpan
course is to build up various kinds of social and economic networks. In fact,
this is one of the primary functions of the ulpan according to the Israeli
Ministry of Education (Haramati 1966). This most effectively works when an
individual ulpan gets a reputation for attracting certain groups of immigrants.
Ulpan Akiva in Jerusalem, for example, has a reputation for having many
Russian immigrants (although there are some non-Russians in this ulpan as
well). Once the reputation at a place such as Ulpan Akiva is established, it
attracts increasingly more Russian students. Anytime a new Russian student
joins Ulpan Akiva, that student has the benefit of learning from the experiences
of other Russian students who have had more time to transition into Israeli
society. As part of the networking, students in the ulpan courses also make
efforts to help one another find jobs.
In addition, the ulpan is a place where people can commiserate about
the difficulty of transitioning into Israeli society. Common bonding
conversation includes how “rude” Israelis are, how difficult it is to find good
jobs, and political conversations about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When an
ulpan is attended by many students from the same country, they are able to
communicate outside of class in their native tongue. People often speak about
the close bonds that are formed among students during the ulpan course.
My research was conducted in a daily ulpan in Jerusalem called Beit
Ha’am (House of the Nation). One of the primary reasons I chose this specific

136

ulpan is because, unlike other ulpanim in Israel that are attended only by new
Israeli immigrants, this one had a sizeable group of students who were either
Palestinian, Palestinians from East Jerusalem or Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The main reasons why Palestinian students attended this public ulpan were
because it was relatively inexpensive compared to the private ulpanim in
Jerusalem, it was secular,
6
and because it was the closest ulpan to East
Jerusalem.
7
The presence of Palestinians in addition to new Israelis in the
ulpan created a rich environment to observe the many dynamics of power at
play.
Language instruction was extremely intensive at Beit Ha’am, with
students required to attend classes twenty-five hours per week as well as
commit to another two to three hours per day studying Hebrew at home. Since
I had some background in Modern Hebrew, I placed into the bet, or second
level, at the ulpan and continued studying up through the final dalet-hey level.
After a group finishes one level of Hebrew instruction at an ulpan, everyone
who is ready to progress moves together to the next level class creating a sense
of continuity. I studied with roughly the same group of students while
attending bet and gimmel and then went to a new ulpan with a few of my
classmates for the dalet-hey course.

6
Many of the ulpanim in Jerusalem have religious teachers and students. With an extra focus
on Judaism, this would not have been an ideal place for Muslim and Christian Palestinians to
study Hebrew.
7
In Jerusalem, many Palestinian citizens of Israel live in East Jerusalem. Also, before the
beginning of the second intifada (Palestinian uprising), the easiest way to travel into Israel
from the main city in the West Bank in Palestine, Ramallah, was through East Jerusalem.

137
The Beit Ha’am ulpan course level bet was fairly structured. We would
first sit down and discuss in Hebrew what the students did during the preceding
evening. We would then listen, write down, and translate five minutes of tape
recorded radio news to practice our writing and listening skills. Afterwards, we
would go over homework assignments from our ulpan textbook. The focus
here was on writing, building new vocabulary, and understanding Hebrew
grammar. We would then take a thirty minute break where students bought
coffee at a machine right outside the ulpan building and socialized. When we
returned to the class, we would read an Israeli newspaper, watch news, or listen
to recorded tapes about Israeli culture and history. After this, we would have a
class discussion about what we had just studied. In between these exercises,
students would frequently ask the ulpan teacher’s advice about how to deal
with problems they faced as they adapted to Israeli society. Whenever
conversations like these occurred, the other students were encouraged to join in
with their own comments in Hebrew. According to one of our ulpan teachers,
this was a good way to break up our ordinary routine.
I chose to conduct my research in the Beit Ha’am ulpan, in part,
because it is an ideal environment to study how power plays a role in the
shaping of performances and Israeli and Palestinian narratives of the nation. It
is a contested space where Israeli narratives of the nation are presented to a
group of students who are either highly supportive of these narratives or highly
critical of them. Every day, we read an Israeli newspaper, listened to the radio

138
in Hebrew or discussed the ideological content in our Hebrew textbooks. Once
a week, we would listen to an audio cassette tape that taught us about Israeli
historical narratives. Sometimes, we would watch Israeli news, television
shows or movies. Since Palestinians, Palestinians from East Jerusalem and
Palestinian citizens of Israel were in this class, Israeli narratives of the nation
were often contested. The power relations in this highly contentious social
space often dictated how a performance would proceed and what kinds of
narratives of the nation would emerge.
In my first ulpan class, Rachael was the teacher. She was a native
Israeli from West Jerusalem and considered herself to be extremely liberal. As
proof of this, Rachael often said that she read Haaretz. She had a very strong-
willed personality and all the students respected her for this. Rachael’s strong
will at times fostered some of the tensest discussions between the Palestinian
and new Israeli immigrant students. My second ulpan class was taught by
Hannah. Hannah was also a native Israeli. She was interested in the arts and
often provided us with Israeli art as a basis in which to do our work. Hannah
did her best to avoid all conflicts between the Palestinian and new Israeli
immigrant students. My last class was taught by Leah. Leah was from the
former Soviet Union and truly loved Israel. As a Jew living in the Soviet
Union, her childhood dream was to move to Israel. Once she was able to make
aliyah she immediately wanted to become an ulpan teacher in order to give
back to Israel. By the time we entered Leah’s dalet-hey class, everyone could

139
express themselves in Hebrew quite clearly. This was most likely the reason
why arguments about narratives of the nation in this class were extensive and
heated.
In my first ulpan course, there was an almost equal mix of Palestinian
and new Israeli immigrant students. Out of the twenty-five students, three were
living in Palestine, five were from East Jerusalem and two were from the Old
City of Jerusalem. Of the new Israeli students, six were from the United States,
two from Russia, two from England, one from Argentina, one from South
Africa and the other from China. There were also two Christian students in the
class – one from Russia and a Jewish woman from the United States who had
converted. All of the new Israeli immigrants and Christian students were living
in various sections of West Jerusalem. In my second ulpan course, the ratio of
Palestinian to new Israeli immigrant students dropped dramatically. The three
students from Palestine no longer attended. Three Palestinians from East
Jerusalem stopped attending as well. However, we did get two new students
from the Old City in Jerusalem. All of the other students, except for the
Russian Christian continued as well. Since Beit Ha’am did not have a higher
level course, the students who wanted to continue their studies in Hebrew had
to go to Ulpan Beit Ha-noar Ha’ivri (House of the Hebrew Youth). Only three
of the Palestinian students and five of the new Israeli immigrant students from
Beit Ha’am went with me to this new ulpan. The rest of the students in the
new class were all new Israeli immigrants.

140

Beit Ha’am was part of a larger Israeli college that was located right
outside the center of West Jerusalem. The central location made it attractive to
students from both West Jerusalem and East Jerusalem since it was relatively
easy to get to. There were several floors of classrooms each looking relatively
similar to a typical high school classroom found in the United States. Each
classroom contained approximately twenty seats. Beit Ha-noar Ha’ivri was
located inside a YMHA (Young Men’s Hebrew Association).
8
This ulpan was
located in the neighborhood of Katamon which was approximately a twenty
minute bus ride from the Jerusalem city center. This location was far more
difficult for students to reach from East Jerusalem and we therefore had very
few students who were not new Israeli immigrants in our class. The physical
classrooms were larger in this ulpan than they were at Beit Ha’am but there
were fewer students.

How Power Impacts Performances before They Begin
Power dynamics between Israelis and Palestinians played a pivotal role
in how performances of Israeli narratives of the nation in the ulpan would
occur even before they actually began. In order to effectively participate,
people needed to prepare for these performances. For a variety of reasons,
though, preparing for performances of narratives of the nation could not always
be a student’s highest priority – be they Jewish, Palestinian, Palestinians from

8
The YMHA in Israel is similar to YMCA in the United States.

141

East Jerusalem or Palestinian citizen of Israel. In addition to the time spent in
the ulpan, students had to spend much of their time trying to find a job.
Further, Palestinian students’ everyday experiences in Israel affected their
desire to participate in ulpan performances. Daily experiences of
discrimination, negative interactions with Israeli police, and frequent
intimidation decreased their incentive to actively engage in the ulpan
conversations. The conjunction of these different experiences, along with other
historical aspects of Israel-Palestinian power dynamics, often pushed
Palestinian students into a mode of silence.
9

***************************************************************
Since yesterday’s class, I have been thinking about a discussion we had
that really upset me. Michael [one of the new Israeli immigrant students]
argued that the IDF were justified in killing a Palestinian girl because she was
playing too closely to the military’s checkpoint. Michael went on to say that
Palestinian parents should never allow their children to play in dangerous areas.
Rachael [our ulpan teacher] seemed to concur with Michael. When the
Palestinian students remained silent, I decided to try to challenge what Michael
said. Using the best argument skills I could muster (with my underdeveloped
Hebrew), I tried to make a sophisticated argument about how the IDF’s
presence in the Palestinian area was the catalyst for the shooting in the first

9
Throughout the rest of this work, I will use portions taken directly from my fieldnotes to
describe what I witnessed. A line of asterisks denotes the beginning and the end of the
fieldnote excerpt.

142
place. Unfortunately, as I was trying to make my argument, I had to frequently
pause to think of the correct words in Hebrew. During some of these pauses,
Rachael cut me off and started arguing against my incomplete points. The
whole experience was incredibly frustrating. On my walk to the ulpan today, I
decided to prepare my arguments in Hebrew just in case this conversation came
up again. Unfortunately, it did not happen. Still, there is a chance something
like this will come up again in the future, and if it does I will be better
prepared.
***************************************************************
Every day at the ulpan, we spent at least some time engaging in
political discussions about current events in Israel and Palestine. I quickly
learned that for me to be an active participant in these discussions and an
effective arguer, I needed to try to formulate my arguments in Hebrew before
the class began. My Hebrew proficiency in the first month and a half of my
research was simply not on a high enough level to make basic political
arguments in the context of spontaneous performances. At first, most of the
preparatory work I did was not terribly useful. There was no possible way for
me to prepare for every political discussion we had since they all required
different vocabulary as well as a sophisticated understanding of the different
issues. However, over a relatively short period of time, as my Hebrew
improved and as I started to understand the issues better, all the preparation I

143
did allowed me to participate more meaningfully in the performances at the
ulpan.
It was a luxury that I was able to spend so much time thinking about
and preparing for the ulpan classes. As a graduate student on a fellowship
living in a rent-free apartment courtesy of my uncle, I had no concerns about
financial resources while I was living in Jerusalem. I was able to devote all of
my time to studying Hebrew and conducting my research. Other students in
the class had far more difficult circumstances than me. For most of the new
Israeli immigrant students who had recently arrived in Israel, getting a job was
their primary concern – not preparing for political discussions at the ulpan. It
did not matter whether the students had originated from richer or poorer
countries. Most new Israeli immigrants moved to Israel without jobs or
prospects for finding jobs and needed to get them quickly just to be able to
survive.
In all of my ulpan classes, the Jewish students were already
professionals or planning to attend Israeli universities to become professionals.
This raised their expectations about the kinds of jobs they hoped to eventually
get in Israel. Still, establishing oneself professionally is extremely difficult at
first. A world-class flautist from Argentina who had lived in Israel for four
months had to start playing weddings and bar-mitzvahs in order to make
enough money to survive. A Russian student with a Ph.D. in history could not
realistically consider becoming an academic in Israel until his Hebrew

144
improved dramatically. In the meantime, he had to wash dishes at a hotel ten
hours a day in order to earn enough money to survive. A dentist from the
United States decided to enlist in the army as a strategy for creating a network
of future clients. His wife was a lawyer. She hoped to get a job as a paralegal
until she learned enough Hebrew to become an Israeli lawyer. Most every day
at the ulpan, people talked about how their job search was going or how a job
interview had gone. Having to prioritize finding a job left the Jewish students
with less time to study Hebrew and prepare for the political discussions we
inevitably were going to have in the next day’s class. Frequently, Rachael
would chastise the students for not spending enough time preparing for class.
During our breaks, though, the students were quick to complain about
Rachael’s chastising. They really wanted to be better prepared for class but the
financial pressures were simply overwhelming and demanded their
prioritization.
For the older Palestinian students at the ulpan, their financial concerns
are far more complicated than those of the Jewish students because the
Palestinian students face barriers of entry into the Israeli workforce. These
barriers arise as early as when a person is ready to begin their advanced
education. When Palestinians who reside in East Jerusalem want to go to
university, they often have to go overseas as a result of being “very poorly
represented in [Israeli] higher-education institutions (Swirski and Swirski

145

1998:19).”
10
Also, according to one of the Palestinian ulpan students who
lived in East Jerusalem, they have a more difficult time getting into Israeli
universities because they are not Israeli citizens.
11
Instead, they go to Eastern
European countries to get a professional education. The older Palestinians
from East Jerusalem I met in my ulpan class were trained doctors, lawyers,
dentists or engineers. Still, once they returned to East Jerusalem from their
universities, they faced a difficult choice: either take a job in East Jerusalem or
the West Bank where they would earn far less money than they would in Israel,
or attempt to find a job in Israel where they would face discrimination in their
job searches and then face further discrimination if they were fortunate to find
a job.
For Palestinian citizens of Israel who do not attend Israeli universities,
there was a requirement to study Hebrew and earn a Hebrew certificate at an
ulpan in order to have a chance at getting a job in Israel.
12
This seemed
completely unnecessary since their proficiency in Hebrew was far greater than
the new Israeli immigrants at our ulpan. Rachael later told me that the
Palestinian students must go the ulpan because their reading and writing

10
The following statistical data support this claim: “in 1992/93, Arabs’ representation in the
student body decreased to 5.3 percent while their share in the age group was 21.7 percent
(Swirski and Swirski 1989:19).”
11
Unlike other Palestinians citizens of Israel, many of the Palestinians living in East Jerusalem
do not have Israeli citizenship. Instead, they have “permanent resident” status in Israel.
12
Since my fieldwork, I have received conflicting information about the extent to which this is
true. It seems that people can get jobs but not as much training and pay: “The graduation
certificate from ulpan provides several tangible benefits. It is a prerequisite for admission into
advanced courses in Hebrew language instruction and vocational retraining programs. It also
grants public servants six months seniority (Aviad and Peretz 2003:32).”

146
abilities are at such a low level. Still, this still did not seem fair. For the few
new Israeli immigrants who were fortunate enough to have secured a job before
their arrival in Israel, they were not forced to go an ulpan – regardless of their
proficiency in Hebrew. It was assumed that they knew enough Hebrew to get
by and then would quickly learn more as they integrated into Israeli society. It
seemed to me that the older Palestinian students from East Jerusalem could
have just as easily been granted the same treatment.
These different forms of discrimination had an impact on how the older
Palestinian students engaged the ulpan class. Even though the older Palestinian
students spoke Hebrew quite well, they told me that they did not want to
participate in ulpan discussions because they were unhappy that they needed to
be there in the first place. One student told me that he could not understand
why he had to waste so much time and money to study at the ulpan when he
was already fluent in Hebrew. Another student told me that he resented the
discrimination he faced – on the job market and in other sectors of Israeli
society – and that he felt uncomfortable speaking up around Israelis because of
this discrimination.
Like the older Palestinian students, the younger Palestinian students
also learned Hebrew in order to advance professionally and financially in
Israeli society. In my ulpan class, a number of the young Palestinian students
were hoping to get into Hebrew University in East Jerusalem or the Technion
in Haifa. There were also a few young Palestinian students who were

147
sophomores or juniors at universities in the United States. They were
preparing for their permanent return to East Jerusalem by taking Hebrew at the
ulpan each summer. Once they graduated, they could immediately begin their
job searches in Israel without the worry of not having the proper Hebrew
certification. There was one Palestinian-American student living in Ramallah
who needed to learn enough Hebrew so that he could be accepted into a dental
school in Tel Aviv. Some of the other young Palestinian students learned
Hebrew so that they could work in Israeli businesses. A number of the students
worked at the West Jerusalem McDonalds or at other local restaurants and
stores and were required to learn more Hebrew in order to get promoted.
Unlike the older Palestinian students, though, younger Palestinian
students were at a similar Hebrew proficiency level to the new Israeli
immigrants. While these Palestinian students had more time to prepare for
performances at the ulpan than most of the other students, they still did not
participate regularly. When I asked two of the students why they did not join
in, they told me that they were so busy preparing their homework that they did
not have enough time to prepare for the political discussions. However, I
believe that, like the older Palestinian students, many of the younger
Palestinians were unwilling to participate because they felt a great deal of
discrimination whenever they interacted with Israelis. This made them feel
uncomfortable about speaking out at the ulpan.

148
An altogether different aspect of power dynamics between Palestinians
and Israelis that impacted our ulpan discussions and performances before they
began were the fairly routine interactions Palestinians had with Israeli police.
These interactions would make Palestinians students late for class or even force
them to stop attending the ulpan altogether. The fewer Palestinian students
attending class, the less likely our discussion and performances of Israeli
narratives of the nation would be contested.
***************************************************************
During break today, Yussef [a male Palestinian citizen of Israel] asked
me where I live. I told him I was living in Beit Ha’Kerem, which is about two
kilometers away from the ulpan. I then asked him where he lives. He
responded that he lives in East Jerusalem. Somehow, our conversation quickly
turned into a discussion about how we each traveled to the ulpan. I told him
that on days that I need to get extra homework done, I will usually take a public
bus. On other days, I like to walk since it’s not too far away. On those days, I
get to practice learning Hebrew words and prepare for class discussions.
Yussef said I should consider myself lucky that I can walk to the ulpan without
any hassle. He told me that he often gets harassed by Israeli police on his way
to school. I didn’t understand what he meant so I asked how he got harassed.
Apparently, Israeli police regularly stopped Yussef in his car at flying

149

checkpoints
13
and randomly on Israeli buses. Most of the time, this was just a
minor nuisance to him. However, there have been a few times when he has
been stopped and was not allowed to continue until he was questioned by the
police. In fact, ever since the beginning of the second intifada he no longer is
willing to ride on Israeli buses because the bus drivers and passengers give him
dirty looks and he is far more likely to get pulled out of a bus by police than out
of his car.
***************************************************************
As the political situation became more contentious and violent during
the course of my research in 2001, Palestinian students increasingly came late
to class. The male Palestinian students from East Jerusalem and Jerusalem’s
Old City were frequently stopped by Israeli police and these encounters often
took a long time. As part of their interrogation tactics, I later learned, the
Israeli police would pull Palestinians aside – whether they were on Israeli buses
or in their cars – and begin their interaction by taking away their identification
cards.
14
While inspecting the card, Palestinians were asked questions such as
“why are you here?” “where are you going?” “when will you be coming back?”
and “do you live in Jerusalem?” Sometimes the delay would extend as the

13
A flying checkpoint is a temporary roadblock set up by Israeli authorities in order to check
Palestinians at random times and at random places. They are set up without warning and
remain active for an unspecified length of time.
14
The Israeli identification card (teudat zehut) identifies Palestinian citizens of Israel as
“Arab.” Israel’s Jewish citizens are identified as “Jew.” All Israeli residents – including
Palestinian citizens of Israel who live in Jerusalem – over sixteen years old are required to
carry this identity card with them at all times.

150

police repeated questions that had already been answered. After receiving
responses to these questions, the police would usually let the Palestinians pass.
On some occasions, though, they would take the identification cards and walk
away for a few minutes. The police might then talk to a supervisor over a radio
or simply hold on to the identification cards while continuing their inspection
work, making the Palestinians wait for an amount of time that was difficult to
predict. The police were looking for signs of nervousness. Occasionally, if the
questions were not answered in a way the Israeli police officers thought
satisfactory, they would take away a person’s identification card and take him
somewhere for further questioning. For Palestinians from East Jerusalem or
Jerusalem’s Old City, then, these interactions with the Israeli police would
often make them late for class.
There were also Palestinian students from the Palestinian cities of
Ramallah and Beit Lehem (Bethlehem) as well as the town of Beit Jala
15
who
had to travel into Israel to get to the ulpan in West Jerusalem. These places are
not too far away from West Jerusalem and under less tense political
circumstances it would take twenty minutes or so to travel the distance. After
the second intifada began, though, the trip to West Jerusalem became far more
difficult, time-consuming and dangerous. First, the Palestinians who were
allowed to enter Israel were forced to go through Israeli military checkpoints.

15
Beit Jala is a predominantly Palestinian-Christian town that borders with a town in southern
Jerusalem called Gilo. Gilo is considered occupied territory by the Palestinians and was thus
an intense flashpoint for violence in the first year of the intifada.

151
There were also the flying checkpoints that the IDF would randomly set up on
main roadways in and around Palestinian cities. When a young Palestinian
man arrived at a checkpoint, it was impossible to predict how long it would
take for him to pass through. It might take an hour or a few hours. On some
occasions it would be impossible to pass a checkpoint for days or even weeks.
Over the time I was attending the ulpan, Israel continually increased
restrictions upon the movement of Palestinians by setting up military checkpoints in
response to the second intifada. Tariq, the male Palestinian-American student who
lived in Ramallah, was thought of very highly by the ulpan teacher since he was a
serious student and always came to class on time with his homework completed.
However, as a result of the checkpoints, Tariq came to class late increasingly more
often. Since Rachael made a habit of berating tardy students, his more frequent late
arrivals became moments of extreme awkwardness. The first day Tariq was late,
Rachael asked him to explain his tardiness. He said he was sorry to be late but that
he had been stuck at a checkpoint since 6 am. He was not permitted to pass through
it until 9 am. The next that time Tariq was late, Rachael again asked him why he
was late. He gave the same reason. Not too long after that, Tariq stopped attending
the ulpan altogether. The Jewish students in the class later learned from other
Palestinian students who spoke to Tariq that Ramallah had been put into a perpetual
state of lockdown. For weeks, almost no one was allowed in or out of the city.
When Palestinian students are stopped by Israeli police or military
officials making them late to the ulpan (or forced to stop attending altogether),

152

their voices become silenced. When George was late because he was stopped
by an Israeli policeman on a bus, the class lost the opportunity to see how his
contribution would have shaped our discussion or performance. When Tariq
could no longer attend the ulpan because he was stuck indefinitely in
Ramallah, his voice was permanently lost. The impact of this loss was
palpable to everyone in the class, including Rachael. She lamented a few times
how less spirited our discussions were without some of the Palestinian students.
Perhaps an even more important reason why Palestinians were forced
into silence during ulpan discussions and performances, though, was because
of the various incidents of Israeli intimidation that Palestinians experience
throughout their lives. A Palestinian citizen of Israel named Muhammad once
told me a story about a confrontation he had with an Israeli policeman. He was
taking a “Ford” from East Jerusalem to the Old City
16
and, as happens not
infrequently, an Israeli policeman pulled over the van and asked to see all the
passengers’ identification cards. For some reason, [according to Muhammad]
the policeman did not like Muhammad and began to slap him. Muhammad did
not protest the mild beating and after it was over the Ford was allowed to
continue on its normal route. I asked Muhammad why he did not report the
unwarranted abuse to Israeli authorities. While laughing, Muhammad told me
that there is no point in talking to them. At best, the Israeli authorities would

16
Palestinians in East Jerusalem use the Arabic word “Ford” to describe the Ford vans that are
used as group taxis in East Jerusalem. The Fords are used because there is no public
transportation.

153

not help him and just let him go. At worst, he would find himself in even
deeper trouble. This experience, and many other experiences I heard similar to
this one, teaches Palestinians to remain silent if they want to avoid conflict with
Israeli authorities. I believe that this practice of remaining silent was carried
into our classroom discussions.
The various forms of Palestinian silencing discussed thus far need to be
understood in the larger context of historical Israeli efforts to silence the
Palestinian collective. Palestinians who live in Israel are not legally referred to
as “Palestinians,” as many Palestinians would surely prefer, but as “Arabs.”
This is an attempt to “silence the link which Palestinians have to the[ir]
disputed homeland (Rabinowitz 1997:12).” After Israel was victorious in the
1948 War of Independence/Palestinian Disaster,
17
an intensive effort was made
at Judaicizing the land by changing the names of towns, geographical spaces,
and roads from their original Arabic names into Hebrew names (Benvenisti
2000). In the Clandestine Immigration and Naval Museum in Haifa, Israel’s
independence was depicted as a battle won against the British while almost no
mention was made of Palestinians. In fact, the British mandate in Palestine
ended only to a small extent because of the battles it had with the Jews of
Palestine. The more important reason is that they could no longer contain the

17
I draw attention to the different naming of historical events by Palestinians and Israelis to
show the contested nature of these historical narratives.

154
brewing conflict between Palestinians and Jews over whose national
aspirations would be realized in Palestine.
By the summer of 1947, both the British administrators in
Palestine and weary officials in London concluded that the
cost of imposing a solution on Arabs and Jews - in terms of
material resources, world opinion, and the sentiment of Arab
state leaders - was simply too high. (Kimmerling and Migdal
2002:136)

These are only three of the many historical examples of Israel silencing
the Palestinian collective. As will be shown in an ethnographic example later
in this chapter, the history of Palestinian silencing has in fact greatly affected
how Palestinians approach discussions and performances at the ulpan.
I raise the issues of financial responsibilities and professional
aspirations, Israeli discrimination and intimidation against Palestinians, as well
as the various factors that silence Palestinians in order to show how
performances are affected by power relations even before performances begin.
For all the students who must spend time looking for jobs, just having enough
time to prepare their homework is difficult. Having to find time to prepare for
political discussions is simply not feasible in many circumstances.
For older Palestinian students, not only did they have to deal with
financial burdens, they had to deal with discrimination in the workforce and in
other realms of Israeli society. These experiences dissuaded them from
wanting to participate in ulpan discussions and performances. For younger
Palestinian students, their need to successfully complete the Hebrew course did

155
not allow them time to focus on preparing for political discussions. For all
Palestinian students, but especially the young men, unexpectedly being stopped
by Israeli authorities limited their ability to regularly attend class. This had a
great impact on our discussions and performances. Tariq was one of the only
Palestinians who consistently voiced opposition to Israeli narratives of the
nation presented during performances. When he was no longer able to attend
the ulpan because he was restricted from traveling in Israel, our performances
suffered because Israeli narratives of the nation were contested less frequently.
Most importantly, there was a direct connection between Palestinians
being forced into silence in various social contexts and Palestinians remaining
silent during our discussions and performances at the ulpan. Palestinians have
learned from all of their personal and collective experiences in Israel that the
best way to communicate with Israelis is to just remain silent. From their
perspective, little can be gained by Palestinians talking to Israelis. This same
Palestinian attitude is brought into our discussions and performances at the
ulpan. All of the different power dynamics discussed in this section, then, had
a major impact when and under what circumstances people could participate in
performances and impact Israeli narratives of the nation.

156
Power during Performances – Institutional Power, the Ulpan Teacher and
the New Israeli Immigrant Students
Once a performance in the ulpan began, there were a number of power
factors that dictated what kinds of narratives of the nation were discussed and
in what manner. The Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture has full control
over creating the curriculum in the ulpan. This includes course scheduling,
producing a textbook used for homework and exercises in class, and
administering tests to determine if a person has gained enough knowledge to
progress to the next level ulpan course. They also hire Zionist teachers to
administer the material. Aside from teaching Hebrew, the teacher in our class
used her authority to approve external materials that were not authorized by the
Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture. She was also the leader of the
performances of Israeli narratives of the nation in the ulpan class. This gave
her the authority to shift conversations in ways she thought were most
beneficial for Israeli narratives of the nation. The power of the Israeli Ministry
of Education and Culture and the ulpan teacher were what guided the
performances of Israeli narratives of the nation in ways that benefited the
Israeli state. The power dynamics between new Israeli immigrant students and
Palestinian students served as another way to ensure that performances would
support Israeli narratives of the nation. As will be shown, there were almost
always more new Israeli immigrant students willing to defend an Israeli
narrative than there were Palestinian students willing to contest it. The spatial

157
features of the classroom were another factor in revealing power dynamics
between the teacher, the new Israeli immigrant students and the Palestinian
students. Seating arrangements in particular gave a strong indication that the
teacher was the center of power in the classroom.
As mentioned earlier, aside from teaching Hebrew, the explicit goal of
the ulpan is to “disseminate Jewish cultural values and educate towards good
citizenship (Haramati 1966:526).” There are a number ways that the Israeli
Ministry of Education and Culture ensures to the best of its ability that this
occurs. The first way is by having a highly systematized course schedule.
Much of what students are supposed to learn in the different levels of the ulpan
courses as well as their day-to-day lessons have been concisely planned out. In
fact, the way that the ulpan is taught has remained very similar to the following
course syllabus which was used between 1963 and 1965:
The first stage (135 hours) is devoted to teaching a basic
vocabulary relating to elementary items of everyday life (565
words and idioms); in the second stage (125 hours), the list of
common subjects (547 words and idioms) is completed. In
stages one and two an understanding is given of the values
and salient characteristics embodied in Hebrew culture, and
an introduction to the demography and geography of Israel
through such informal techniques as listening to suitable radio
programs, talks, reading a simple newspaper (For the
Beginner – a periodical issued specially for such a readership
by the Ministry of Education), and learning popular phrases
and songs. In the third stage (250 hours), communication in
writing is taught (reading newspapers and writing letters);
instruction is also given in the geography and demography of
the country and in Bible and literature…On the conclusion of
each stage, a country-wide examination takes place. This
serves, inter alia, as a criterion to measure achievements – for

158
the pupil, the teacher and the Language Instruction
Department. (Haramati 1966:531)

According to Foucault, efficiency is a disciplinary mechanism that
ensures the perpetuation of institutional power (Foucault 1977). The highly
systematized course schedule and curriculum goals of the Israeli Ministry of
Education and Culture create efficiency when teaching ulpan courses. There
are a predetermined number of hours per ulpan course and a number of words,
idioms and common subjects a student is expected to learn during each level of
instruction. In addition to this, there are predetermined methods of conveying
important ideas about Israel. During the alef and bet levels of the ulpan,
students are taught about the “demography and geography of Israel” by
“[listening to] suitable radio programs, talks, reading a simple newspaper…and
learning popular phrases and songs (Haramati 1966:531) [my italics].” In the
gimmel level of the ulpan, more on geography and demography is taught as
well as Bible and [Israeli] literature. By creating efficiency and discipline in
the ulpan, the Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture (and surreptitiously the
Israeli state) creates the conditions which provide the highest probability of
accomplishing its stated goals for students – most particularly, creating good
citizens.
One of the specific ways that the Ministry of Education and Culture’s
curriculum goals are met is by designing courses around specific course
materials that effectively communicate Israeli historical narratives of the

159
nation. In the ulpan, students are required to purchase and use a textbook
authorized by the Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture. Every night,
students in the ulpan had to complete homework exercises from L’Hatzliach
B’Poel V’Tachbir (To Succeed in Verb Forms and Syntax). The following
morning in class, the students would review the exercises with the teacher and
the other students. Many of the Hebrew exercises in the textbook served to
introduce new Israeli immigrants to different Israeli historical narratives of the
nation and cultural attitudes. For example, in the following exercises, students
needed to fill in the proper Hebrew verb form in three sentences: “Many Jews
from Russia immigrate to Israel”; “The Israeli army was formed on May 30,
1948”; and “The Jews were expelled from Spain in the year 1492.” By
completing this exercise, students learned a part of a historical narrative about
Jewish history in Spain, Russian immigration and when the Israeli army was
formed.
The exercises also convey important information about more broad
Israeli narratives of the nation such as what I have termed the Israeli
“Palestinians are the enemy” narrative. The exercises included sentences such
as “The army officers caught the terrorist,” “The soldier shot at the terrorist but
missed” and “The two sides did not sign the agreement because they could not
come to an agreement.” In these sentences, we learn that Palestinians are
terrorists and that Israel is in an ongoing fight with them. We also learned that
the Israelis and Palestinians cannot reach a peace agreement. This sentence

160
subtly reinforces the Israeli “peace process” narrative (discussed further in
chapter 3) which asserts that Palestinians are responsible for the continued
absence of peace. In this narrative, whenever there are negotiations, Israel
makes every possible effort to reach peace but the Palestinian leadership
always ultimately fails in its efforts.
In the context of the ulpan class at Beit Ha’am, with a mix of new
Israeli immigrant students and Palestinian students, the exercises in the
textbook simultaneously served as a way to transmit Israeli narratives of the
nation as well as Israeli historical narratives and as a way to foreclose
discussions about Palestinian narratives of the nation. Since the stated purpose
of the exercises in the textbook was to teach students about Hebrew grammar
and vocabulary, discussions about the content presented in those exercises were
rare. When we went over our homework in class, then, by default, we were
only discussing Israeli narratives of the nation. There were no exercises about
Palestinian narratives of the nation in the textbook because they, of course,
directly contest Israeli narratives of the nation. By controlling the content of
the textbook and how the assignments were discussed, the Israeli Ministry of
Education and Culture effectively conveyed Israeli narratives of the nation.
As occurs in most institutions of education, tests, a grading system and
the authority to permit students to move from one grade level to the next serves
as forms of surveillance that reinforce power. In the ulpan, these three
components were often less rigorous than what would be found in other formal

161
classes. Students did not receive grades for their homework or for any of our
other work in the class. While attendance was taken by the teacher, it did not
have any bearing on how a student was graded in the class. For new Israeli
immigrants, though, attendance requirements needed to be met in order to
receive the living stipend. There were also no tests given until the end of each
course. At that time, a test was administered by the ulpan to determine whether
a person had acquired enough Hebrew language skill in order to progress to the
next level at the ulpan. A portion of this test was objective but there was also
an important subjective element. The subjective element required students to
sit down with a teacher and have a conversation in Hebrew to prove a certain
level of proficiency. As a result, this form of surveillance did reinforce the
Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture’s power over the ulpan students.
Another way the Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture exercised
power was by hiring highly ideologically Zionist teachers who were trained to
administer the goals of the ulpan. All three ulpan teachers I got to know during
my classes discussed the importance of Zionism in their lives and the fact that
teaching new Israeli immigrants Hebrew was one way to articulate this
devotion to the Zionist ideology. Rachael told me “I could make a lot more
money if I were to teach history to Israeli students but I am a Zionist and I
believe teaching olim is one of the most important jobs in Israel.” Leah told
me:

162
I immigrated to Israel ten years ago without my family and
the first place I was able to meet other Israelis was at my
ulpan. I was so thankful for that experience. Being young
and away from home for the first time, I was really happy to
be around people with Jewish values…Becoming a teacher at
an ulpan was my way of giving back to Israel. I wanted to
make sure that other olim had as good of an experience as I
did.

The reason it was so vital that a Zionist teacher lead the class at the
ulpan was because the Ministry of Education and Culture could not ensure the
creation of good Israeli citizens simply by creating a curriculum. The ulpan
teacher was a person who helped ensure that the goals set out for the ulpan
course were actually realized. In particular, the teachers were needed to control
which outside materials were permitted to be used in the ulpan in order to
ensure that Israeli narratives of the nation were effectively conveyed and that
contesting narratives were disallowed. They were also highly effective at
controlling performances so that Israeli narratives of the nation were discussed
and contesting narratives were rebuffed or ended quickly. All three ulpan
teachers I had were extraordinarily adept at manipulating these improvisational
performances so that the Israeli narratives were clearly articulated and well
defended. For this reason, the ulpan teacher was always the key figure in
guiding performances as well as the person with the most power.
One of the main responsibilities of the ulpan teacher was to authorize
which outside materials would be used during our class. As we progressed to
the upper levels of the ulpan course, we spent increasingly more time reading

163
Israeli newspapers, listening to the news in Hebrew on the radio, and watching
Israeli television programs and films. Once we got to the third level of the
ulpan, we were responsible for bringing Yediot Aharanoth, Israel’s most widely
read Hebrew newspaper, to class every Wednesday. During the time of my
research, violence between Palestinians and Israelis was beginning to peak and
people of both nationalities were getting killed almost daily. If there was a
story in the newspaper about an Israeli who was killed by Palestinian militants,
Rachael would ask us to read that story first. These articles would often
include personal details about the person killed and how family, friends and
community members reacted to the death. These kinds of ‘memorialization’
stories regularly appeared in the Israeli media and served to reinforce the Israeli
“victim” narrative of the nation. After working our way through the
memorialization article, Rachael would then ask the students which newspaper
article we would be interested in reading next. She would always approve
articles about Israeli culture, Jewish history and was especially enthusiastic
about articles about Jews who lived outside of Israel. She never approved
articles that discussed the conditions of “Arabs” in Israel or opinion editorials
that were critical of Israeli or military policies. By being able to choose outside
materials, Rachael frequently ensured that only Israeli narratives of the nation
were discussed.
As much power as the teacher had in controlling which materials we
used in our class, she had less control over how students reacted to the material.

164

Once we reached the fourth level of the ulpan course, the students would listen
to the Hebrew news on the radio every morning at 8 am. The summary lasted
approximately one minute and would discuss the most important news stories
of the hour. During this exercise, our teacher Leah would use a tape-recorder
to record the summary of the news and then replay it a little bit later in the
class. The following was a typical Israeli news summary on the radio:
“The hour is eight o’clock. A mortar shell landed on a house
in Gush Katif – no one was injured.
18
The Israeli Defense
Forces killed five Palestinian security officers in Ramallah –
one Israeli soldier received moderate wounds. Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon is expected to accept the Mitchell Report with a
number of reservations.
19
Four Israelis were killed in road
accidents this weekend in the north, bringing the total to 142
this year. The weather – partly cloudy with a small chance of
rain.”

While the announcer was reading the news summary, the students were
supposed to listen and try to comprehend as much information as possible. We
would then have a group discussion about this information. After this quick
exercise, Leah would replay the news summary one sentence at a time and we
would write down in Hebrew what the announcer had said. After this, we
would discuss the meaning of each sentence.

18
Gush Katif was a settlement in the Gaza Strip that was abandoned in August 2005 when
Prime Minister Sharon enacted the disengagement from Gaza plan. Gush Katif, by far,
sustained the most attacks from Palestinian militants during the height of the second intifada.
19
The “Mitchell Report” was a report produced by George Mitchell, a former member of the
United States Senate, that sought to find ways of “ending the violence,” rebuilding confidence”
and “resuming negotiations” between Israelis and Palestinians after the beginning of the second
intifada.

165

Since the news summary was almost exclusively about stories
concerning Israel, any ensuing discussions we had were inevitably about Israel.
The only times Palestinians were mentioned in the news summary was to very
quickly convey how many Palestinians (usually employing a derogatory term
like “terrorist”) were killed by the IDF.
20
Listening to the news on the radio in
Hebrew, then, was an effective way of introducing Israeli narratives of the
nation to the class and concurrently disallowing the introduction of any
Palestinian narratives of the nation. However, there were a number of times
that we listened to the news summary and the Palestinian students contested the
Israeli narratives that were presented. So while Leah had power to control the
material we used, ensuring discussions exclusively about Israeli narratives of
the nation, she had less control over whether these narratives would be
contested.
Once the class mastered understanding the news summary, Leah
allowed us to listen to the full news report. At first, the stories presented in the
full news reports were only able to give the Palestinian students material in
which to contest Israeli narratives of the nation. Two weeks after we began
this exercise, though, the class was inadvertently introduced to a Palestinian
narrative of the nation during one of the news reports. A discussion began after
the narrator presented an in-depth news report about Marwan Barghouti, an

20
As I will argue in chapter 5, an Israeli narrative of the nation can emerge out of Palestinian
deaths as well.

166

extremely controversial Palestinian figure. For Israelis, Barghouti was
considered an arch-terrorist responsible for the dispatching of numerous
“suicide bombers” and ordering of terror attacks within Israel. For
Palestinians, Barghouti was viewed as a politician in the Palestinian Fatah
political party as well as a Palestinian freedom fighter.
21
The class discussion
of the news story quickly transformed into a performance where the Palestinian
and Israeli students argued with each other about Barghouti. The performance
was about whether Barghouti was a terrorist, as the new Israeli immigrants
claimed, or a political figure as the Palestinian students claimed. In the
performance, the Palestinian students discussed why Barghouti was viewed as
a politician more so than a freedom fighter. Barghouti was an official in the
Palestinian Authority and was often quoted for his political views about the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Palestinian newspapers and television reports. If
Barghouti did plan attacks, he was no different than Israeli politicians who plan
attacks against Palestinians.
Though the Israeli students and teacher were in no way persuaded by
the Palestinian students, the fact that the Barghouti story was introduced as a
competing narrative was problematic to the overall project at the ulpan of only
transmitting Israeli narratives. It was no surprise to me when a few days later

21
Barghouti was captured by the IDF in Ramallah on April 15, 2002 a few months after I
completed my research in Jerusalem and indicted in an Israeli civilian court on charges of
murder and attempted murder stemming from activities carried out by forces under his
supervision. On June 6, 2004 he was given five consecutive life sentences plus an additional
40 years in prison (20 years for attempted murder and another 20 for membership in a terror
organization).

167
Leah changed how we listened to the full news report on the radio. Instead of
listening to the news live, she recorded the 6 am news at her home. She then
chose stories she deemed to be not too “political” and presented them to us as
material suitable for class discussion. By censoring the full news report before
our listening exercise began, Leah was able to reaffirm her power as the
teacher.
Aside from controlling the materials that enter the ulpan discourse, the
single most powerful tool available to the ulpan teacher during class
discussions was her fluency in Hebrew. This often ensured that performances
of Israeli narratives of the nation were executed in a way that was most
favorable to the Israeli nation. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the most
difficult and frustrating part of the class for many students was their inability to
sophisticatedly express themselves in a foreign language. At times, students
literally stopped talking mid-sentence because they could not think of the
appropriate Hebrew word. Having experienced this myself numerous times, I
can say that this dissuaded me from talking again in the future unless I felt
completely confident I could articulate myself properly. If students tried to
supplement their discussion with non-Hebrew words, the teachers would
immediately interrupt and say, “We only speak Hebrew here. Don’t speak
English. How will you learn Hebrew if you continue to speak in English?”
Also, if students took an extra instant to think how to phrase something
properly in Hebrew while they were in the middle of their sentence, the

168
teachers would inevitably interrupt. This was a particularly useful tactic of
ending performances whenever the teacher felt the need to do so. Finally,
during performances of Israeli narratives of the nation, the ability to employ
rhetoric is vital. People must be able to convince others about the points they
are trying to make. This skill is highly dependent upon a person’s fluency in a
language. Since the ulpan teacher was the only person fluent in Hebrew, it
ensured that she would be the most effective rhetorician during our
performances.
My level three ulpan teacher, Hannah, was extremely interested in
Israeli film. At least once a week, we would watch an Israeli feature length
film and discuss its meaning. Again, as with the newspaper articles Rachael
chose, Hannah chose what she considered to be socially interesting but “safe”
material for our classroom discussions in Hebrew. One film we watched was a
docudrama about the life history of a famous Israeli Sephardi singer named
Zohar Argov. One of the themes of the film was about a young Sephardi
overcoming the difficulty of growing up poor in an Ashkenazi-dominated
Israeli society. Once we finished the film, the class had a long discussion about
early racism in Israeli society towards Sephardim and discussed to what extent
these attitudes persisted in Israeli society in the present. After the conversation,
Muhammad, one of the Palestinian students from the Old City in Jerusalem,
discussed how he felt a similar kind of racism against Palestinians. Hannah
was genuinely shocked by Muhammad’s statement. She asked him when he

169
had last felt that an Israeli was racist towards him. When he responded that
someone had just a few nights ago screamed at him from a passing car that he
should leave Israel, new Israeli immigrant students said that Muhammad
should not pay attention to that person – he must have been some kind of
radical. Muhammad said he hears these kinds of comments all the time when
he walks home to his house in the Old City. Immediately, Hannah interrupted
and said “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. This is a Hebrew course.
We really should not get into political discussions here.” This showed another
important aspect of power that the teacher maintained. By controlling what we
could and we could not discuss in class, Hannah exerted her power to end
discussions that might lead to performances of contesting narratives.
There were times, however, when our ulpan teachers chose to allow
Israeli narratives of the nation to be contested longer than might have otherwise
been expected. The teacher permitted the new Israeli immigrant students to do
this, it seemed, because their beliefs about Israeli narratives of the nation were
strengthened during ulpan performances. It was also a way to attempt to
problematize Palestinian beliefs about these narratives.
***************************************************************
Today was the day we learned about Yom Ha’atzmaut [Israeli Day of
Independence] and I was extremely curious to see how this class was going to
go. Would Rachael use any sensitivity in teaching us about Israel’s
independence? How were the Palestinian students going to react to listening to

170
Israel’s story of independence – which, of course, came at the expense of the
Palestinians?
The Palestinians students seemed extremely tense before this discussion
started and I cannot help but feeling it has something to do with the heightened
Israeli nationalistic feeling that seemed to be oozing out of the streets, road-
signs, light-posts, markets, and houses over this last week or two. I must have
seen more Israeli flags on display than there are actual Israelis in this country.
Also, the celebrations in the streets have been pretty raucous and if I were a
Palestinian living in the Old City I would feel very intimidated just walking
around.
It was not a surprise to me, then, that when the teacher began talking
about how Israel gained its independence, the Palestinian students began to
question her. Rachael talked about how the Arab armies from the surrounding
countries attacked Israel and how only a miracle allowed the Israelis to win the
war despite such overwhelming odds. When Nisrin [a female Palestinian
citizen of Israel] said that Israel’s Independence Day was the worst day in
Palestinian history, Miriam, one of the Jewish students responded, “Whose
fault is that? We wanted to have peace with the Palestinians but they rejected
it. If the Palestinians had agreed back then to the United Nations partition plan,
they would have had most of Israel.” George replied, “Why should we have
accepted the United Nations peace plan and have Israelis on our land? We
have been here much longer than you.” Immediately, a number of the new

171
Israeli immigrants took to Miriam’s defense. With raised voices they said,
“We have been here much longer than you! Our history in Israel dates back
over 2,000 years.” When the Palestinian students tried to respond to anything
the new Israeli immigrant students said, they were shouted at and cut off.
This is how the whole conversation went. The Jewish students were
more effective in making their points simply because they talked over the
Palestinian students. They effectively shut down the Palestinian students from
making any points by cutting them off. Rachael did not add very much to this
discussion but seemed to me to be quite pleased with the way it was going. At
one point, she did step in to help make a point that the Jewish students were not
able to argue convincingly enough. For the most part, though, she left the
arguing to the Jewish students.
***************************************************************
As already mentioned, all the teachers were effective at shifting or
ending performances whenever they felt a performance was moving too far
away from what they considered to be desirable. In the case of the “Yom
Ha’atzmaut” narrative performance, though, Rachael showed much more
patience than in other performances. When she saw that the new Israeli
immigrant students were rigorously defending the “Yom Ha’atzmaut” narrative
and that the performance was going well, she allowed it to continue. At the
end of this performance, Rachael concluded by proudly telling the Palestinian
students, “you see. We have an open class here. This is democracy in action.

172
We Israelis can learn from you and you can learn from us Israelis.” It was
obvious that she considered this performance to be a spirited debate that
ultimately resulted in the Israeli side winning and the Palestinians side learning
something important about Yom Ha’atzmaut.
There was another power dynamic at work during most of the ulpan
performances that was also exemplified in this “Yom Ha’atzmaut” narrative
performance. There were almost always far more new Israeli immigrant
students willing to defend an Israeli narrative of the nation than there were
Palestinian students willing to contest it. This was largely the result of the
other power dynamics already discussed in this chapter that discouraged
Palestinian students from joining in ulpan performances. In the performance of
the Israeli “Yom Ha’atzmaut” narrative, there were at least ten new Israeli
immigrant students arguing for the narrative as opposed to two Palestinian
students who were contesting it. It became clear after witnessing many of these
performances that the side with the most participants tended to have a
rhetorical advantage. If there are ten people arguing a point against two
people, those two people do not have enough time to anticipate, respond to, and
speak over the other ten people. Since the Jewish students outnumbered the
Palestinian students in this discussion about Israeli independence and since
many of the Palestinian students decided not to engage in this performance, the
Jewish students were able to dominate the argument.

173
These performances also had a cumulative effect in terms of future
ulpan performances. After the Yom Ha’atzmaut performance, I talked with
Nisrin and she told me that she felt intimidated during the conversation. She
was hesitant to continue talking because the new Israeli immigrant students
were so aggressive when they were shouting. She also told me that she would
probably not engage in future conversations like these anymore. Over the next
two months, she in fact rarely did participate in ulpan performances.
The composition of classroom space is another important power
dynamic affecting performances at the ulpan. According to Manke (1997), all
teachers have a great deal of control in the construction of this space:
Most teachers have the prerogative of organizing classroom
space—arranging desks, deciding on the use to be made of
different areas, and deciding what will be kept in the
classroom (within the limits of building architecture and other
constraints)…These choices are among the most important
resources teachers have as they contribute to the construction
of classroom power relationships. (Manke 1997:64)

In my ulpan classes, the teacher set up the classroom in a typical
western arrangement with the teacher in the front of the classroom with a large
desk and the students seated facing her in rows of smaller desks. This
arrangement served to focus the students’ attention on the teacher while
conversely making it difficult for the students to see one another. During our
discussions, this particular dynamic made it easier for the teacher to interrupt a
discussion whenever she felt it was necessary.

174
The teacher allowed all of the students in the class to decide where they
wanted to sit and most students chose the same seats every day. Usually, the
Palestinian students sat next to one another and the new Israeli immigrant
students sat next to one another. Still, there were many occasions when this
tendency was not followed. When students were late for class they often chose
a seat positioned closest to the door, regardless of who was sitting in that area.
There were also a few Palestinian students who regularly sat next to new Israeli
immigrant students.
Often, the seating arrangements in the ulpan classroom represented
smaller cliques within the larger Palestinian and new Israeli immigrant social
groups. Some of the Palestinian students who knew each other before the
ulpan course started sat together during class. Palestinian students who did not
know any of their classmates quickly became friends with other Palestinian
students and sat with them. For the new Israeli immigrant students, it seemed
that people chose to sit next to other students who shared the same language or
a similar cultural background. So, the students who spoke English from the
United States and Britain usually sat near one another. Students from South
America also tended to sit in the same area. Generational differences were
another impetus for forming cliques. Whenever older Palestinian or older new
Israeli immigrant students were in the class, they congregated next to one
another. With that said, seating arrangements could be highly fluid within the
different Palestinian and new Israeli immigrant cliques.

175
The reason seating dynamics were so important in the ulpan was
because they often symbolically expressed different facets of the Israeli-
Palestinian power relations found in the classroom. At Beit Ha’am, new Israeli
immigrant students sat in different places all over the classroom and many
different students participated during performances. Palestinian students in the
class, on the other hand, tended to cluster more closely together. The
Palestinian students who sat in the front only spoke aloud when directly asked
by the ulpan teacher to participate in our daily Hebrew exercises. The
Palestinian students who participated most frequently during performances sat
in the back of the classroom far away from the teacher. This was quite
symbolic since the Palestinian students who were contesting Israeli narratives
of the nation did so from the most distant position of power in relation to the
ulpan (Israeli) teacher.
There are multiple power dynamics that control how narratives of the
nation are transmitted to the students of the ulpan. The Israeli Ministry of
Education and Culture sets up the ulpan curriculum, including the course
schedules, the textbooks used, and the tests. This ensures that the curriculum is
most likely to effectively convey Israeli narratives of the nation with the
minimal number of competing narratives. In addition to this, the Ministry of
Education and Culture chooses the ulpan teachers. These Zionist teachers are
given two primary responsibilities in terms of conveying Israeli narratives of
the nation. They are responsible for carefully controlling the outside classroom

176
materials used in the ulpan. This helps ensure that contesting narratives are not
often introduced into performances. The teachers are also responsible for
guiding performances in a way that best conveys Israeli narratives of the
nation. This can include stopping, shifting or continuing a performance
depending upon how each performance is proceeding. Thirdly, there are
always more new Israeli immigrant students willing to argue for an Israeli
narrative of the nation than Palestinian students willing to contest it. This
allows the new Israeli immigrant students to have a great rhetorical advantage
during ulpan performances. Lastly, the construction of the ulpan social space
revealed power dynamics between the students and the teacher. Seating
arrangements were often indicative of who was likely to participate in
performances, and their relative distance from the teacher indicated their
relationship to her. The Palestinian students who sat in the back were the most
likely to be involved in our performances and also least likely to have the
power to speak without getting cut off by the teacher.

Palestinian Resistance during Performances – Silence and Secrets
While there were numerous power dynamics working to limit the
Palestinian students from directly contesting Israeli narratives of the nation,
they were still able to contest them using competing narratives. This subject is
more fully taken up in the next chapter. More often, the Palestinian students
were able to employ two indirect strategies in contesting Israeli narratives of

177
the nation. The strategies were deploying silence and secrets during our ulpan
performances. When Palestinians deployed silence, it often created a tension in
the ulpan classroom because the Israeli teacher and new Israeli immigrant
students knew that the Palestinians disagreed with what was being discussed.
The Palestinian students also deployed secrets – in the form of murmuring to
one another in Arabic – for similar purposes. By speaking in Arabic, the
Palestinian students were conveying a clear message to the teacher and new
Israeli immigrant students: we are critiquing what you are talking about and we
do not want you to understand our critique. Silence and secrets, then, allowed
Palestinians to participate in performances by communicating dissatisfaction
with a discussion without having to disclose their message to everyone in the
class.
“‘Lies, secrets, and silence’ are frequently strategies of resistance”
(Visweswaran 1994:60). While Visweswaran’s intention in this quote was to
show how informants employ lies, secrets and silence as strategies of resisting
ethnographic inquiries, I witnessed how these strategies of communication
were employed in other kinds of social interactions. As I have already shown,
in many different facets of ordinary life, Israelis attempt to silence Palestinians
both personally and as a collective. When Palestinians remain silent during
performances in the ulpan, it would at first glance appear that Israeli narratives
of the nation go uncontested. However, when considering silence not simply as

178
an oppressive act but as an act of agency and resistance, we see that
Palestinians do in fact contest Israeli narratives of the nation.
***************************************************************
Today was the day that I gave my speech to the ulpan class about what
I do in the world. I spent a lot of time preparing and thinking about what I was
going to say. I started out talking about anthropology and what I have done in
the past – my Passover and Poland documentaries…Then I started to rant about
the racism in Israel and how Palestinians were not being treated fairly in Israel.
This had been building up inside of me for a couple of months ever since I
joined the ulpan class and with everyone forced to listen to me without
interruption, I just kind of let it all out. I went on to say that one of the hardest
things to experience as an outsider of Israeli society is how Palestinians are
silenced by Israelis. Palestinians are not free to say what they want – even in
this classroom. My teacher, Rachael, asked me exactly what I meant – does
that mean that Palestinians are afraid to talk? I said I did not think it was a
question of being afraid. Before I could say anything else, Rachael cut me off
and asked the Palestinians in our class what they thought about what I had said.
No one responded.
After I finished my presentation, Munna finally interjected her opinion
about why Palestinians are often silent in the ulpan. She said that being
silenced is not just what Israelis do to Palestinians – though that is a big part of
it. There has been a long line of colonialist rulers in Palestine and that this

179
history has created a Palestinian culture of being silent (after class, Nuha told
me that she thinks that it also has do with Palestinians not trusting Israelis).
For the remainder of the class, Rachael went on a diatribe about Israeli-
Palestinian relations. The Palestinian students remained silent throughout
Rachael’s discussion. But when we got to a point in the conversation when
Rachael said that the political situation would improve if the Palestinians had a
legitimate democracy, some of the Palestinians began to murmur to one another
in Arabic. At that point, Rachael paused and asked the Palestinian students
what they were talking about. No one responded. After a few awkward
seconds, Rachael continued on with her diatribe.
When I spoke with Munna after class and asked her what the
Palestinian students were discussing at that moment, she told me that they were
making fun of Rachael for talking about Palestinian democracy. For
Palestinians, Israelis have no right to lecture Palestinians about democracy
because they do not believe Israel is really a democracy. Their democracy
serves only the Jews and largely excludes the Palestinian citizens of Israel.
***************************************************************
In our ulpan class, many of the Palestinian students remained silent
during ordinary discussions or when confronted with performances of Israeli
narratives of the nation. In part, as Munna pointed out, this can be attributed to
a long history of Palestinians being silenced by Israel and other colonial
powers. However, silence was also used by Palestinians to convey disapproval

180
to the ulpan teacher and the new Israeli immigrant students about a discussion
or performance. During this performance, the Palestinian students employed
silence on two different occasions.
When Rachael asked if the Palestinian students were afraid to talk after
I suggested that they were forced to be silent, everyone (perhaps, ironically)
remained silent. When no one responded, there was an uncomfortable lull in
our discussion that created a thick tension in the classroom. Rachael repeated
her question and did not get a response the second time either. This silence
was the Palestinian students’ way of participating in this discussion. It sent a
clear message to Rachael and the new Israeli immigrant students that
Palestinians do feel silenced in the ulpan class. There was also silence when
Rachael was discussing the Israeli version of the “Israeli-Palestinian peace
process” narrative. The Palestinian students clearly disagreed with what
Rachael was saying but given the power relation between the Israeli teacher
and the Palestinian students (Rachael’s fluency in Hebrew, her authority to
guide discussions in a way most advantageous to her, etc.), the most effective
way to register disagreement with her in this particular situation was to remain
silent.
On many other occasions, the way Palestinian students resisted
performances of Israeli narratives of the nation was by murmuring in Arabic.
During this performance, the Palestinians employed this tactic when Rachael
began discussing the Israeli “democracy” narrative of the nation. It started

181
when Rachael said that relations between Israelis and Palestinians would get
better if only the Palestinians would develop a more democratic political
system. The condescending and paternalistic attitude, which Rachael more
straightforwardly stated on numerous other occasions, was that until the
Palestinians begin to be more like the Israelis, with a fully functioning
democracy, there could be no peace. After classes such as these, Palestinian
students would privately tell me they were offended by these conversations
because, to them, Israeli democracy was a hypocritical farce. After all, how
could Israelis explain that Palestinians citizens of Israel were represented by
only a handful of Ministers in the Israeli Knesset even though Palestinian
citizens of Israel constituted approximately twenty percent of Israel’s total
population? Their representation was extremely disproportionate to their total
population. They also talked about the many economic, political and religious
laws that were biased against Palestinian citizens of Israel. There were also the
unwarranted security checks, the ongoing house demolitions, and the
disproportionately less tax money funneled to Palestinian public education.
Instead of offering any one of these competing narratives to the Israeli
“democracy” narrative, though, the Palestinian students decided to register
their disagreement by murmuring in Arabic.
Deploying silence or murmuring secrets in Arabic was a highly
effective way for Palestinian students to communicate disapproval about a
discussion or performance without having to be rebutted by the ulpan teacher

182
or new Israeli immigrant students. When the ulpan teacher is the person doing
most of the performing of an Israeli narrative of the nation, as was the case in
this performance, Palestinian students were even more likely to deploy these
tactics. That is because when the ulpan teacher leads the discussion, the
confluence of all of the power dynamics discussed in this chapter work against
them. Silence and secrets, then, are acts of resistance to the various power
dynamics in the ulpan. Still, as Rabinowitz has cautioned, Palestinian acts of
resistance must be seen in a proper context. Resistance can only be seen as
“temporary upsets of the going order” but not something that “fundamentally
upset[s] it (Rabinowitz 1997:11).”

Conclusion
Performances of Israeli narratives of the nation in the ulpan emerged in
the context of a wide range of complex power relations. The first set of power
relations discussed in this chapter impacted performances before they
happened. The students’ financial concerns and professional aspirations
directly inhibited their ability to prepare for performances. For new Israeli
immigrants, it was far more pragmatic to spend time looking for a job than it
was to prepare for performances. For the older Palestinian students who knew
Hebrew quite well, the various forms of discrimination they felt in Israel
dissuaded them from wanting to participate in performances. Younger
Palestinian students who had time to prepare for the ulpan prioritized studying

183
Hebrew (and not preparing for performances) in order get into an Israeli
university or enter the Israeli job market after they finished university.
In addition to this, because of the contentious political situation
between Israelis and Palestinians, young Palestinians, especially men, were
increasingly unable to attend the ulpan. Getting stopped by Israeli police or
running into one of the many semi-permanent and flying Israeli checkpoints
caused Palestinian students to be late for class. Also, a number of Palestinian
students living in Palestine were forced to stop coming to the ulpan altogether
because the places they lived became closed military zones. All of this
impacted the performances because when Palestinian students did not come to
class, they were unable to join our performances and offer competing
narratives.
A long history of Palestinians being forced to be silent is what I believe
had the largest impact on our ulpan discussions and performances. Most of the
Palestinian students never spoke during performances of Israeli narratives of
the nation. Some participated only occasionally. The few who were regular
contributors did so only reluctantly. As explained by Munna, a number of
historical forces caused the Palestinians to keep silent. In addition to the
history of being silenced are the ordinary encounters Palestinians have with
Israeli authorities. Staying silent in order to avoid getting into trouble with
Israeli authorities reinforces the Palestinians desire to remain silent. These

184
experiences carry over to the ulpan classroom where the teacher is seen as an
Israeli authority figure.
The second set of power dynamics discussed in this chapter impacted
performances in the ulpan classroom. First, the Israeli Ministry of Education
and Culture constructed a curriculum as well as the “hidden curriculum” in
order to best articulate Israeli narratives of the nation without allowing for
contested narratives or the introduction of Palestinian narratives of the nation.
It did this by carefully crafting classroom and homework materials –
audiotapes that students were required to listen to and required textbooks – so
that it was extremely likely that most classroom discussions would be about
Israeli narratives of the nation. Also, having the power to hire a teacher with
strong Zionist values helped ensure that these narratives would be presented
and defended in the most favorable fashion.
Presenting and defending Israeli narratives of the nation was only one
way that the teacher asserted control over classroom performances. As the
only person fluent in Hebrew, the teacher had a tremendous advantage during
performances in relation to the ulpan students. In many cases, she was the only
person who could argue about an Israeli narrative of the nation with any level
of sophistication. She was also able to use her power in the teacher-student
relationship to navigate performances in directions that she thought most
favorably articulated Israeli narratives of the nation. She mainly used this
power to foreclose or redirect those performances that competed with Israeli

185
narratives of the nation. She also authorized new Israeli immigrant students to
argue for Israeli narratives of the nation whenever she believed that the
performances were going well. Finally, the teacher often permitted a rhetorical
style of performance that allowed Jewish students to intimidate Palestinian
students during performances. This had a two-fold effect. The intimidation
would often lead Palestinian students to cease participating in the current
performance. It would also make Palestinian students feel as though they did
not want to participate in future ulpan performances.
Palestinian students were able to deploy three different strategies of
resistance to the varying power dynamics during ulpan performances. The first
was joining in performances and offering competing narratives to the Israeli
narratives of the nation. This was often the more difficult strategy since there
were many more new Israeli immigrant students willing to oppose the
Palestinian student than other Palestinian students willing to get involved in the
performance. The other two strategies were to resist discussions or
performances by employing silence or murmuring secrets in Arabic.
Deploying silence or secrets were highly effective ways for Palestinian students
to communicate discontent with interpretations of Israeli narratives of the
nation without having to be rebutted by the ulpan teacher or new Israeli
immigrant students. Given the power dynamics of the ulpan, silence and
secrets were often the most effective acts of resistance to Israeli narratives of
the nation.

186
Chapter 3
Narratives of the Nation, Everyday Performance and Belief Tendencies

This chapter explores how everyday performances of narratives of the
nation impact ulpan students’ beliefs. I begin the chapter with a brief
description of how the works in medical anthropology have influenced my own
understanding of the relationship between narrative and experience. My
approach to this issue places an emphasis on understanding performances as
social spaces where experiences are in process and where new narratives
emerge as a result of these experiences. These new narratives that emerge
during a performance serve as models for students’ belief structures. But what
is performance space? How can one recognize when a performance starts and
when it ends? What kinds of limits does performance space set on performers
when performing narratives of the nation?
In this chapter, I will define performance space, discuss impression
management, then look closely at a specific ulpan performance I call the “no
partner” narrative performance. This performance incorporated a number of
different Israeli and Palestinian narratives of the nation. My analysis of this
performance looks at how contested narratives, competing narratives and
personal narratives are deployed to both convince oneself and convince others
of the veracity of a narrative of the nation. Then, I look at the process of how

187
performances help shape new narratives. Once new narratives of the nation are
in the ulpan discourse, to what extent does a person’s use of these narratives
obligate them to believe in that narrative and how much contestation is
acceptable for each narrative? I then investigate the extent to which we can
understand what a person actually believes about a narrative of the nation. I
suggest at the end of this section that people’s beliefs change over time and,
because of this, we must look at belief tendencies rather than any concretized
form of actual belief. The final part of this chapter looks at a second
performance in the ulpan which I call the “killing justification” narrative
performance. My analysis considers how past performances of narratives of the
nation influence future ones. I conclude that tracing this process can lead us to
a general understanding of a person’s belief tendencies.

Narrative, Experience and Belief Structure
Of the writings in medical anthropology discussed in chapter one, it is
the work of Kirmayer, Mattingly and Good that have been most influential in
shaping my understanding of narrative theory. Much of their theory is
interested in understanding how narrative and experience are interrelated. The
first issue, then, is understanding the nature of experience. For Kirmayer and
other “discontinuity theorists,” experience is so unruly, so disparate, that it
fundamentally lacks the ability to have order or to become coherent. This lack
of coherence means that narratives can only artificially impose order on human

188
experience. It is because of this fundamental flaw that Kirmayer calls for
medical anthropology to discontinue employing the term narrative as a way of
understanding illness experience. At best, people’s fractured experiences of
illness can only be represented by “enacted narratives.” This term
acknowledges that narratives are enacted by a variety of different actors
(patients, doctors, clinical institutions, etc.), a ‘heteroglossia,’ with different
interests and motivations that often work at cross-purposes. More importantly,
though, the term “enacted narratives” accentuates the inherent inability of
narrative to structure unruly past experiences.
While I agree with discontinuity theorists that experience is fractured, I
believe, along with Mattingly, that it is not narratives’ primary function to
impose order on past experience. Instead, the relationship between narrative
and experience is of a different order. Narratives emerge spontaneously in a
present moment – that is, they emerge in the midst of people’s experience
during a performance. As Mattingly writes, narratives are “in quest of drama”
(Mattingly 2000:189), and performances provide the kinds of dramatic moments
that people feel compelled to narrativize. In this sense, narrative production is a
highly aesthetic and creative process. Still, we cannot ignore our intuition as it
tells us that some important connection exists between past experience and
present narrative formation.
While narratives cannot impose coherence on past experiences, we can
see how past narrative formations – which emerged from past experiences

189
during different performances – create a desire to engage in future performances
which results in new narrative formations that shape new future action
structures. Let us trace how this process works. As we have already seen in
Mattingly’s work, narratives that emerge in a performance are used by patients
and therapists to model future action structures (1998). However, since
Mattingly focuses on the aesthetics of the narrative moment itself, she does not
address the question of how narratives are used by people once a performance
finishes. This chapter will show that these new narratives enter into an
individual’s matrix of other assimilated narratives. All of these narratives can
be at odds with one another because they provide different models for future
action. As these competing narratives unsettle one another, they lead people to
a desire to engage in future performances where other narratives can emerge
that provide new models for future action. In other words, part of what draws a
person into an interaction that is transformed into a narrative moment is the
unsettled nature of past performances and past experiences.
In my own fieldwork at the ulpan, I witnessed a process that was very
similar to that which has been described in encounters between clinicians and
patients. However, in the ulpan, the narratives that emerge during performances
are used to help shape students’ future belief structures as opposed to future
action structures. Since the Palestinian and Israeli students’ beliefs about Israeli
national narratives were oriented so differently, the performances rarely
concluded with the students being satisfied. Students would often rehash the

190
performance and new narratives immediately after class or during class breaks
with their friends. There were also frequent discussions about how students
wanted to continue that day’s performance or engage in a new performance in a
future class since they were unsatisfied with the results of the one just
performed.
In my interviews with Palestinian and Israeli students, I learned that
many people continued to think about and discuss the emergent narratives after
class with family members or other friends not connected to the class. Students
would take the narratives from class, consider them along with other competing
narratives – wherever and whenever they may have been formed – and return to
the ulpan with the desire to pursue a new performative moment. The new
narratives that emerged from the next performance would provide alternative
models of future belief structures. Narratives, then, are only temporarily
complete. They often leave people with an unsettled feeling about a narrative
and it is this feeling that leads people to desire future performances which can
result in alternative models for future belief structures.
In her more recent works, Mattingly has looked more closely at the
process of how dramatic narrative moments emerge. She asks, “What
differentiates the quality and form of these dramatic times from more ordinary
moments? (2000:190).” Mattingly is interested in the moment that Dell Hymes
has called the “breakthrough into performance” (Hymes in Mattingly,
2000:189). This is the temporal point where more ordinary moments transform

191
into performative moments, one where dramatic narrative moments emerge.
These performative moments occurred frequently in the ulpan classroom.
While Mattingly focused on what happens in the narrative moment, my own
work focuses on how performances and the narratives that emerge in them
impact a person’s desire to continue narrativizing. In the ulpan, people engage
in everyday performances in order to strengthen their own belief system and to
convince other people about the veracity of those beliefs.
Good’s (1994) research, drawing from reader response theory, was
useful in understanding why this is true. Narratives, like a book that is being
read, become increasingly more meaningful over time as the plot becomes
further developed in a person’s mind. In other words, new experience gained
through further reading makes a person’s understanding of the narrative more
developed. When narratives of the nation are performed in classrooms, the
performance inevitably ends. But like the reader who puts down a book for the
evening before it is finished, these narratives of the nation often get taken up
again in later classes. New elements of the national narrative are learned in
between performances (whether they are thought about by a student or whether
they learn something new in a different performance) by students and the
teacher and these new elements (or narrative details) influence how a narrative
emerges in future performances. This process of narratizing and renarratizing
continues until the course is finished at the end of the semester.

192
Performance Space – Regions and Spheres
In order to understand the many layers of meaning in an ulpan
performance, I would like to come to a useful understanding of performance
space. Everyday performances take place in widely varying social contexts.
Social space plays an important role in how performances are performed. At
the ulpan, most of the performances played out inside of the classroom. How,
then, might we conceptualize performance space in terms of its influence on a
performance? This point has been taken up in Wertsch’s work on Soviet and
post-Soviet national narratives (2002). Borrowing from Goffman’s conceptual
model of front and back regions in performance, Wertsch distinguishes between
two different kinds of social spaces:
The notion of “regions” that Goffman outlined is central to
how social situations operate. Regions are performance spaces
that are bounded by time, space, and perceptual access.
Goffman divided the space in which a performance is carried
out into a “front region” and a “back region.” The former is
“the place where the performance is given” (p. 107), where the
performer tries to “give the appearance that his activity in the
region maintains and embodies certain standards” (p. 107). In
this setting, “some aspects of the activity are expressively
accentuated and other aspects, which might discredit the
fostered impression, are suppressed” (p. 111). In accordance
with his dramaturgical analysis, Goffman viewed performances
in the front region as akin to performances on stage.
In contrast, a back region, or “backstage,” is “where the
impression fostered by the performance is knowingly
contradicted as a matter of course” (p. 112). It is in this region
that “the performer can relax; he can drop his front, forgo
speaking his lines, and step out of character” (p. 112).
The performances analyzed by Goffman are typically carried
out not by isolated individuals, but in “teams.” It is usually a
group, or team, that is concerned with impression management,

193
performance, and the use of backstage and frontstage language.
Part of the dynamics of such teams is that “one over-all
objective ... is to sustain the definition of the situation that its
performance fosters” (p. 141); a team tries to avoid revealing
any “destructive information” (p. 141) that would call its
performance into question. The result is that “a basic problem
for many performances is that of information control; the
audience must not acquire destructive information about the
situation that is being defined for them. In other words, a team
must be able to keep its secrets and have its secrets kept” (p.
141). (Wertsch 2002:135-36)

It seems quite useful to conceptualize the social space in which a
performance occurs in terms of performance regions that are bound by time,
space and perceptual access. This definition offers a way for us to demarcate
when one performance begins and when it ends. In the ulpan, a performance
occurred when students who were present in our classroom began and ended an
important discussion about a narrative of the nation. If people continued the
discussion outside the classroom, this would have to be considered a new
performance since the time, space and perceptual access had all changed.
In addition to this idea, Goffman and Wertsch believe that there are
different performance regions that dictate the kinds of impressions performers
are willing to give to their audiences. In the front region, certain standards and
forms of presentation must be adhered to so as to not jeopardize the overall
impression of the performance. In the back region, people need not worry about
what kind of impression they make since their audience is no longer present. In
the back region, there is room for contradiction and contestation of
performances. Wertsch understands the difference between the front and back

194
regions as essentially the difference between performances in the “public and
private spheres” (2002:136). In public spheres, “teams” must worry about the
presentation of the performance in order not to reveal any destructive
information. In private spheres, people are less worried about impression
management since they are presumably with people whom they trust. This is
the social space where contestation can occur freely.
It certainly seems productive to think about performance space as
bounded by time, space, conceptual access and power relations (my own
addition to the model). However, sometimes it is difficult to maintain the kind
of cohesion Wertsch demands of the performance space he envisions. When
students left the classroom for a class break, they generally went to a coffee
machine right outside the ulpan building. Occasionally, students would
continue discussing the performance that originated in the classroom. Being in
a new social space with different performers and power dynamics meant that
this was a new performance. Still, during any given coffee machine
performance, Palestinian and new Israeli students moved freely in and out of
this conversation without dramatically changing what was being discussed.
From a Wertschian perspective, this social space was not tightly enough bound
for it to be considered one performance. Since the dynamics of the conversation
were changing quickly, it needed to be thought of in terms of multiple
performances. Yet, it is only in rare instances when performance space can
maintain the strict cohesion that is found in the ulpan classroom and in

195
Wertsch’s idealized model. Most performance spaces resemble the coffee
machine performance where people move in and out fairly rapidly. This
suggests that the definition of performance space might need to be more
flexible, allowing for minor changes that do not greatly influence the outcome
of the performance.
In addition to this, Goffman’s binary splitting of performative space into
front/back regions and Wertsch’s binary splitting of public/private spheres is
problematic in several ways. In many situations, the line that separates front
and back regions as well as private and public spheres is not always clear cut.
Employing Wertsch’s and Goffman’s concepts, the ulpan classroom would be
considered a public sphere or a front region because that is where the
performance is given. There were moments in the classroom, however, when
students were able to create their own private spheres within the public sphere.
For example, as mentioned in chapter two, Palestinian students spoke to one
another in Arabic as a way to resist an Israeli narrative of the nation. Languages
switching immediately problematized the performance space. Speaking audibly
in the classroom meant they were still performing in the public sphere of the
ulpan. Still, the switch to Arabic created a private sphere in which only the
Palestinian students had access to what was being said.
It is also problematic to think about performance space in such rigid
terms as impression management, information control and maintaining certain
standards during a performance. Each performance space is unique and any of

196

the features specifically attributed to either private or public spheres might
easily be found in the other. So, while Goffman and Wertsch conceptualize
only the public sphere as a space where people deeply care about the
impressions they make, I have found the same to be true in private spheres. It is
not the kind of sphere that dictates how impressions are given, then, but what is
at stake during the performance. In a discussion I had with some Palestinian
friends at a dinner, Nuha [a female Palestinian citizen of Israel] was adamant
that in order for there to be peace, Israel had to give back all the Palestinian
lands from the 1967 war.
1
However, when Nuha and I talked privately a few
weeks later about the same subject, she acknowledged that there would need to
be a compromise on the 1967 borders given the “realities on the ground.”
2

When I asked her why she did not say this in our earlier conversation at the
dinner, she said that it would be hard for her to explain this opinion to her
Palestinian friends. In front of them, she felt as though she needed to be
resolute about the Palestinian cause. In front of me, she was more willing to
talk about a compromise because she knew I was Jewish. In the private sphere
with Nuha’s Palestinian friends and the private sphere with me the stakes were
quite different and as a result, these spheres must be considered as different
social spaces. It was clear in both spaces that she cared about the impression

1
As mentioned in chapter two, United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 on November
22, 1967 called for the “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the
recent conflict.”
2
The realities that Nuha was referring to was that large and dense Israeli population centers
exist in Jerusalem and outside Jerusalem on occupied Palestinian land.

197
she gave but the particular impression depended upon who was in the social
space.
Another problem with the dichotomy between front and back regions or
public and private spheres is that it can distinguish too strongly between
interrelated performances and hide some obvious connections. There were
many occasions at the ulpan when a classroom performance was a catalyst,
leading to a new performance outside during our break. Though one could
make a sound argument that a performance outside near the coffee machine was
a new performance, especially because that space was divested of most of the
power relations found in the classroom, the second performance would have
never occurred unless the first one had previously taken place inside the ulpan.
In sum, the question of how social space influences performances is very
important because it serves as a powerful actor in the performance along with
the performers and the audience. Time, space, perceptual access, and power can
only tie performative spaces loosely together. Still, trying to conceptualize
performance space in the binary terms of back region/front region, private
sphere/public sphere, is problematic. First, it is hard to define a performance
space as either private or public. In ulpan performances, students were able to
leave the collective public performance space and create a more private space
by speaking in a language only certain students were able to understand.
Second, each performance space is unique and in all of these spaces, people or
“teams” are concerned with impression management, information control and

198
keeping standards. To what extent they are concerned with this depends on the
social situation and stakes of the performance. Also, in an ideal world, actors
would be able to fully control the impressions they make but in the real world of
improvisation it is too difficult to actually monitor impressions all the time. At
times, performers do not even care about the impressions they make. Third,
artificially creating a binary of private and public spheres hides the intimate
connections that exist between different performance spaces. One performance
can immediately ignite a new performance that very much resembles the first
one.
Given these different issues, it seems most useful to think about each
performance space as unique and not in binary terms such as public and private
spheres. In each unique performance, the issues of impression management,
information control, and standards all play an important role in determining
what a person says they believe. Understanding the extent to which people
deploy these strategies requires a close investigation of the stakes involved in
each individual performance. Each new performance brings new people,
motivations, and circumstances together and these, in large part, instruct people
how to perform.

199

“No Partner” Narrative Performance in the Ulpan
3

I would like to now briefly sketch how a performance in the ulpan
classroom unfolds. In the ulpan, Israeli narratives of the nation are introduced
to the class through a variety of means. As discussed in the chapter two,
materials taken from textbooks, news reports and audio tape recordings are the
sources of Israeli narratives of the nation. Once Israeli narratives of the nation
are introduced by the teacher as discourse, they are occasionally transformed
from an ordinary conversation into an everyday performance. During these
everyday performances, the teacher and students use the Israeli narratives of the
nation in a rhetorical style to debate their discursive merits and their veracity.
This is done by employing competing, contested and personal narratives.
During this generative process, new elements of a narrative of the nation are
introduced into the performance and these new elements can reshape the
narrative in such a way that either adds or subtracts details from that narrative.
Once new elements of a narrative are introduced, they provide new belief
structures that can be rejected, ignored, partially accepted, confirmed or fully
assimilated by the students in the ulpan.
While performance of narratives of the nation were common in the
ulpan, there were many other moments when the opportunity to begin a
performance went unrealized. These potential moments began when a narrative

3
In Israeli political discourse, it is often repeated that Israel has “no [Palestinian] partner” with
which to negotiate or talk. This phrase, as I will show in this section, has become an Israeli
narrative of the nation.

200
of the nation was introduced into classroom discourse while reading the ulpan
textbook or when reading or listening to the Israeli news. After these narratives
were introduced, both Israeli and Palestinian students might raise a question
about the veracity of the narrative. Usually, these questions would not lead to
an everyday performance. An example of this occurred when the class read a
statement from a newspaper article that insinuated that all Russian Jews faced
anti-Semitism in their lives in Russia. Alex, one of the Russian students,
disputed this statement by saying he had never faced any anti-Semitism while
he was living in Russia. After we heard Alex’s reply, no one engaged the topic
further and we moved on to the next topic. Many discussions of narratives of
the nation ended this way because one person, usually the teacher, had the
authority to confirm or reject the narrative without dispute. At other times,
though, a narrative that was introduced to the class was too controversial to let
go uncontested. This is when a performance would begin.
One such controversial narrative was an Israeli narrative of the nation
that claimed that Israel had “no partner” on the Palestinian side with which to
negotiate. One morning, we were reading a news account about a discussion
between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and United States Secretary of
State Colin Powell. President George W. Bush’s policy at this time was to keep
trying to persuade Sharon to continue the peace process by negotiating with
Arafat. Sharon told Powell that it was useless for Israel to talk to Arafat since
he was continuing to fund terror. Israel, he claimed, had no Palestinian partner

201

with which to negotiate peace. This “no partner” Israeli narrative of the nation
turned out to have great resonance in Israeli discourse.
4
To this day, any Israeli
who hears the phrase “no partner” immediately understands that it is the Israeli
government who does not have a Palestinian partner with whom to discuss
peace.
The following “no partner” narrative performance was one of the longest
and most complicated performances we had while I was in Rachael’s [the ulpan
teacher] ulpan class. While I will refer to this ethnographic example from here
on forward as the “no partner” narrative performance – since the “no partner”
narrative was the first narrative of the nation to be performed - this in no way
intends to minimize the complexity of the performance or the many narratives
discussed in it, as I will explore in my analysis.
****************************************************************
Today, we read a news story that quickly provoked a heated debate
amongst the teacher and students. In the story, Sharon said that Arafat funds
terror and that there was no point in considering him or the Palestinians partners
in the peace process anymore. After finishing reading the story in Hebrew as a
group, Rachael asked rhetorically in a lowered voice, “Yes, who do we have to
talk to?” Immediately, Munna [a female Palestinian citizen of Israel] responded

4
At the time of the writing of this chapter in March 2006, temporary Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert again employed the “no partner” term when discussing why he would not
negotiate with Hamas, the democratically elected representatives of the Palestinians. The
reasoning is that since Hamas does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, they cannot be a partner
in negotiations.

202

by asking what did Rachael mean that Israel had no Palestinian peace partner.
Of course, there is a partner. It is us Palestinians who do not have a partner.
Ever since Rabin
5
was assassinated, Arafat has had to negotiate with several
Israeli prime ministers, all with different political agendas. This has made it
near impossible for the Palestinians to negotiate. Rabin’s replacement, Shimon
Peres
6
, seemed to want to take a similar path of reconciliation as did Rabin but
he lost our trust after he ordered the killing of Palestinians. When Netanyahu
7

came into office, there were no negotiations at all. In fact, while Netanyahu
refused to negotiate, Israel took advantage of the situation by building more and
more settlements on Palestinian land. How can there be talk of peace while the
settlers are stealing what little land we have left, she said.
Rachael responded that Israelis elected Netanyahu in the first place
because all Israel got in return for trying to negotiate peace was Palestinian

5
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was Israel’s first leader to formally accept Yasser Arafat
and the Palestine Liberation Organization as negotiating partners for peace. Rabin was
assassinated by a religious Jewish zealot in November 1995 who was ideologically opposed to
the two-state solution that was being negotiated. In principle, the two-state solution was
supposed to divide up the land in such a way that would secure both Jewish and Palestinian
national aspirations.
6
Prime Minister Shimon Peres, like Rabin, was in the Israel’s Ha’avodah (Labor) Party. The
Labor Party in Israel is considered to be the left-leaning political party and has since 1993
sought to create some kind of peace agreement with the Palestinians through negotiations.
7
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was (and still is as of March 2006) in the Likud Party.
The Likud Party had always been highly skeptical of negotiating with Arafat. For Netanyahu
and others in the Likud, the peace process was seen as showing Israeli weakness. It was a way
for Israel to give a lot of concessions to Palestinians without any real returns from them. The
Likud believed that giving concessions under any attack whatsoever is a sign of weakness to
Palestinian militants. They also believed that allowing the Palestinians to have sovereignty over
any part of the land, especially if it bordered directly with any of Israel’s Arab neighboring
countries, would be dangerous since the Palestinians would then have the ability to import far
more sophisticated weaponry. For the Likud, then, the goal was to forestall a Palestinian state
as long as possible – especially if Israel was being attacked.

203

terror. She continued, do you know how difficult it is for Israelis to go to a
mall? We risk our lives every day just leaving the house. I am so scared now
that I will not even think about going to a mall until the violence settles down. I
cannot even consider allowing my children to get onto a public bus anymore
because I worry that they might get blown up by a suicide bomber. Of course
you do not understand what it is like to be scared all the time because the
Palestinians never attack your stores in East Jerusalem.
8

Munna responded that there have been almost no Palestinian attacks
from the time negotiations began until the second intifada and that there were
no attacks at all until 1996. Only after years of frustration with the peace
process did the attacks begin. Israel had years to show how peace was going to
benefit Palestinians but all we got in return during the peace process was new
settlements, the expansion of old settlements into Palestinian lands, Israeli
bypass roads to support the settlers, and more difficult living circumstances.
Also, just because we are not Jewish does not mean we are immune from the
attacks. Do you think the militants think about our well-being when they attack
you in West Jerusalem? We ride the Israeli buses just like you. We worked in
all of the restaurants that were blown up. They do not stop to worry about us

8
The population in East Jerusalem is overwhelmingly Palestinian citizens of Israel. There are
probably few, if any, stores owned by Israelis there.

204

while they are planning their attacks. They know we work in those restaurants.
I had two friends that were hurt in the Sbarro attack.
9

Ignoring what Munna said about attacks, Rachael went back to the issue
of the settlers. She said that if the Palestinians had accepted any of the Israeli
peace offers, there would have never been any settlements in the first place.
Had there not been settlers, the whole infrastructure set up to protect them
would have not been necessary and the Palestinians would be living freely
today. Rachael went on to say, have you ever heard of Abba Eban? He is a
famous Israeli politician who said “the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to
miss an opportunity.” So many times we have tried to negotiate peace with you
and every time it looks like something good might happen for the Palestinians,
your leadership fails you. I really believe that your leadership will never be
happy until all the Jews are thrown into the sea.
10
Either way, the Palestinians
must elect somebody who understands the best deal they are going to get from
the Israeli government and accept it.
At this point, George [a Palestinian] entered the conversation and said
that regardless of how the peace process was going, Israel had no right to seize
Palestinian lands and give them to Israeli settlers. What kind of country can we

9
The Sbarro pizza restaurant attack was considered one of the most devastating while I lived in
Jerusalem. While many Israelis were killed and injured, we heard from Palestinian students that
a number of the injured workers in the restaurant were Palestinian citizens of Israel.
10
The expression that the Palestinians want to “throw all the Jews into the sea” is well known
by both Israelis and Palestinians and means that once the Palestinians have enough power to
overcome Israel, they will kick them out of the land and sink them in the Mediterranean Sea.
This metaphor has a lot of power for both Israelis and Palestinians.

205

have in the future if you keep taking away all of our land from us? George went
on to say how upsetting it was to hear how Israel justified this appropriation of
Palestinian land as a necessary security precaution. He argued that this was not
a security issue. It was a pure and simple issue of Israeli expansionism.
11
If
anything, moving more settlers into the Palestinian lands makes it more
dangerous for Israelis. The settlers’ presence creates great friction between
Palestinians and Israelis and most Palestinians believe that resistance is
justified, both morally and under rules set out by international law, against the
settlers and the Israeli soldiers who are there to protect them.
12
Also, now that
there are so many settlers living in Palestine, it will be impossible for your
government to remove them after a peace agreement has been reached.

11
Indeed, in the Fourth Geneva Convention (August 12, 1949) – Convention (IV) Relative to
the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Part III – Status and Treatment of Protected
Persons, Section III – Occupied Territories, Article 49, it says, “The Occupying Power shall not
deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
12
There appears to be no international law that specifically sets out provisions for a legal right
of resistance. However, the question of whether armed resistance can be found in the spirit of
international law is far more controversial. According to Falk (2002), “Resistance UN
International law is silent on the rights of an occupied people to resist an occupation that
flagrantly and persistently violates their most fundamental rights. Such rights do seem to flow
directly, however, from the general support given to the dynamics of decolonization and from
the related legitimacy of efforts by a colonized or oppressed people to engage in struggle,
including armed struggle. Without entering into the substantive details, the main relevant point
is that the historic 1960 UN General Assembly Declaration on the Granting of Independence to
Colonial Countries and Peoples establishes four important propositions. First, [the use of] force
to deny self-determination is prohibited under international law. Second, and conversely,
“forcible resistance to forcible denial of self-determination—by imposing or maintaining
colonial or alien domination—is legitimate according to the Declaration.” Third, movements to
achieve self-determination, although not qualifying as states, have standing in international law,
including the right to receive support from outside actors. Finally, third-party governments can
treat such movements as legitimate without encroaching on the rights of the state exercising
control over the territory and its inhabitants. The extension of such general developments in
international law to the Palestinian struggle is supported by the weight of international expert
opinion and has been endorsed on a number of occasions by the UN General Assembly.”
(2002:26-7)

206

Rachael seemed to be extremely sympathetic to George’s argument,
especially because she considered herself to be a liberal. She said that most
Israelis, including herself, are against settling in Palestinian areas. Why would a
handful of Jews want to live in the middle of tens of thousands of Palestinians in
Shkhem (Hebrew for Nablus)? She also agreed that the settler presence could
only be a problem for both Israeli and Palestinian peace interests.
Orly [a female new Israeli] said that not only were settlements bad for
the peace process, but she thought it was morally wrong for Israel to allow
settlers to move into Palestinian areas. If we want real peace with the
Palestinians we are going to have give up this idea of settling Greater Israel.
13

There are two or three million people living in the Palestinian areas and we
cannot rule over them since they do not want us there.
Lior [a male new Israeli] said that we do not want to be there at all. But
we have to be there for our own security. How can we possibly leave the
Palestinians alone without watching them? We cannot trust them. If we were to
leave them alone, they would just arm themselves better and attack us with
greater firepower.

13
Greater Israel, sometimes referred to as ‘Biblical Israel,’ refers to the boundaries of Israel as
they are described in the Old Testament: “On that day, God made a covenant with Avram,
saying: ‘To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great
river the Euphrates. The land of the Kenites, Kenizites, Kadmonites; the Chitties, Perizites,
Refaim; the Emorites, Canaanites, Gigashites and Yevusites’ (Genesis 15:18-21).” In modern
geography this would include land from the Mediterranean Sea to Iraq (West to East) and from
Egypt to Turkey (South to North).

207

Uri [a male new Israeli] took a more religious-Zionist perspective on
settlers. He said that all Jews are responsible to follow the religious obligation
of settling the land of Biblical Israel. Further, once Jews live on Israeli soil, it is
a sin for them to give it up. The land was a gift from God and nobody is
allowed to give away God’s gifts. At this point, it was clear that the Israeli
students were beginning to argue with one another. So, Rachael cut off this line
of the conversation by saying that regardless of what is right and wrong, until
there is a Palestinian partner and there is no terror, few Israelis will want to give
concessions to the Palestinians.
Nuha [a female Palestinian citizen of Israel] then said that whether there
is violence or not, Israel needs to provide concessions to the Palestinians in
order to provide hope to the general Palestinian population. Israel must stop
taking away Palestinian lands while they are negotiating. As you have seen for
the last year, without hope, support for the militant groups rises dramatically.
Almost incredulously, Lior said, concessions? What about Barak’s way too
“generous offer”
14
to Arafat at Camp David? Israel was ready to give you

14
Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Arafat met at Camp David with President Clinton and their
respective negotiating teams in 1999. Many Palestinians and Israelis hoped that this meeting
would bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What was referred to in the Israeli media
as Barak’s “generous offer” was the percentage of land in the West Bank and Gaza that Israel
was willing to allow the Palestinians to control under the Palestinian Authority. Though the
actual percentage of land Barak offered was never explicitly clear since the negotiations
remained a secret, the Jewish students, based on accounts presented in the Israeli media, told the
Palestinian students that Barak had “offered” them ninety-six percent of the West Bank and
Gaza.

208

everything you asked for – and more. Is all this killing they are doing worth a
few dunams of land?
15

Nuha replied, I voted for Barak and it was the Palestinians’ votes that
helped Barak become the prime minister. Netanyahu would still be your prime
minister had Palestinian voters in Israel not come out to support him. We had a
lot of trust that he would find a way to make peace with Arafat. After the
negotiations broke down, though, we lost all faith in him and in Israel’s desire
to make peace with us ever. And on the topic of Barak’s so-called generous
offer, if his generous offer was accepted, what kind of freedom would
Palestinians have? What if I wanted to go to the beach in Gaza? I would have
to go through as many checkpoints as I do now to get there. If I wanted to go
visit my family in Nablus, how long would it take me? Even after this
“generous offer,” we will still have the settlers and we will still have the roads
and we will still have the checkpoints.
Somewhat sympathetically, Miriam [a female new Israeli]
16
responded
by saying that she felt really bad about the checkpoints. In her work as a “peace
through art” teacher in Gaza, she traveled all over Judea and Samaria
17
to help
Palestinian children who were very poor. As she moved from one place to
another, she felt that the checkpoints were really making life difficult for the

15
A dunam is a measurement of land – 1 dunam = 0.247105381 acre.
16
There were a few students in the class like Miriam who were not new Israeli immigrants.
They were taking the ulpan course to learn Hebrew but had not made any immediate
commitment to immigration.
17
Judea and Samaria are the biblical terms for what is now present-day Palestine.

209
Palestinians – especially the children. But in the end, what can Israelis do? We
have to have these checkpoints or we get killed. It is our moral responsibility to
not allow innocent Jews to die at the hands of terrorists and this is one of the
best ways to do it.
Moshe [a male new Israeli] went on to argue that not only did Arafat
refuse Barak’s offer, but he never made a counter offer in response. Why did
Arafat not choose to negotiate? Nuha said, negotiate? Thank you for offering
us our own land back to us. She added that at her house in Shofat (in East
Jerusalem) her family was in possession of a family tree that dated back over
five hundred years. She went on to say that many other Palestinian families in
Jerusalem that she knew also have long family lines. It is an insult for you to
offer us what already is ours in the first place.
The Jewish students were very upset about this last comment. We have
been here much longer than you. There have been Jews living in Jerusalem for
over two thousand years. If we had not been kicked out of Israel by the
Romans, all of the Jews would still be living in Israel. Munna said you are all
new immigrants to my country. You all just got here. You have not lived here
for a long time. Why should you have more rights than me? At this point the
performance was getting quite personal and the students were getting upset.
Probably sensing this, Rachael ended the performance by saying we had a good
conversation but now it is time for our break.

210

During the break, a small group of Palestinian and Jewish students
gathered together near the coffee machine to continue the discussion from the
classroom.
18
Nuha began the conversation by saying how the opinions of the
Jews in our class just go to show that Israelis are either politically right or
extreme-right. There are those Israelis who believe they should kick the
Palestinians out to Jordan and there are the rest of the Israelis who believe we
should be kicked out of Israel just so that you do not have to see us any more.
Israelis want peace for Israel’s sake and they are only willing to make peace on
their own terms. They do not care about peace for the Palestinians and they are
not interested in understanding what Palestinians need for peace. If there really
was an Israeli Left, there would be people talking about all the innocent
Palestinians that get murdered. Or they would talk about how the Palestinians
who live in Israel suffer from Israel’s harsh policies. Nuha looked at me and
said, my uncle just had his house knocked down because he did not build it with
an Israeli permit. Do you know how long it takes to get a permit to build houses
in East Jerusalem? People wait for years. What are they supposed to do while
they are waiting? Live on the streets? Martijn [a male new Israeli] said there
must have been a good reason that they knocked down the house. It must have
not have been safe. Why would they knock it down otherwise? Nuha said, you

18
The “backstage” conversations usually switched to English once we went outside the
classroom.

211
Jews just do not understand how bad it is for us. They knock down our homes
all the time. And this is just one of our problems.
****************************************************************

Analysis of the “No Partner” Narrative Performance
The first thing I noticed about ulpan performances are that narratives of
the nation are never fixed either before or after they are performed. Bruner and
Gorfain (1984) explain why this is true. In their article about the Israeli
“Masada” narrative, Bruner and Gorfain employ the term ‘dialogic narration’ as
a way to explain the perpetual unsettledness of national narratives. The term
dialogic narration is meant to call attention to the polyphonic nature or the
multivocality of national narratives. According to this view, there is not a
national narrative or the national narrative but “various tellings and
interpretations” (1984:56) of national narratives. There are a number of ways
that narratives are dialogic, according to Bruner and Gorfain, but the one way
that is most applicable to the “no partner” narrative performance is that national
narratives have “a dialogic relationship between [the] self and society”
(1984:60). In this situation, “Tellers and listeners do not take passive roles in a
superorganic process of storymaking but actively engage in an interpretive act
to make ‘the story’ meaningful to themselves and relevant to their own life
situations” (1984:60). In other words, people actively engage narratives of the

212
nation so that they can create greater personal meaning for themselves with
them.
The other thing I noticed in all of the ulpan performances is that the
original narrative of the nation that is debated is almost never the same narrative
being debated when the performance ends. In the “no partner” narrative
performance, the discussion began about who was a legitimate partner in peace
negotiations. It ended on a discussion about who has more of a legitimate claim
to live in Palestine/Israel given the different genealogical logics that each
respective group deploys. During this performance, the class shifted quickly
from one narrative of the nation to another. This included the Israeli “generous
offer,” “peace process,” “Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an
opportunity,” “Israeli victim of Palestinian terror,” “settlements,” “appropriation
of Palestinian land for security reasons,” and “Greater Israel” narratives. The
performance also incorporated various Palestinian narratives of the nation. This
included employing their own versions of the “settlement” narrative as well as
“the Palestinian citizens of Israel victimization” narrative.
Why did the performance move so quickly from one narrative of the
nation to another? In part, this can be attributed to the improvisational nature of
performance. However, the main reason that narratives of the nation shift so
quickly during every day performances is due to the rhetorical nature of these
performances. Narratives of the nation that enter the ulpan performance are
used by the teacher and students, albeit in bits and pieces, to persuade other

213
students about the veracity of a narrative. To do this, one must employ a variety
of rhetorical strategies – most important of which is changing which narrative is
being discussed in a performance – in order to ensure that the performance is
persuasive to others.
In the context of this ulpan performance, the rhetorical strategy of
shifting the performance was accomplished by employing three different kinds
of narratives: contesting narratives, competing narratives, and personal
narratives. Generally speaking, the Israeli teacher and the new Israeli students
tried to persuade the Palestinian students about the validity of Israeli narratives
of the nation, while the Palestinian students contest those narratives.
Occasionally, Palestinian narratives of the nation are performed and conversely,
the Israeli teacher and students contest the veracity of those narratives. In
performances in the ulpan, one might expect to only see one ‘side’ (Palestinians
or new Israelis) contesting the narratives of another. In fact, though, there were
occasions when Israeli students contested their own narratives of the nation.
In addition to contesting narratives of the nation, students use competing
narratives they have previously assimilated to try and counter another person’s
version of a narrative of the nation. These competing narratives offer an
alternative version of a truth to those being presented by another narrative. For
example, as already mentioned, the Palestinians have their own version of the
settlement narrative. The narrative elements within the Palestinian narrative

214
that were employed during the performance contradicted narrative elements
found in the Israeli version of the narrative.
The third strategy used at the ulpan was to argue against another
narrative of the nation by employing various kinds of personal narratives.
These narratives did not necessarily have to draw from a person’s personal
experience – in fact, they often would be drawn from other people’s personal
experiences. What is important about these personal narratives is that they were
employed in a rhetorical fashion as a way to shift the focus of the performance
away from a narrative of the nation towards a personal narrative. These were
employed in the performance as a device for gaining sympathy from other
performers and audience members or for assigning blame. It seemed that
beneath the surface, the “no partner” narrative performance was often a debate
about which side deserved more of the blame for the lack of peace and which
side had greater claim to victimhood given the ongoing violence.
What we see in the “no partner” narrative performance is that
performances of narratives of the nation shift quickly because of their
improvisational and rhetorical nature. When one “team” got the upper hand
during the performance, people representing another “team” felt compelled to
change the direction of the performance. The “no partner” narrative
performance is also a good example of how the three strategies of contesting
narratives, competing narratives, and personal narratives were deployed in the
flow of the performance. The following is a chronological analysis of the “no

215
partner” narrative performance that considers how these three narrative
strategies were employed by the participants.
The very first response to Rachael’s comment that the Israelis really did
not have a partner with whom to negotiate was made by Munna. She did not try
to respond directly to Rachael’s comment. Instead, she contested the “no
partner” narrative by turning the logic of the argument back onto the Israeli
narrative. She did this by saying it was Israel that could not be a partner with
the Palestinians since Israel’s quickly changing political system did not provide
the required stability to make peace.
In response to this, Rachael shifted the topic of the performance away
from the “no partner” narrative towards justifying the election of a conservative
Israeli prime minister in the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. She
then moved the performance even further away from the “no partner” narrative
by employing a more personal narrative. Rachael spoke about how scared she –
and every Israeli Jew – was to go to the mall or to let her/his kids get on a public
bus.
Munna responded with her own personal narrative. She talked about
how Palestinian citizens of Israel have the same difficulty living in Israel since
they were in just as much danger as Israelis. These contributions of personal
narratives did not have anything to do with the substantive discussion of the no
partner narrative. Instead, they were used as attempts to elicit sympathy from
audience members and other performers.

216

The performance then shifted to a discussion about a competing
narrative of the nation about settlements. Part of the Palestinian narrative about
settlements, as Munna said at the beginning of the performance, is that Israel
effectively steals Palestinian land when settlements are created and when they
are expanded upon. This problem is exacerbated because Israel has to create an
infrastructure to support the settlements which takes control over more
Palestinian land. The overarching problem of the settlements and its
infrastructure, according to Munna, was that they are used to further the Israeli
occupation.
19
Rachael then moved away from the substantive part of the
discussion to blame the Palestinians for the settlement build up. She said that if
the Palestinians had agreed to a peace agreement there would have been no
opportunity for the settlements to have expanded in the first place.
20
While
Rachael admits later in the performance that she is generally against Israeli
settlements, she still uses the opportunity presented here to blame the
Palestinians for their buildup.
Rachael then shifted the performance towards a full discussion of who
should be blamed for the lack of peace. To support her position that it was the
Palestinians who were to blame, she employed a very powerful Israeli narrative

19
In another ulpan performance about the settlement narrative, we learned that the “bypass”
roads found in the West Bank – which are for Israeli use only – create points of friction between
Palestinians and Israelis. These roads usually wind up criss-crossing with roads used by
Palestinians and it is at these points where the Israeli military sets up checkpoints. So, the
occupation is strengthened in two ways by the building of the infrastructure to support the
settlers.
20
The argument that Israel’s unfair actions are a result of Palestinian behavior is frustrating to
Palestinians. They call it “blaming the victim.”

217

of the nation which was created by the former Israeli foreign minister Abba
Eban. He wrote that “the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an
opportunity” when negotiating with Israel for peace.
21
To Israelis, this narrative
has become a metaphor that shows, on the one hand, how Israel has given the
Palestinians every conceivable opportunity to attain peace, and on the other,
blames the Palestinian leadership for their inability to accept Israel’s peaceful
overtures. Continuing along similar lines, Rachael then employed another
popular Israeli narrative that is used to blame Palestinians. She said that if the
Palestinians were able to create a democratic political system, this would
provide the conditions for a real peace process to emerge with Israel.
22
While
Arafat had been the democratically elected President of the Palestinian
Authority in January 1996, in Israel’s opinion his win had been tarnished over
time because of his autocratic style of rule. The implication of this Palestinian
democracy narrative is that the Palestinians are incapable of reaching peace with
Arafat as its leader. These narratives reveal a very typical Israeli position about
what Palestinians are obligated to do to achieve peace. The Palestinians must
vote into office someone who will understand the limitations of what the Israeli

21
Abba Eban wrote this quote about PLO leader Yasser Arafat after the Palestine Liberation
Organization rejected the 1978 Camp David Accords.
22
It will be interesting to see if and how this metaphor is redeployed now that the Palestinians
have democratically elected Hamas as the leaders of their representative government. Hamas, at
this point, still rejects any efforts at peace-making with Israel.

218

government is willing to offer for peace and then accept this Israeli version of
peace.
23

At this point, a Palestinian named George entered the performance. He
offered new elements from the competing Palestinian narrative of the nation
about settlements. If Israel continues to expand into Palestinian territory, the
Palestinians will have no land left with which to base a final peace agreement.
He also protested the part of the Israeli settlement narrative which claims that
infrastructure is needed for the sake of Israeli security.
24
In the Palestinian
competing narrative, Israeli settlements provide the state with numerous
outposts, along with the infrastructure that supports it, in order to surveil
Palestinian activity whenever necessary.
25
George argued that in the West Bank
and Gaza security is actually compromised when Israel builds more settlements
because it creates more anger and resentment from the Palestinians. It also
provides more points of friction between the Palestinian civilian population and
the Israeli military. George’s last argument was that, pragmatically, it would be
difficult to maintain peace if an agreement were ever reached because it would

23
This is another argument that infuriates Palestinians. Palestinians always talk about how they
do not want to accept an “Israeli peace.”
24
Both the need for settlements and their infrastructure was historically rationalized by Israel
after they temporarily occupied the Sinai from Egypt after the 6 Day War. The purpose of these
settlements according to the logic is that Israeli outposts serve as a first warning system in case
Israel is about to be attacked by its enemy. An extremely similar rationale has been used for the
necessity of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
25
It is shocking to witness how settlements are built in the West Bank. There is a clear
delineation between the settlements and Palestinian housing in the West Bank. Almost all of the
settlements are on top of hills looking down on Palestinian villages.

219

be difficult to move hundreds of thousands of Israelis out of the West Bank and
Gaza back into Israel.
26

George’s long discussion about settlements spurred an internal debate
amongst the Jewish teacher and students. The debate produced two competing
Israeli narrative elements within the larger “settlement” narrative – the
“security” narrative and the “Greater Israel” narrative. For Rachael, having
settlements simply did not make sense for the security of Israeli soldiers. A
handful of Israelis living in concentrated Palestinian population-centers put
those Israelis who protect them at grave risk. Orly, a young woman who had
recently immigrated to Israel from Boston and was considered to be the most
liberal Jewish student in the class, not only agreed with Rachael but even took
the argument one step further. She implied that it was immoral for Israel to
settle Palestinian lands with Jews.
Orly then introduced and refuted the Greater Israel narrative that is
advocated by religious Zionism.
27
She said that Israelis would have to give up
on the dream of Greater Israel if they wanted real peace with the Palestinians.
Lior shifted the performance back to a more security driven discussion by
saying that Israel has to have settlements because, left alone, Palestinians would

26
Since this performance, Israel has withdrawn all of the Israeli settlements out of Gaza.
27
Religious Zionism is a movement that justifies efforts to build a Jewish state in Israel on the
basis of the Jewish religion. The main ideologist of religious Zionism was Rabbi Abraham Kook
and he urged young religious Jews to support Zionist efforts to settle Israel. Rabbi Kook saw
Zionism as a part of a divine plan to resettle the Jewish people in its homeland. This eventually
became the justification for the Greater Israel narrative. Zionists who are not aligned with
religious Zionism reject this idea as being unrealistic and undesirable.

220
do everything in their power to destroy Israel. Settlers were on Palestinian
lands to safeguard Israelis against that possibility. Uri, in response to Orly’s
argument, began to discuss in greater detail the religious justification for the
settlements. Once Jews have control over any part of the land of Israel, they are
forbidden to relinquish it for any reason. The discussion of the Israeli
“settlement” narrative concluded very abruptly when Rachael ended the
conversation.
The “no partner” narrative performance then continued when Nuha
employed a Palestinian narrative about how people should be treated while their
representatives are negotiating with Israel. According to this Palestinian “peace
process” narrative, peace cannot be achieved if the people who are living under
Israeli occupation cannot maintain hope. For this reason, Israel must offer
good-will concessions as a friendly gesture towards Palestinians. With this,
there can be continued internal support for a peace process. Very aggressively,
Lior argued against this narrative by saying that the Israeli leaders have already
made many concessions to the Palestinians. Lior said that Barak made the
Palestinians a “generous offer” that the Palestinian leadership inexplicably
rejected. Nuha responded that the Israeli offer was not actually generous at all.
For her, the agreement being negotiated would have not offered the Palestinians
much in terms of actual concessions. To reinforce her point, Nuha talked about
how the agreement would offer the Palestinians only slightly easier movement
throughout Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. If Palestinians wanted to take long

221
trips to visit friends or family in other places, they would still be subject to the
humiliation of being checked at all the Israeli checkpoints. Miriam, a new
Israeli student, then shifted the performance away from the “generous offer”
narrative by employing a personal narrative that offered sympathy to
Palestinians who have difficulties with the Israeli military at the checkpoints.
Miriam talked about the occasion when she, a non-Palestinian, had a difficult
time watching and enduring what happened to Palestinians at checkpoints.
After the sympathetic interjection, though, she redeployed a previously
discussed narrative to blame the Palestinians for the need for Israeli
checkpoints: if the Palestinian terrorists did not attack Israelis, there would be
no need for Israel to have the checkpoints.
Not satisfied with how the “generous offer” narrative discussion
finished, Moshe shifted the performance back to the topic. He said even if the
Palestinians did not consider Barak’s offer to be generous, Arafat and the
Palestinians should have still continued negotiating with Israel. Nuha argued
against Moshe by saying that Israel did not have the right to negotiate items
such as Palestinian land that was already in the possession of the Palestinians.
Nuha’s comment became an introduction into a very contentious competitive
narrative between the Jewish and Palestinian students. As justification for their
presence in Palestine/Israel, both Palestinians and Israelis deploy a “continuous
residence” narrative. Jewish Israelis believe that they are entitled to live in
Israel because they have lived in Jerusalem continuously ever since they were

222

driven out by the Romans.
28
Jews claim, therefore, that they have had an
historic connection to the land for over two thousand years. The Palestinian
“continuous residence” narrative centers on the argument that Palestinians are
really the native people of the land. Many Palestinian families in Jerusalem and
other Palestinian cities have proof in the form of family trees that they have
lived in Palestine much longer and in greater numbers than the Jews. Until the
establishment of the state of Israel, the Palestinian population greatly
outnumbered the Jewish population.
29
Only after the Holocaust and the
establishment of Israel did these numbers change. As this performance
continued, both Israeli and Palestinian students began to heatedly repeat the
same arguments and that is when Rachael decided to end the “no partner”
narrative performance by saying it was time for a class break.
The end of the performance in the classroom was so heated that a new
performance about who has the right to live in Palestine/Israel began
immediately afterwards during the class break. There were a number of
Palestinian and Jewish students participating in this performance. Nuha began
the discussion by repeating why the Palestinians have rights to the land. She
added that the only reason Israelis do not see things such as family trees as

28
Still, few, if any, of those Jews believed in Zionism or a Jewish state in Palestine. Before the
advent of a Zionist doctrine in the mid-1800s, religious Jews believed that Jews should only
return to Israel and establish a Jewish state with the assistance of a Jewish messiah.
29
According to Rodinson (1968), there were 7,000 Jews in Israel (mostly living in Jerusalem)
and 367,244 Palestinians living in Palestine in 1870. According to British census figures from
1922, this figure rose to 83,970 Jews and over 650,000 Palestinians. Just a few years before the
establishment of the Israeli state in 1942, there were 484,408 Jews and around 1,750,000
Palestinians. (Esco Foundation 1947)

223

proof of their rights to the land is because of Israeli racist attitudes towards
Palestinians.
30
Nuha then used a personal narrative about the ongoing
destruction of Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem to exemplify her point.
Martijn, another of the new Israeli liberal students, contested this by saying he
believed that the Israeli authorities would only knock down Palestinian houses if
they were dangerous for the Palestinians to live in. Nuha replied to Martijn that
she knew that Israel was destroying the houses to get rid of Palestinians because
of her own uncle’s experience. Even though this was a new performance, the
students employed the same kids of rhetorical strategies to try and convince
others about the veracity of their own narratives.

The Nature of Narratives of the Nation and Rhetoric during Performance
The three rhetorical strategies students used to shift the performance are
competing narratives, contesting narratives and personal narratives. Working
through the analysis of the “no partner” narrative performance, we also see how
competing and contesting narratives can teach us quite a bit about the nature of
narratives of the nation. The term narrative of the nation or national narrative
might leave the impression that there can be a consensus about a narrative’s
meaning within what one would consider to be a “team.” After all, the term

30
Many Palestinians in Jerusalem believe there are essentially two kinds of Israelis: there are
the racist Israelis who want to see the Palestinians leave Israel because they are inferior to
Israelis and there are the more subtle Israeli racists who want to see Palestinians leave so that
they will not undermine the idea of a democratic Jewish state.

224
narrative of the nation implies that the narrative belongs to the nation - the
whole national collective. The “settlement” narrative, though, demonstrates
how narrative elements can at times actually work to undermine any sense of
national agreement. Within the Israeli “settlement” narrative, there are two
competing narrative elements that articulate support for Israeli settlements. For
example, “Greater Israel” is one narrative that was used by supporters of the
settlement narrative, while “security for Israel” was another narrative used to
support settlements. Different supporters of the settlement narrative might
accept one, reject the other, or accept both of these elements.
Further, in the “no partner” narrative performance we saw how these
two different narrative elements were used to produce four different competing
narratives. First, there was a discussion about whether the settlements were
good or bad for Israel. For the students who were supportive of Israeli
settlements, the “security for Israel” narrative element asserted that Israel needs
settlers and settlements to monitor its enemy’s actions. The “Greater Israel”
narrative element asserted that Jews were obligated by their religion to both
reconquer historically lost Israeli land and to never give away land that had
already been reconquered. For the Israelis who did not support the settlements,
the “security for Israel” narrative element asserted that it was untenable and
undesirable for Israel to protect so few Israelis who were living among so many
Palestinians. The “Greater Israel” narrative element was rejected because it was
not pragmatic. Yet a third unrelated narrative element stated that it was simply

225

immoral for Israelis to be living on Palestinian land. The various narrative
elements serve as internal fissures within the “settlement” narrative and shows
how some narratives of the nation reject any notion of a national consensus or
agreement.
Contesting narratives reveal something intriguing about narratives of the
nation. People can look at the same narrative elements and interpret them in
completely opposing ways. For example, the “generous offer” narrative that is
set within the larger context of the “peace process” narrative means different
things to Palestinian students than it does to the Israeli teacher and the new
Israeli students. For the new-Israeli students in the class, Israel’s generous offer
proved (to themselves) “the big price Israel was willing to pay” in order to
achieve peace with the Palestinians. For Palestinians, Israel can never make a
generous enough offer since whatever is offered can only be seen as a partial
recovery of what had already been taken away from them. People’s
positionality often dictates how they are supposed to view a particular
contesting narrative.
31

In addition to what competing and contesting narratives reveal about the
nature of narratives of the nation, I have considered other key issues in the
analysis of the “no partner” narrative performance: impression management, the
ability to employ rhetorical skills during a performance and how performances

31
This is not to say that they always will concur with what they are supposed to believe in
according to their positionality. It is just that people are aware of the contesting narratives
offered by opposing positions.

226
of narratives of the nation are often not about the “facts” of the debate.
Participants of a performance (individuals or “teams” as described by Wertsch
and Goffman) can vary greatly as to the kinds of impressions they want to make
during performances. In most situations, the degree to which people manage
impressions is dependent upon the particular narrative of the nation being
discussed. Some narratives of the nation demand a great deal of impression
management while other narratives demand less. When the new Israeli
students were discussing the issue of settlements during the “no partner”
narrative performance, they offered a wide variety of interpretations of the
“settlement” narrative and were perfectly at ease with showing these differences
of opinion to the Palestinian students. Impression management was clearly not
their highest priority. However, when they were discussing the “generous
offer” narrative, the Israeli students were far more careful about managing
impressions, in order to maintain a unified stance as best they could. There are
other times when an emotionally-charged performance does not allow people to
consider impression management. In such a situation, students get caught up in
the speed and flow of a performance and sacrifice clarity and depth for brevity
and passion.
When people enter performances, they must carefully pick and choose
which parts of the narrative of the nation are available to them to interject given
their particular outlook on that narrative at the time of the performance. With
such an abundant amount of information and a great deal of pressure of having

227
Palestin

y Israel?
that

to think quickly in a contentious performance, performers need to rely on their
creative rhetorical skills when deciding which element of a narrative to deploy.
We saw Nuha’s spontaneity in the primary performance when she discussed the
kind of behavior Palestinians expected of the Israelis during the peace process:
Israel should not build settlements and take away Palestinian land during the
peace process. She could have just as easily talked about other pressing issues
to Palestinians such as easing military closures and checkpoints, allowing more
Palestinian workers into Israel,
32
or stopping the assassinations of
ians.
33

Often in narrative performances, the “facts” of a narrative, or elements
within a narrative, are debated only sporadically and without serious substance.
In the “no partner” narrative performance, the “generous” offer Israel made to
the Palestinians was never scrutinized in detail. Did Israel offer ninety-seven
percent of the West Bank and Gaza or did they offer only eighty-eight percent?
Why was the three to twelve percent that was not given back withheld b
How much control over the Muslim and Christian holy sites would the
Palestinians have in Jerusalem? These are only a few of the dozens of facts
could have been debated and discussed. What was actually discussed was
almost completely off the topic of the offer to the Palestinians. Lior uncritically

32
Before the second intifada, many Palestinians relied on Israeli work permits in order to earn
labor wages in Israel to sustain their livelihood. After the intifada began, Israel stopped
granting these work permits, with only a few exceptions.
33
Israel’s “targeted killing” of Palestinian militants (political leaders from the Palestinian
perspective) is a particularly reviled policy. These attacks usually wind up killing many more
innocent civilians than Palestinian militants.

228
ha

rent
“generous offer” narrative was undertaken in a future ulpan
erformance.
Perfor
nce,

o
talked about how Israel had offered everything but a few dunams of land. Nu
responded by talking about the Palestinian citizens of Israel’s role in helping
bring Prime Minister Barak into power. She then speculated into the future
about how a peace agreement based on what Barak offered might impact her
freedom of movement. This performance, then, showed one unique articulation
of the “generous offer” narrative. As we will see later in this chapter, a diffe
approach to the
p

mance and its Impact on New Narratives and Belief Structures
For one of the major assignments in the ulpan, all the students were
required to make a presentation in Hebrew about why they were taking the
class. When it was Munna’s turn, she presented her ideas in a performance that
was extremely conciliatory to the new Israeli students. During her performa
she talked about how taking a class with Jewish students provided her with
some hope about future Palestinian-Israeli relations. She thought that even
though there were a lot of unresolved problems in the class, learning about
Israelis had been a valuable experience for her. She concluded that a class like
this might very well be used someday as a model for future peace negotiations.
Rachael and the other students very much concurred with Munna and discussed
how important it was for Palestinians and Israelis to get to know one another.
Everyone agreed that this would have to be the first step for a genuine peace t

229
it

class held two reunion events within the first six
months
ction
res.
tive

l to the emergence of
a new n
out
-
Israelis celebrate the “reunification” of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
emerge between Palestinians and Israelis. Students then talked about how
was important that they maintain their relationships after the course was
finished. This is a good example of how a narrative that is produced during a
performance can be used as a future action structure (Mattingly 1998). In this
case, the resulting narrative created an action structure that promoted students
continuing to be friends with one another in the future. This action structure
was, in fact, acted upon as the
of the class ending.
My aim here is more concerned with how the resulting narratives of
performances generated new models for future belief structures. Whereas in the
above example, the narratives were jointly constructed for the creation of a
structures, it was not at all necessary to jointly construct narratives during
performances for the purpose of creating models of future belief structu
What usually happened was that Palestinian and Israelis students each
constructed their own new narrative by introducing new elements of a narra
of the nation into the performance. This resulted in at least two competing
narratives – one Palestinian and one Israeli (and often more). As will be shown,
it is these different narrative elements that are fundamenta
arrative and different models of belief structures.
An example of this process occurred during an ulpan performance ab
Israel’s national holiday called Jerusalem Day. On Jerusalem Day, Jewish

230

According to the official Israeli narrative of the nation as presented in an official
Israeli Knesset Document about Jerusalem Day:
Jerusalem was divided during the War of Independence [1948]
and nineteen years later was reunited as a result of the 6-Day
War… It stands as an inspiration not only to residents of Israel
and the Jewish People but also to the entire world.
34
(Knesset
Document 2003b)

There is no such reunification version in the Palestinians’ competing
narrative of the nation. For Palestinians, instead of a “reunification” narrative,
this is the moment when the “occupation” narrative begins. At this point in
history, Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank and Gaza become occupied
territories after Israel wrests control of these lands from Jordan and Egypt. So
the same historical events led to competing narratives of the nation that were
radically different – the “Palestinian occupation” narrative and the Israeli
“Jerusalem Day” narrative (which is part of the larger “Six Day War” narrative).
During the following “Jerusalem Day” narrative performance, there
were a number of different elements of the narrative of the nation introduced by
Rachael, the new Israeli students and the Palestinian students. This resulted in
two competing narratives that served as models for future belief structures.
****************************************************************
Rachael described Jerusalem Day as the day Israel celebrates the
liberation and reunification of Jerusalem after two thousand years away from its

34
The title of this document is “Jerusalem Day: A Historical Introduction.” I found this
document on the Israeli Knesset website at http://www.knesset.gov.il/holidays/eng/jer_intro.htm

231

rightful owners – the Jewish people. We also learned the Israeli historical
narrative, or the officially-sanctioned Israeli interpretation of the historical
events, that led to Israel’s “reunifying” all of Jerusalem. These included the
“difficult and heroic” Israeli battles for control over the Old City in Jerusalem as
well as other battles with the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian militaries. We
were also taught about the political importance of Jerusalem being the capital of
Israel. Rachael’s presentation offered all the students in the class information
about Jerusalem Day that they had previously not known.
35

After Rachael’s presentation, George responded by saying that
Jerusalem Day was a sad holiday and scary time to be a Palestinian living in
Israel. It was sad because the Palestinians never had a desire to live under
Israeli control in the first place. While Palestinians were not much happier
living under Jordanian rule (because they had not yet achieved self-
determination) before Israel took over, it was still better to be controlled by
people who had a similar culture and similar values. Besides, George
continued, what is meant by the reunification of Jerusalem? Who and what was
reunified? Everyone who lives in East Jerusalem, with the exception of a
handful of settler Jews, is Palestinian. Almost all the people who live in West
Jerusalem are Jewish. He questioned if these two places with such different
cultures and religious beliefs could ever really be reunified in one nation? Also,

35
In fact, most of the new Israeli students had never even heard of Jerusalem Day before they
arrived to Israel while the Palestinians from Jerusalem had been exposed to the holiday for some
time.

232
he continued, the Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their
future Palestinian state. Until East Jerusalem is totally free from Israeli rule,
this cannot be realized. George concluded by saying Jerusalem Day is a very
painful reminder to Palestinians that no one has ever considered the needs and
desires of the people who are actually living in East Jerusalem.
****************************************************************
Both George’s and Rachael’s performances offered the students
narrative elements with which to construct new versions of the Israeli
“Jerusalem Day” narrative and the Palestinian “occupation narrative.” The
extent to which these elements provided a student with a greater understanding
of the narratives of the nation depended upon each individual’s previous
knowledge of the narrative elements introduced. Along with the new versions
of the ‘Jerusalem Day” narrative and the “occupation” narrative came models
for future belief structures. For the new Israeli students who were previously
unfamiliar with the Jerusalem Day holiday, a new belief structure emerged that
justified Israel’s conquering of East Jerusalem, a place almost exclusively
Palestinian. Also for the new Israeli students, when the Palestinian students
employed the “occupation” narrative in response to the “Jerusalem Day”
narrative, it showed that Israel was not justified in reunifying Jerusalem or,
more broadly, ruling over the Palestinians. As for the Palestinian students, by
having greater access to the varying narrative elements they could become

233

either more or less firmly entrenched in their own beliefs about the “Jerusalem
Day” narrative and the “occupation” narrative.
The immediate impact of this performance was fairly predictable. While
informal interviews with George and a few of the new Israeli students strongly
suggested that the performance would not immediately persuade them to change
their beliefs about the legitimacy of their own respective narratives, they all
thought they had learned something new about their own and the other’s
narrative during the discussion.
36
How might learning new narrative elements
impact what a person believes in the future? Usually, they simply serve to
reinforce a person’s previous beliefs about a narrative of the nation. At other
times, though, an alternative belief structure that might lie dormant for an
extended period of time might resurface in the future.
More relevant to our ulpan performances, though, having a more in-
depth understanding of the various elements within a narrative of the nation
better prepares a student for debating in future performances. The better one
performs during future performances, the more likely it will impact the ultimate
shape of the narrative that emerges and the new belief structure.
I have argued that new narratives emerge in the context of performances
of narratives of the nation in the ulpan classroom. These narratives emerge
because new narrative elements of a narrative of the nation are inevitably

36
Although as I learned later in an informal interview, Orly did alter her belief about Jerusalem
Day as a result of this performance. She saw how the Jerusalem Day celebration was offensive
to Palestinians and as a result refused to participate.

234
introduced during performances. While in other social circumstances the result
of contentious performances can lead to broken narratives (Kirmayer 2000), in
the ulpan this leads to competing narratives. Different versions of the same
narrative are rhetorically debated and this provides students with alternative
models for future belief structures. While the new belief structures might not
have an immediate impact on students, over time the new belief models can
persist and eventually transform an individual’s belief system.

Demands of Narratives of the Nation upon the Audience
I will now consider what, if anything, narratives of the nation demand
from the people who use them. To what extent does a person’s use of these
narratives obligate them to believe in that narrative and how much contestation
is acceptable for each narrative? Narratives of the nation make varying
demands upon the audience, especially when narratives are being performed in
public spaces. For example, the “settlement” narrative performed by the Jewish
students demanded very little, in terms of interpretation and belief, from the
people who were discussing it. Palestinian students, too, were free to believe
what they wanted about the settlement narrative and contested it as much as
they liked. The “peace process” narrative was far less flexible though. On most
occasions, the new Israeli students would not challenge Israel’s narrative about
peace in any substantial way. There were yet other narratives of the nation that
placed the ultimate demand on the audience Audiences were not allowed to

235
contest such narratives in any way because of its core importance to Israeli and
Jewish identity as well as its use in justifying the existence of the state (see
discussion of “Holocaust” narrative below).
According to Wertsch (2002), national narratives make two basic kinds
of demands from the audiences who “consume” them (2002:117). Building on
a Bakhtinian model of discourse, these two demands can be conceptualized as a
distinction between an “authoritative” and an “internally persuasive” narrative
(2002:118):
“the authoritative word (religious, political, moral; the word of
a father, of adults, of teachers, etc.) ... demands that we
acknowledge it, that we make it our own; it binds us, quite
independent of any power it might have to persuade us
internally; we encounter it with its authority already fused in it”
(Bakhtin 1981, p. 342). In such cases, “one must either totally
affirm [the authoritative word], or totally reject it” (p. 343).
One is not invited to engage in the give and take of dialogue, to
“divide it up – agree with one part, accept but not completely
another part, reject utterly a third part” (p. 343).
In contrast, internally persuasive discourse does not rest on
such hierarchical differentiation of authority. Instead of being
put in a position of either totally accepting or rejecting the
words of another, the speaker is encouraged to engage in a kind
of dialogue with what others say because “the internally
persuasive word is half-ours and half-someone else’s” (p. 345).
In contrast to authoritative discourse, which is characterized by
the dogmatism attached to words, one is invited to take the
internally persuasive word as a “thinking device” (Lotman,
1988), as a starting point for a response that may incorporate
and change what was originally said. (Wertsch 2002:118-119)

While this model provides a good jumping off point for a discussion
about what narratives demand of its performers, it is also problematic on several
levels. To begin with, the authoritative narrative category is too general when

236
trying to describe those narratives of the nation that are fundamental to the
construction of the nation. Tentatively assuming the legitimacy of the
authoritative narrative category, let us consider two different kinds of
authoritative narratives. The first example which entered classroom discourse
fairly regularly was the “Holocaust” narrative. Very loosely defined, this is a
Jewish historical narrative about World War Two that discusses the intense and
enduring suffering of European Jews as a result of Nazi Germany. The varying
elements of this narrative were never openly debated by Israeli or Palestinians
students during the class. According to the model presented above, this should
be considered an authoritative narrative. Another authoritative narrative is the
“state of Israel” narrative. At its core, the “state of Israel” narrative asserts that
Israel has a moral right to exist. This authoritative narrative worked quite
differently than the Holocaust narrative. Not only was Israel’s right to exist
never contested in the ulpan, it never even came up in an informal conversation,
let alone a classroom performance. In all of my conversations with the new
Israeli students – and for that matter, every Israeli I talked to during the duration
of my fieldwork – not one questioned aloud Israel’s right to exist. For most
Israelis, then, it is fair to assume that the “state of Israel” narrative is an
authoritative narrative that is of a different order than the “Holocaust” narrative.
The difference between these two authoritative narratives is that while both

237

cannot be contested, the “state of Israel” narrative cannot even be discussed in a
conversation.
37

There are some other serious shortcomings to Wertsch’s authoritative
versus internally persuasive model. It does not take into account the idea that
narratives of the nation make different demands on particular audiences in
different social spaces. In the case of the “state of Israel” narrative at the ulpan,
the students were not allowed to contest the narrative. None of the Palestinian
students ever did question the “state of Israel” narrative in our class – at least
not in Hebrew. On several occasions, though, I witnessed Palestinian students
during our class break or during informal conversations debating the narrative.
George once told me, for example, that all of this [meaning the land of Israel
and Palestine] would one day be Palestine because Israel never had the moral
authority to start a country here. From the opposite side of the spectrum,
Munna said that the Palestinians had to be far more realistic. Half of the people
living in Palestine/Israel are Jews. We’re not going to just be able to get rid of
them, even if that is what we really wanted to do. She wanted Israelis and
Palestinians to find a way to create a true representative democracy that she
thought could be called ‘Palesrael.’ For both Palestinian and Israeli students,
then, the question of Israel’s right to exist is an authoritative narrative in the
context of the ulpan classroom. Outside of the ulpan, the “state of Israel”

37
For a more general discussion about how the Holocaust has been deployed, see Finkelstein
(1999).

238
narrative is an internally persuasive narrative for the Palestinian students while
for the Israeli students it remains an authoritative narrative. So, one must pay
careful attention to who the audience is when talking about authoritative or
internally persuasive discourse as well as under what social context the narrative
is used.
Another problem with Wertsch’s model is that it does not account for
those circumstances when authoritative narratives are forcibly transformed into
internally persuasive narratives. When this happens, the demands of a narrative
must be altered. In the late 1980s, an intellectual movement led by the ‘new
Israeli-historians’ and Israel’s ‘critical sociologists’ began to question certain
aspects of Israel’s dominant historical narratives. Up until this movement came
into existence, many of Israel’s historical accounts about its past were
considered to be authoritative by both Israeli scholars and by Israel’s Jewish
public. One of the most contentious historical narratives that came under attack
was the question about whether Palestinian refugees voluntarily left Israel
during Israel’s War of Independence/Palestine’s Disaster or whether Israel
forcibly expelled Palestinians from their houses and land. The stakes for this
narrative are incredibly high. If the Palestinians were shown to have left of their
own accord, Israel might more forcefully be able to delegitimize the
Palestinians’ claims to their lands and homes. If it was shown that Israel had
forcibly expelled the Palestinians, under United Nations General Assembly
Resolution 194, Palestinians would be entitled to return to their houses if they

239

were “willing to live peacefully” with the Israelis.
38
Up until 1987, the Israeli
national narrative asserted that the Palestinians who formerly lived in Israel left
in 1948 primarily because the Arab leaders (including Egypt, Jordan, Syria,
Lebanon and Iraq) that were fighting Israel pleaded with the Palestinians to
leave the country for their own safety.
39
Benny Morris’s (1987) controversial
work on Palestinian refugees irrefutably proved that, in most cases, it was Israel
that forced the Palestinians out. Israel’s pre-state militia called the Haganah
devised a plan known as “Tochnit Dalet” or “Plan D[alet]” that “was not a
political blueprint for the expulsion of Palestine’s Arabs” but it nonetheless
“meant the depopulation and destruction of villages that hosted hostile local
militia and irregular forces” (Morris 1987:62-3).
40
Many other Israeli national
narratives that were once considered authoritative became internally persuasive
narratives as a result of this Israeli intellectual movement. The larger point is
that there are far too many factors beyond the state’s control that dictate how
narratives of the nation are shaped. As the narratives of the nation inevitably
change as a result of challenges, the kinds of demands that are possible of the
people who assimilate the narratives must change too.

38
See Appendix D
39
This narrative began on August 10, 1948, when Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett told
U.N. Secretary-General Trygve Lie that the Palestinians had “left in obedience to direct orders
by local military commanders and partly as a result of the panic campaign spread among
Palestinian Arabs by the leaders of the individual Arab states (Freundlich 1981:442).”
However, no evidence has been uncovered to substantiate Sharett’s claim.
40
As opposed to Morris who thinks Plan D was not a deliberate attempt to expel Palestinians,
Walid Khalidi, a Palestinian historian, wrote that Plan Dalet was an Israeli master plan “which
entailed the destruction of the Palestinian Arab community and the expulsion and pauperization
of the bulk of the Palestine Arabs…” (Khalidi 1988:8).

240
Having shown some of the limitations of Wertsch’s idea, I believe it is
still extremely useful to consider how narratives of the nation demand different
kinds of beliefs from its audiences. It is also useful to consider how the
demands of narratives of the nation on audiences vary from one social space to
another. In the context of the ulpan, the Israeli narratives of the nation had a
great deal of power to make demands upon the people assimilating them,
although this often changed once people left the ulpan. Also, the nation can
never fully control whether its narratives are authoritative or internally
persuasive and because of this what is demanded of audiences usually will
change over time. Still, we do see that narratives of the nation have some
control in placing belief demands upon their audiences.

Mastery and Appropriation of Narratives of the Nation
Perhaps the greatest strength of Wertsch’s theorizing on narratives of the
nation, is his attention to their performative nature (see also Anagnost 1997;
Rofel 1999). In an everyday performance, people say what they believe about a
narrative of the nation to other people. Still, trying to decipher what a person
actually believes about narratives of the nation both before and after a
performance is extremely difficult. The main problem lies in the fact that
people perform the narratives of the nation differently in different social
contexts and at different times. Given this problem, Wertsch is extremely
pessimistic about our ability to understand what people believe about narratives

241
of the nation: “When trying to examine what a people ‘really believes,’ it is
often the case that it seems to believe one thing in one context and something
different, and often contradictory in another” (2002:123). Instead of being able
to ascertain what a person actually believes, then, Wertsch suggests we limit our
inquiry about a person’s beliefs to whether s/he masters, appropriates or resists a
particular national narrative:
The mastery of textual resources concerns knowing how to use
them. In the case of historical narratives, for example, mastery
is reflected in the ability to recall them at will and to employ
them with facility when speaking. But it extends beyond that
as well to include skills such as being able to use historical
narratives as a foundation for reasoning about the actors and
motives behind the events being discussed…
The appropriation of textual resources concerns…the process
of making something [historical narratives] one’s own. This
process involves the text’s having “personal sense” (Leont’ev,
1981) for its user, as opposed to abstract, distanced
“meaning.”…
The opposite of appropriating a cultural tool is resisting it
(Wertsch, 1998). Just because someone is exposed to a cultural
tool – and just because she has mastered it – does not guarantee
that she has appropriated it. (Wertsch 2002:119-20)

In terms of understanding an individual’s belief about narratives of the
nation, then, Wertsch believes we must limit ourselves to understanding
whether a person either appropriates or rejects a narrative. From the perspective
of the state, it obviously hopes that its citizens not only master narratives of the
nation but appropriate them. This is so that citizens can use national narratives
as a resource for creating an identity that is, in part, centered around the state
(Wertsch 2002).

242
Like Wertsch’s other models presented in this chapter, this one is also
problematic. The assumption that people either appropriate or reject a narrative
of the nation is based on the idea that a narrative of a nation is a cohesive whole.
We have already seen, though, that narratives of the nation are dialogic (Bruner
and Gorfain 1984) – they have different elements which can often be
contradictory. With this in mind, it is clear that people can both appropriate and
reject different elements of one narrative of the nation at the same time. Again,
using the “settlement” narrative as an example, there are multiple justifications
for and against the establishment and perpetuation of Israeli settlements. These
justifications are all different elements of the larger settlement narrative and
people have very different reactions to the narrative as a whole as a result of
their beliefs about the different elements. Some new Israeli students, on the one
hand, appropriated the elements of the settlement narrative that asserted an
Israeli need to have settlements for security reasons. Some of those same
students, on the other hand, rejected other elements of the settlement narrative,
such as the Greater Israel narrative.
Another problematic aspect of Wertsch’s model is the employment of
the mastery category. Even though the definition of mastery given does not
explicitly say a person needs to master a narrative of the nation, the terminology
chosen does strongly imply that a person has to have a high level of knowledge
about many narratives of the nation in order to argue for them. The definition
says a person must be able to “recall [national narratives] at will” and “employ

243
them with skill” during performances (2002:120). In the ulpan, though, most
people did not need a high level of understanding of the different elements of
narratives of the nation. Even so, the students were very effective rhetorical
performers of narratives of the nation. This is because only a small part of the
performance actually dealt with the substantive issues in the narratives of the
nation. In many ways, having the rhetorical talent to subvert discussions by
using personal or contesting narratives was more effective during performances
of narrative of the nation than actually producing reasoned arguments that
directly addressed the narrative.
Another shortcoming of this model is that it does not place a great
enough emphasis on how people can change their beliefs over time. People can
make very dramatic or quite subtle changes in their personal beliefs about
narratives of the nation over varying amounts of time. Returning to an earlier
example, almost all Israelis believe in “the state of Israel” narrative – Israel has
a right to exist in the land they presently inhabit. On the surface it might seem
that people would not change their belief about this narrative over time since it
is fundamental to their sense of Israeli personhood. However, we have seen that
Jewish-Israeli beliefs about the “state of Israel” narrative have been reshaped
over time in reaction to the transformation of the meaning of ‘Israel.’ Before
the 1980s, almost all Israelis found the idea of a Palestinian state to be
anathema. The goal was to create an Israeli state with borders from the
Mediterranean Sea to the Jordanian border and this was what was mapped onto

244
the Israeli national conscious. Any notion of a Palestinian state was contrary to
this goal and was in direct conflict with the state of Israel. The onset of the first
intifada in 1987 and the beginning of peace negotiations between Palestinians
and Israelis at Oslo in 1992 changed this conception greatly. For the first time,
Israelis began to accept the idea of a Palestinian people with the need for their
own state. This broadly changed how Israelis conceptualized a future Israeli
state. In order to achieve peace, there would need to be an overhaul in the
imagining of the state. The Israeli state was going to have to share its land,
negotiating the parameters of a Palestinian and Israeli state living side by side
with one another. So while people do not necessarily believe less in the “state
of Israel” narrative, the way the narrative is conceptualized has undergone a
dramatic reformulation.
A more startling example shows how beliefs about a narrative can
change radically over time. Up until World War I, there were two diametrically
opposed versions of the “state of Israel” narrative. The relatively new secular
Zionist “state of Israel” narrative which asserted that Jews had the right to live
in what was then British Mandate Palestine. A religious Zionist “state of Israel”
narrative that had been in circulation for centuries and advocated by almost all
of the world’s Orthodox Jews asserted that Jews were strictly forbidden to live
in an Israeli state that was not established by the Messiah and without having a

245

properly religious Jewish government in place.
41
A remarkable transformation
of this core Jewish religious belief occurred over the time that Israel was
beginning to form in the early twentieth century. While only a short time ago it
was sacrilege for Orthodox Jews to live in a secular Israeli state, it quickly
became the most desirable scenario for many Orthodox Jews.
What these two more historical examples have demonstrated is that
people’s beliefs in narratives can change fairly dramatically over time. As will
be shown, more subtle transformations of people’s belief can occur over short
periods of time.

Belief Tendencies
While it might be impossible to know exactly what people believe about
narratives of the nation, I think it is possible to understand more about what
people believe than simply if they have been appropriated or rejected. Getting
to this understanding requires rejecting any strict definition of the term “belief.”
Instead of trying to understand what a person actually believes, then, we must
trace how a person’s beliefs change over time by listening to what they say they
believe in different performance spaces. What we see when we do this is that
people usually have strong belief tendencies. In other words, people rarely
articulate their beliefs so differently from one performance to another. This is

41
In fact, there are still quite a few adherents to this state of Israel narrative living both in
Jerusalem and New York.

246
especially true over a short period of time. Another thing we can observe over
different performances is how much a person is invested in a particular belief.
When a person feels passionately about a belief, they are far more likely to
spend time working to ensure that their beliefs are defensible both to themselves
and in everyday performances with other people who are not necessarily
inclined to believe the same narrative.
One of the next major ulpan narrative performances came only four
weeks after the “no partner” narrative performance. What was particularly
intriguing about this “justified killing” performance was its connection to our
discussions about the “settlement” and “generous offer” narratives in the “no
partner” narrative performance. It was clear in this next performance that some
students had spent a considerable amount of time thinking about these
narratives. Through their efforts, new elements of competing Israeli and
Palestinian narratives of the nation were introduced to the class. Future
performances of narratives of the nation in the ulpan, then, offered people the
opportunity to learn more about narratives. Performances and the work that
goes into thinking about narratives after a performance is part of the ongoing
process an individual goes through in generating personal belief tendencies.
****************************************************************
We started our class discussion as usual with the hourly radio summary
of the news. The almost daily tally of how many Qassams had been fired into
Israel and a few other news items were read by the announcer. At the very end

247
of the summary, the announcer said “a four month old Palestinian girl was shot
and killed by the IDF in Gaza.” No explanation, no name – just that she was
killed. It just so happened that I was watching the Palestinian news station last
night and I saw the gruesome image of this baby with her dead body opened up
by the bullets and her insides hanging out. It was a very powerful image – not
only because I don’t often see video of dead people but because this little victim
was so young. It made me sad to hear that the little girl’s life, which had very
much been humanized to me last night, was simply a footnote in the Israeli
news summary.
When we got to the end of the news summary and it only made mention
of the baby’s death in passing, Nuha made a “tsk-tsk-tsk” sound. The sound
might have been meant as a kind of “shame on you” to the soldiers that had
killed the baby. Or it might have been to the Israeli news who had belittled her
death with only a brief mention. Other Palestinian students followed Nuha’s
lead by making the same sound. These disapproving sounds were the beginning
of another heated debate between the students. Rachael asked Nuha why she
had made that sound. Nuha, almost in tears, said that she was tired of the Israeli
news completely desensitizing the soldiers’ acts of murder to the listeners of the
news. Every time a Palestinian gets killed, if we ever hear anything about it at
all in the Israeli news, it is the last item in the news summary. And that is it –
we do not hear anything else about the person. When a Jew gets killed, it is the
first item on the news summary. Then we hear many more details after the

248
news summary. There was no personal description of the baby as there is when
Jews get killed by Palestinians. The news did not talk about what a tragic loss it
is to the baby’s family like they would have if it was a Jewish baby that got
killed. They did not even mention the baby’s name.
Nuha then went on to dispute the choice of words the announcer used in
describing what happened to the baby girl. How could he use the word “killed”
when we are talking about a four month old baby girl? She was murdered.
There is no other possible explanation. Is that baby a terrorist? When
Palestinians attack Israelis and Jewish children are killed the media calls it
murder. Why is an innocent Palestinian girl getting killed while an innocent
Israeli girl gets murdered?
Then, Shaheen [a female new Israeli] said that you cannot compare the 4
month old Palestinian baby who died last night to the 10 month old Israeli baby
who was murdered three weeks ago. The Palestinian terrorists purposefully
killed the baby. They know when they blow themselves up in the middle of a
restaurant that they will definitely kill women and children. The Israeli soldiers
who killed that baby never meant to kill her. They do not aim at babies like the
terrorists do. And the soldiers are usually in such dangerous positions, that
when they shoot it is because they are just trying to protect themselves.
Sometimes, they accidentally kill people. I know how this works, Shaheen said,
because my son is doing his military service in Gaza right now. He tells me
how hard it really is to figure out who is an innocent person and who is about to

249
kill him. The terrorists dress the same way as civilians and they are willing to
hide in the mosques and in the schools.
Nuha was very, very upset about Shaheen’s response. She said how can
you justify any baby getting killed? She also said do you not see that the reason
why your son’s life is in danger is because he is in a place where no one wants
him to be there. Why is your son, a boy who has only lived in Israel for a few
years, pointing a gun at people in a place where he does not belong? He is there
to protect a handful of Jews that are stealing Palestinian lands.
Shaheen responded that her son does not want to be in Gaza at all. He
wishes he was at a university and not acting as a policeman between
Palestinians and the settlers. But it is his obligation as an Israeli citizen to
defend his country and he has to be in Gaza because that is where the military
ordered him to go. She then said she didn’t understand why Palestinians make
such a big deal about the Israelis who work and live in the Territories. There
are plenty of Palestinians living in Israel. Why shouldn’t Israelis be able to live
with the Palestinians?
George responded that if the Israelis came as friends, perhaps it would
be okay for them to live there. But the soldiers come with their guns pointed at
people. The problem is that the soldiers are there to protect the settlers. The
settlers are there to take more land away from the Palestinians. If you really
want to understand why Palestinians attack Israelis this is one of the main
reasons.

250
Regardless of what the settlers do, Lior said, the Palestinians should not
be killing innocent people. Why kill Israelis in malls and restaurants if the
problem is with the settlers? Besides that, Palestinians should negotiate for
peace – not use violence to achieve their goals.
Nuha responded we have tried negotiating with Israelis for over sixty
years now. Where has that gotten us? Over the years, Israel has taken more and
more land from us. It has made our living conditions harder and harder. We
have less hope now that something good can happen with Israel than we ever
have. I have looked into this generous offer that Barak made to us since the last
time we talked about this. I would like to tell you some of the things I learned.
She then referred to her notebook and read off a whole slew of facts (which I
borrowed from her after class to copy). According to Barak’s generous offer, a
future demilitarized Palestinian state would be made on ninety-two percent of
the West Bank and one hundred percent of the Gaza Strip. Palestinian scholars
contest the ninety-two percent figure in the West Bank because it does not
include neighborhoods in East Jerusalem that have already been annexed by
Israel as well as the land Israel will keep that separates Jordan from Palestine
(the Jordan Valley). Also, there are areas that are under Palestinian
administrative control but also under Israeli military control. This disputed land
amounts to another ten percent or so of the West Bank and there is no
agreement as to when these lands will be left by the Israeli military and fully
returned to the Palestinians. So that leaves us with about eighty percent of the

251
West Bank. Another important issue here is not how much land we get but
which land. The settlement blocs that Israel proposes to keep in their eight
percent of the West Bank essentially sets up a wide range of internal borders
within Palestine under Israeli control.
Some of the other problems that Palestinian scholars have found
unacceptable are that East Jerusalem was supposed to serve as the capital of the
future Palestinian state. The neighborhoods that are closest to the Old City will
not be under Palestinian control – they are considered to have “functional
autonomy” which is a political way of saying they will be under full Israeli
control. Also, Israel not allowing Palestinian refugees to return to their homes
is illegal. What should the millions of refugees who live outside of Palestine
and Israel do? To sum up, she said, the generous offer Barak gave us was on
only 22% of historic Palestine. Other aspects of the offer do not comply with
international law when it comes to a permanent resolution of the conflict. What
I have seen then about Barak’s generous offer is that the Palestinians are
actually the ones who have made all the generous offers and the Israelis have
offered us absolutely nothing. At that point, the other Palestinian students
began cheering and clapping. Afterwards, Rachael asked Nuha where she had
learned about those facts. After Nuha had said she had done some research at
Bethlehem University and called some professors she knew, Rachael said how
can we believe what the Palestinian scholars say about this? They are clearly
biased…

252
****************************************************************
What this ulpan performance demonstrated was that students actively
engage in thinking about narratives of the nation before performances in order
to be better prepared for them. In most situations, students think about the
different elements of a narrative on their own. Sometimes, they will have more
in depth conversations about a narrative with friends or family members.
Occasionally, people will even do research on them. They do this not only to
become more effective debaters during performances but because they are
genuinely engaged in making their beliefs about a particular narrative more
sophisticated and more defendable.
For example, having spent some time thinking about and discussing our
first performance of the “settlement” narrative, Shaheen brought up a point that
is often advocated by Israelis who believe in settlements. Why should it be so
problematic for a few Israelis to live on Palestinian land when nearly one
million Palestinians live on Israeli land? Many people who reject the Greater
Israel narrative as a justification for settlements employ this more security-
driven narrative. “Why should a few Jews bother you?” is the rationale. I asked
Shaheen a few days after the performance how she had come to introduce this
point into our class discussion. Before answering, she wanted to make clear to
me that she did not necessarily believe in the settlements. She then told me that
she had just had a long discussion with her son, who was on a weekend break
from his military service, about what he thought about the settlements. Since he

253
had been doing his military service in an area dangerous for Israeli soldiers
strictly for the benefit of the settlers, Shaheen believed he was uniquely
qualified to speak about the subject. In their discussion, he had said in an ideal
world there would not be any settlements in the Gaza Strip but if Palestinians
have the right to live in Israel, Israelis should also have the right to live in the
Gaza Strip. She thought that what her son had said was intriguing and she
wanted to introduce the argument to the other students in the class to see what
their position was about this idea.
What Nuha did before this performance of the “generous offer” narrative
was quite similar to what Shaheen had done. She left a previous performance
unsatisfied with the result of the discussion and decided to gather more
information about a narrative. In her case, instead of having a conversation
about it with a family member or thinking about it on her own, Nuha took the
initiative to do extensive research on the Palestinian “settlement” narrative. She
had also gone to the trouble of writing out all the facts she had collected in
Hebrew so she could present them in an acceptable way that would not allow
Rachael to cut her off. Even though Rachael steered the conversation in a
different direction after Nuha spoke, the thoroughness of the research had a big
impact on the Palestinians in the class, as was demonstrated by their applause.
Nuha told me after the class that she had been waiting for the opportunity to
introduce these facts into the classroom discussion for over two weeks.

254
These two examples show why it is so useful to think about people’s
beliefs more in terms of belief tendencies over time. Before the ulpan class
began, Shaheen had not actually settled upon what she believed about the Israeli
settlement narrative. The “no partner” narrative performance gave her the
impetus to work through some new ideas presented in the class. After thinking
about it more and discussing the narrative with her son, her performance in the
“justified killing” narrative performance seemed to indicate that Shaheen was
leaning towards being in favor of the Israeli settlement narrative. In an informal
interview with Shaheen at the end of the semester, it was clear that her
commitment to the settlement narrative had become more entrenched. As for
Nuha, her commitment to the Palestinian version of the generous offer narrative
was already clear in the “no partner” narrative performance. Her inability to
defend her belief well in that performance gave her the impetus to research the
matter so that she could present facts that would support her belief. Both
Shaheen’s beliefs about the settlement narrative and Nuha’s belief about the
generous offer narrative will not end with this performance. Their beliefs will
become more sophisticated over time if they continue to stay invested in them.
Regardless of the level of their commitment to engaging these narratives,
though, in all likelihood Shaheen will stay committed to some version of the
settlement narrative approximating the one she performed in the class and Nuha
will stay committed to a similar version of the Palestinian generous offer she
performed.

255
Still, Shaheen and Nuha each had different goals with the introduction of
the new narrative elements. Shaheen did not introduce her elements of the
narrative simply as a rhetorical tool in the “settlement” narrative. Instead, she
used the performance as an opportunity to ‘try on’ this alternative element of the
“settlement” narrative. For Nuha, the presentation of facts about the “generous
offer” was a powerful way to dispel the Israeli narrative and defend her own
version of the narrative. It was primarily rhetorical and it wound up being
responsible for partially shaping some of the students’ beliefs about the
narrative.
If we think in terms of belief tendencies, we can also begin to investigate
how audience members’ beliefs are affected by these narrative performances.
In discussions with students over the week following the “justified killing”
narrative performance, I learned that ulpan performances generally did not
change how they were oriented towards a larger narrative. In other words, new
Israelis students still believed in some Israeli version of the generous offer
narrative while Palestinian students still believed in a Palestinian version. What
these performances did affect were students’ beliefs and understanding about
particular elements within the larger narrative. The Palestinian students I was
able to interview agreed with Nuha about the Palestinian generous offer
narrative but having more facts (elements of the narrative) allowed them to feel
stronger about their belief in the narrative. Most of the new Israeli students did
not say they were impacted by the new information Nuha provided about the

256
generous offer narrative but a few did say that they would have to think more
about what Nuha had presented.
As already mentioned, these performances also provide alternative belief
models that may be used to shape individual beliefs in the future. The
discussion of the settlement narrative did not seem to impact the new Israeli
students very differently than the first performance since there was already such
a wide range of opinions about the narrative. However, something surprising
did emerge in a private conversation I had with Nuha sometime after the
“justified killing” performance. Even though she still did not think it was
appropriate for settlers to live in Palestine because of the power differential
between Israelis and Palestinians, Nuha acknowledged that Shaheen’s argument
made a little bit of sense to her. If there was eventually a genuine peace
agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, she could not imagine how it
would be possible to justify keeping those Israelis who wish to live in
accordance with Palestinian laws and in peace out of Palestine. So while Nuha
did not change her overall belief about the Israeli version of the settler narrative,
Shaheen’s presentation did have an impact on her own Palestinian version of the
narrative. Settlers were not acceptable now but in the future it might be possible
to have them living in Palestine.
What this second performance of the “settlement” narrative and the
“generous offer” narrative clearly demonstrates is that people are influenced by
previous performances of the narratives of the nation. As I discovered in my

257
interviews with students, people do spend time thinking about the narratives of
the nation discussed in the ulpan. They bring up these narratives in
conversations with friends from the class and occasionally talk about them with
other friends and family and on the rare occasion even do their own research on
the narrative. What happens after these performances, then, has an important
impact on our understanding of a person’s beliefs. If a person has something at
stake with a narrative of the nation – in other words, if that narrative is
important enough to a person that that they actually consider its merits – they
occasionally work at making their understanding of that narrative more
sophisticated. They do this because, generally speaking, people have a fairly
narrow idea of what they believe and they seek to better justify this belief to
themselves and to others.

258
Chapter 4

The Transformation of Palestinian Social Suffering
Experiences into Israeli Narratives of the Nation

In the preceding chapters, I have traced the process of how Israeli
narratives of the nation that are formed within a social space provided by the
Israeli media make their way to ordinary people and how they then become
transformed into personal narratives which serve as belief structures. Now, I
would like to follow how the narrativizing process works when personal
narratives become appropriated by the media and form narratives of the nation.
I will do this by examining the process of how Palestinian social suffering
experiences and narratives become transformed by the Israeli media into Israeli
narratives of the nation. As opposed to the narratives of the nation discussed
earlier whose construction was highly reliant upon the actions and experiences
of different sectors of the Israeli elite, the construction of narratives of the
nation using social suffering experiences relies on the suffering of ordinary
individuals or groups of individuals. By tracing this process, I will show how
Palestinian social suffering experiences can become appropriated by the Israeli
media and transformed into an Israeli narrative of the nation – even when the
Palestinians are diametrically opposed to this process.
Before getting into an in-depth discussion about this narrativizing
process, though, I would like to present the various ways in which social

259
suffering has thus far been conceptualized in the academic literature. One of the
primary ideas discussed in Kleinman, Das, and Lock’s edited volume, Social
Suffering (1996) is that suffering, in distinction to pain (which is a
fundamentally personal experience), is a social experience. Pain and social
suffering are intricately interrelated though: “[t]he investment of personal pain
with meaning transforms it into suffering, which then becomes a social process”
(Ramphele 1996:114). Young argues for two different “qualities” of suffering.
The first order of suffering is based on “a universal biology,” similar to the
personal pain described by Ramphele. The second order of suffering is based
on “social codes (which include moral and religious codes)... (Young
1996:245).” These codes mitigate whether or not individuals are “eligible”
(Young 1996:246) for suffering. One of the important reasons to emphasize the
cultural nature of suffering is that it is through a sufferer’s interaction with
culture that s/he might be able to narrativize and create meaning out of his or
her suffering.
In one of the original works that inspired research on social suffering,
Kleinman and Kleinman (1991) discussed two forms of suffering that are
relevant to the work in this chapter:
There are routinized forms of suffering that are…experiences of
deprivation and exploitation and of degradation and oppression
that certain categories of individuals (the poor, the vulnerable,
the defeated) are specially exposed to and others relatively
protected. There also is suffering resulting from extreme
conditions, such as survivorship of the Holocaust or the Atom

260
Bomb or the Cambodian genocide or China's Cultural
Revolution.

Later recognizing that the boundaries between routinized forms of
suffering and suffering resulting from extreme conditions can often be blurred,
Das and Kleinman (2000) discussed a new, more flexible understanding of
suffering that takes into account the times when “the violence of extreme
situations is carried into everyday life (2000:16).” In other words, they
recognized that many social suffering experiences fall somewhere in-between
the two categories of extreme and routinized suffering. In this chapter, I will
refer to this kind of suffering as suffering from everyday violence. During the
course of my research in Palestine, people told me personal social suffering
narratives about their routinized suffering, their suffering from everyday
violence and their extreme suffering. The form of social suffering narratives I
was exposed to was largely dependent upon to whom I was talking and how I
was conceptualized by the storyteller. I will investigate all three of these forms
of social suffering in this chapter and the ways in which the Israeli media
presents them to the public.
When I was first introduced to a person and they found out I was an
American, they would almost always tell me their social suffering narratives
that resulted from extreme conditions. These stories, which were often about
extremely violent incidents, are the most dramatic forms of social suffering

261
narratives. These stories are generally about family members or friends that
were killed or severely injured by the IDF.
Once I got to know people better, though, they would usually stop
telling me stories about the suffering they endured from extreme conditions and
begin telling me stories about their more routinized forms of suffering and their
suffering from everyday violence. By the time I had lived with my Palestinian
roommates for a few days, routinized suffering was the kind of social suffering
narrative we most often discussed. Usually, routinized suffering is not violent
in the strict sense of the word but it often happens at moments when there is
potential for violence.
Through my daily conversations, I learned that Palestinians mainly
endured routinized suffering when they were trying to actually avoid violent
confrontations with the IDF. For example, when young men have to make a
decision about traveling on roads where they know an Israeli flying checkpoint
is going to be set up as a roadblock, they experience routinized suffering. This
may manifest itself as a postponement of travel plans until word spreads that the
checkpoint has been dismantled. However, when people need to get somewhere
in a hurry, they might attempt to circumvent a checkpoint by driving on dirt
roads that are less likely to be used or surveilled by the Israeli military. If
Palestinians are unable to avoid traveling through a checkpoint, they are often
subject to a more direct confrontation with the Israeli military. Usually, this
means having to wait for an undetermined amount of time in a hot car until the

262

flying checkpoint is removed from the road. At other times, though, the
confrontation can be a bit more antagonistic. As I witnessed on many occasions
at flying checkpoints, groups of young Palestinian men are detained and forced
to wait in direct sunlight without shade or water for hours until they are either
carried away by an Israeli military vehicle or released. As the term implies,
routinized suffering occurs to people at any day and at any time.
After only a short period of time in Palestine, it was clear that the
routinized forms of suffering, though often less severe in scope, are far more
likely to occur than the extreme forms of suffering. Regardless of what form of
social suffering Palestinians endured, though, people were always eager to tell
their social suffering narratives to me and other “internationals”
1
with whom I
spent time. Palestinians would tell us that they wanted us to be “witnesses” to
their stories. They wanted us to “go back to America to tell the people about the
real story of the Palestinians.”
In this chapter, I employ social suffering narratives with a variety of
different purposes in mind. First, I want to provide another space where
Palestinian social suffering narratives can be given voice. When I told the
Palestinians who shared their social suffering narratives with me that their
stories would have no real impact on their situation, they still wanted me to tell
their stories anyway. Palestinians hold out little hope for meaningful change in

1
I met a number of international students at Bir Zeit University where I was studying Arabic. A
number of these people became my friends and my travel companions during my visit to
Palestine.

263
their political and economic situation – thirty-nine years of conflict with Israel
has taught them to be extremely cautious in this regard. Instead, what
Palestinians hoped to get by my telling their stories is other people’s
understanding of their very human suffering experiences. Second, I
intentionally employ a number of suffering narratives I have personally
experienced or other internationals have experienced in order to dispel a
common belief amongst westerners that Palestinian suffering narratives are
often “exaggerated,” “overstated by the Arab media,” or simply “lies.” By
providing first-hand accounts of what happened to me which are similar to the
experiences of Palestinians, I hope to influence people to not summarily dismiss
the social suffering narratives that emerge from Palestine. Finally, and from a
more theoretical perspective, I use social suffering narratives because these are
the stories that are most likely to become narrativized by the media and then
transformed into narratives of the nation.
Rather than focus primarily on the ways in which Palestinian social
suffering narratives are narrativized by the Palestinian media, I will investigate
how they become narrativized in the Israeli media in order to examine how and
why Palestinian social suffering narratives are appropriated and transformed
into Israeli narratives of the nation. According to Kleinman, Das and Lock
(1996), cultural representations of suffering can be used in a variety of ways.
They can be used for “political and moral purposes,” “to authorize nationalism
or class and ethnic resistance,” and to create “a market for suffering [where]

264
victimhood is commodified (1996:xi).” Similarly, I argue that Palestinian social
suffering experiences are used in the Israeli media to perpetuate two separate
Israeli narratives of the nation. The first is the “moral IDF” narrative which
asserts that Israel’s military employs the highest possible moral standards in
their battle against Palestinian terror. Even the most extreme forms of
punishment inflicted upon ordinary Palestinians are justified because of this
narrative of the nation. The second is an affirmation of the Israeli “democracy”
narrative. Since Israeli reporters are allowed to provide competing narratives to
the state’s officially-sanctioned narratives, this implies that there is freedom of
speech in the Israeli media. Even though there are actually only a limited
number of competing narratives presented in the Israeli media, the fact that
examples exist would seem to reaffirm that Israel is a “true democracy.”
The first section of this chapter focuses on the narratives that result from
routinized forms of social suffering and I argue three main theoretical points.
First, I expand the current “understand[ing] and delineat[ion of] the varieties of
social suffering (Das and Kleinman 2000:16).” The examples I present –
economic suffering and non-violent corporeal suffering – are not typical of what
has been previously studied in works on social suffering. According to
Kleinman, Das and Lock, “[i]ncluded under the category of social suffering are
conditions that are usually divided among separate fields, conditions that
simultaneously involve health, welfare, legal, moral, and religious
issues…(1996:ix).” The second theoretical point I make is that when people

265
experience routinized social suffering, they are more likely to suffer from
inconvenience and/or humiliation than from physical violence. The final
theoretical point I discuss is about Palestinian experiences of routinized
suffering. Although Palestinian routinized suffering experiences can lead to
Palestinian narratives of the nation through performances of shared experience,
they are rarely transformed by the Israeli media or the Israeli state into Israeli
narratives of the nation.
The next section of this chapter explores suffering from everyday
violence. In this portion of my work, I examine three violent episodes – two of
which I personally witnessed and another of which was related to me by another
international from England who was my next door neighbor. One of the most
important characteristics of experiences of suffering from everyday violence is
that the vast majority of suffering in these situations occurs to the people who
are either completely peripheral to the violent confrontation or somewhat
peripheral. There are two primary types of suffering from everyday violence
that become narrativized in the Israeli media: when people are injured as a result
of IDF actions and when the IDF captures wanted Palestinian militants. In these
situations, the Israeli media bases its narrativization on official and non-official
IDF narratives of events. Unless someone is injured, though, most suffering
from everyday violence is not narrativized by the Israeli media. In situations
when they are narrativized, the suffering experiences are routinely stripped of
almost all personal detail. Only with rare exceptions do the Israeli media offer

266
competing narratives of Palestinian suffering from everyday violence different
than the officially-sanctioned IDF versions.
The final section in the chapter looks at the process of how suffering that
is the result of extreme conditions gets transformed into Israeli narratives of the
nation. In most situations of extreme Palestinian suffering, the narrativization
process in the Israeli media works similarly to the way it works for suffering
from everyday violence. The Israeli media, getting almost all of its information
about suffering experiences from the IDF, transforms extreme Palestinian
suffering experiences into a narrative. However, in certain situations of extreme
Palestinian suffering, after the officially-sanctioned Israeli narrative is
constructed, a competing narrative is formed by Israeli reporters. Two Israeli
reporters, Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, are internationally renowned for their
work in collecting the social suffering narratives of Palestinians and then
reporting those details in their Haaretz articles. As will be shown, their work
has had an unexpected impact on Israeli audiences and Israeli narratives of the
nation. Among Israeli readers of Haaretz, Hass and Levy are often accused of
and being Palestinian sympathizers and, as a result, their narratives of
Palestinian social suffering are largely dismissed.
In the most extreme cases of Palestinian suffering, an altogether
different narrativization process occurs. As part of the wider Israeli “operation
Defensive Shield” to kill or capture wanted Palestinian militants in the West
Bank, the IDF invaded Jenin in April 2002. The operation caused extreme

267
suffering because of the intense physical damage done to the Jenin refugee
camp (on the edge of Jenin city) and the high death toll that resulted from the
fighting. In this particular situation, the IDF’s role in the narrativizing process
was more limited than in other narrativizing efforts. For the first month during
and after the invasion, the Israeli state took an extensive and ongoing role in the
narrativizing process as it tried to ward off accusations, both nationally and
internationally, that Israel had committed “a massacre” against Palestinians.
What these examples of extreme Palestinian suffering show is that the more
extreme the suffering (the more violence, injuries and death), the more active
the Israeli state becomes in the narrativizing process.
While routinized suffering, suffering that results from everyday
violence, and extreme suffering all occur to Palestinians, each of these forms of
suffering undergoes different narrativization processes in the Israeli media. As
will be shown, much of this process is dependent upon if and how the IDF first
narrativizes Palestinian suffering experiences. When Palestinian suffering
experiences become narrativized in the Israeli media, they often are manipulated
and then transformed into Israeli narratives of the nation.

Palestinian Narratives of Social Suffering
From the moment I began talking to Palestinians in Ramallah and Bir
Zeit, I was told social suffering narratives. Why do Palestinians form social
suffering narratives and then share them with one another and with other

268
internationals? Scholars of social suffering and the anthropology of violence
point to the connections between suffering or violence and identity formation
(Feldman 1991; Daniel 1996; Jakubowska 1992; Malkki 1995; Stewart and
Strathern 2002). A study conducted by Ross (2001) on South African women
shows that people share suffering narratives as a way to embody the suffering of
other kinsmen and kinswomen. These studies might adequately explain why
Palestinians share suffering narratives amongst themselves but it is not a
satisfactory explanation as to why they so readily shared them with non-
Palestinians such as me. The following experience suggests that Palestinians
perform their suffering narratives for a variety of reasons.
One day while sitting with Nisreen, my closest Palestinian friend, and a
married couple who were acquaintances of hers, the husband Samir started to
tell a story from his youth about when he had hung a Palestinian flag on the top
of his house in the Gaza Strip. This occurred in the late 1970s well before the
Palestinian Authority was established and when Israel had full administrative
and military control over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. At the time,
Palestinians who were in possession of objects with symbols of Palestinian
nationalism – such as Palestinian flags or necklaces shaped as Israel but with the
Palestinian colors (green, red, white and black) – would risk great trouble if they
were caught with these items by the Israeli authorities. At the time of the story,
Samir was twelve years old. He tried to take down the flag before Israeli
soldiers could get to him, but he was caught and immediately punished. He told

269
my friend and me, laughing heartily, that he was forced to stand on top of his
family’s roof for two straight days. On the first day, he was so bored that he
tried to run away from the Israeli soldiers who were sitting on the road near his
house. When the soldiers eventually caught him, they slapped Samir around a
little and then sent him right back to the roof to continue his punishment. At
this moment, the three Palestinians could not contain their laughter. The story
went on for a few more minutes and when it ended I asked them how they could
be laughing so flippantly at such a disturbing story. My friend said “what
choice do we have? If we don’t laugh at these stories, we’ll have to cry.” This
was not the last time I heard performances of Palestinian social suffering
narratives ending with intense laughter.
One might argue that this performance created a sense of Palestinian
political community or identity amongst the three Palestinians. In addition to
this, though, I believe Palestinians share their suffering narratives during
everyday performances to create a shared experience. Among Palestinians,
creating a shared suffering experience reinforces the notion that a person is not
suffering alone and affirms that other people have gone through similar
suffering experiences. When performing these narratives with non-Palestinians,
creating a shared experience is a way to teach people what it is like to live like a
Palestinian. In addition, during these performances Palestinians create and
perpetuate Palestinian narratives of the nation. Since Palestinians so often share
similar kinds of suffering experiences, their repeated narrativization of these

270
experiences during performances can transform social suffering narratives into
Palestinian narratives of the nation. I have heard countless stories such as
Samir’s about Palestinian children who defied the Israeli authorities by carrying
with them symbols of Palestinian nationalism. The narrative that emerges is
that Palestinians are defiant in the face of an unwanted Israeli presence.

Routinized Forms of Palestinian Suffering
Before I went to Ramallah, Palestine to conduct my research, I thought I
knew a great deal about Palestinian social suffering. I was told many different
suffering narratives by Palestinian friends when I lived in Jerusalem and Los
Angeles and read hundreds of newspaper articles and internet stories about
specific incidents of Palestinian suffering. I realize now that these suffering
stories were generally about everyday violence and extreme forms of
Palestinian suffering. I learned about the more routinized suffering only by
getting to know individual Palestinians and hearing their day-to-day life stories
as well as by living in Palestine and experiencing the suffering for myself. Most
of the social suffering narratives I heard from my Palestinian friends were about
the more mundane experiences of living under Israeli occupation. These are
stories about a person being late for work, a person who cannot visit her family
for the weekend, or a child you are sitting next to in a car who is crying because
he is hot and has to wait – all of which occur because of an Israeli checkpoint. I
never heard Palestinians discuss their experiences of fear when confronting the

271
IDF, but I always thought (based on my own personal experiences of fear) that
this was one of the unspoken aspects of the suffering narrative.
Even after hearing and witnessing so many different routinized suffering
stories, I understood how difficult it was to convey how it feels to live this
reality every day. Experience after experience, story after story – the suffering
has an extraordinary cumulative effect. Routinized suffering places a great
weight on individuals’ lives. Over an extended period of time, routinized
suffering produces a great sense of paranoia and claustrophobia. When a
firecracker is set off to celebrate a wedding, one wonders if it is actually the
sound of a bullet being fired. When talking to a friend in a public restaurant,
one wonders if an Israeli secret agent might be listening. Routinized suffering
is in fact an expected part of a person’s life and a common topic of
conversation.
In the examples of suffering I present below, and in the rest of the
chapter, I present a number of stories in which I personally suffered. I do not
wish to leave the impression that my suffering was similar to Palestinian
suffering. First and foremost, as a United States citizen I always had the option
to leave Palestine if my suffering became too intense. I also never suffered like
Palestinians because I ultimately knew that being from the United States could
get me out of suffering situations that Palestinians could not get out of – and I
was spared serious suffering on two occasions because of this. Finally, I was in
Palestine only for a short period of time and the cumulative effect that long-term

272

suffering has on Palestinians did not impact me in the same way. With this in
mind, I offer the following narratives of routinized suffering that occur in
Palestine as a result of economic and non-violent corporeal forms of suffering.
****************************************************************

Esmat had been asking me for a few days to come by his office to meet
his co-workers and to help him write a letter in English to the Israeli authorities
at the Ashdod Port in Israel. Apparently, for over six months, Esmat’s boss has
had over $400,000 worth of equipment being held there. Esmat was assigned
the task of writing a letter to try and somehow retrieve his company’s
equipment. As we started rewriting the draft of the letter that Esmat had
previously written, I learned that the equipment was being held up because the
Israeli authorities had not yet let it pass through customs. The Israeli port
authorities told Esmat that all the cargo imported into the Palestinian Authority
must go through a rigorous Israeli check in order to ensure that no weapons slip
in and make their way to Palestinian militants. They also mentioned that this
process can be an extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive process and
that they did not know when the company’s equipment would be released.
As it turns out, by not being delivered, the equipment being held at the
Ashdod port
2
is putting three hotel construction projects on hold. The situation
has come to a breaking point because the company responsible for building the

2
In order to protect the identity of the company, I refrain from describing the specifics of the
equipment.

273
hotels is threatening to break its contract with Esmat’s company and use another
company that already has the equipment on hand. Not only would this cause
Esmat’s company to lose the contract, it would also leave them with $400,000
worth of equipment for which nobody has any use. If this happens, Esmat’s
company is going to go out of business.
It was not one hundred percent clear to me what the purpose of the letter
was until I started helping Esmat write it. After a brief introduction, the letter
explained the various financial difficulties Esmat’s company was enduring as a
result of the wait. It stated that the Israeli tax on imported items for Palestinians
ran nearly one hundred percent of the equipment’s value. While this is an
exorbitant fee, it was already factored into the overall cost by the company. In
addition to this tax, the Palestinian Authority also charged tax for importing
foreign goods. The letter went on to say that Esmat’s boss was on the brink of
financial ruin waiting for the release of his equipment. So, instead of waiting
any longer, he hopes that by paying an additional ten percent to the port
authorities he can have the cargo checked immediately. It was a bribery
attempt. Not only was the success of this letter instrumental for the survival of
the business, but on a more personal level, Esmat and the rest of his co-workers
had not actually been paid for the last four weeks of work because his boss had
run out of money waiting for the equipment to be released.
****************************************************************

274
The social suffering caused by various economic barriers set up by Israel
had a far greater impact than I could have imagined. Since Israel has complete
control over Palestinian exports and imports, the Palestinian economy’s success
is directly dependent upon the daily political relationship between Israel and the
Palestinian Authority. In more difficult times, imports and exports are subject
to tighter Israeli control. Not only do Israeli economic restrictions impact
imports and exports, they even affect how Palestinian goods travel from one
part of Palestine to another. When I traveled around the West Bank to collect
suffering narratives, I learned that it is often cheaper for Palestinians to buy
imported Israeli goods – that have no restrictions in terms of movement into the
market – than to buy Palestinian goods which are subject to great delays at the
various Israeli checkpoints.
Palestinian economic uncertainty leads people to worry about ordinary
financial problems, such as not being able to pay the rent, buy groceries, or be
able to spend some money on leisure activities. The most difficult financial
burden that was affected by economic uncertainty which I witnessed, though,
was the ability of young Palestinian men to get married. In Palestinian society,
I was told, it is of the highest importance for a man to get married at some point
in his twenties if he wishes to get married at all. Once a man enters his thirties,
it grows increasingly more difficult to find a family willing to allow their
daughter to marry him. As a result, Palestinian men in their late teens must

275
begin to consider how they will best be able to save up enough money to get
married.
In Palestine, grooms and their families are obligated to pay a brideprice
in order to attain a bride. One of my roommates, for example, told me that in
order to get married, he would need to have about 30,000 New Israeli Shekels
(NIS) (which at the time was approximately $6,700) on hand to give to the
bride, another NIS 15,000 worth of jewelry for the bride, an apartment for the
married couple to live in after their wedding, and NIS 8,000 for the wedding
party. This is an extraordinary amount of money for most young men in
Palestine. In some cases, a groom’s parents could use their savings or try to
borrow money to help pay the costs of a wedding. In the case of my
roommates, though, they wanted to place as small a financial burden as possible
on their families since they all came from farming families that did not have a
lot of disposable income or the ability to generate it. The economic uncertainty
that Palestinians endure is the cause for a great deal of social suffering because
of its implications for Palestinian marriages.
The routinized suffering caused by people having to delay getting
married until they have enough money was the most commonly discussed topic
of conversation for my roommates. Another form of routinized suffering that
results from economic factors is a person’s limited career opportunities. This
plays a major role in how a person must approach their college education (for
those who are fortunate to get a college education). This was also discussed

276
regularly by my roommates. One of my roommate’s brothers, Usama, who had
just been admitted to Bir Zeit University, wanted to become an engineer – a
profession highly regarded in Palestinian society. His brother, who had just
finished an engineering degree at Bir Zeit, tried to dissuade Usama from doing
this because he was having a difficult time finding a job. Again, because of the
political circumstances, there was less investment in construction projects and
fewer jobs for engineers. When I asked Usama if he had any desire to become a
doctor or lawyer, he told me no. There was only one Palestinian university, Al-
Quds (Jerusalem) University, that offered degrees in medicine and law and the
programs were very new and not very reputable yet. It would be difficult for
him to compete against lawyers and doctors who received their education
abroad. The restrictive career choices in the Palestinian economy greatly limit
how a Palestinian must approach his education. After Palestinians finish
college, limited career opportunities also force them to take jobs for which they
are overqualified. This is also a cause of routinized suffering from economic
factors.
****************************************************************
Now that I know all of my roommates pretty well, I am starting to ask
them what they all do for work. One of the guys is finishing his degree as an
engineer at Bir Zeit University. Another guy who graduated with an
engineering degree at Bir Zeit is now a speechwriter for one of the ministers
working for the Palestinian Authority. One of my other roommates is an

277
accountant who actually does very little accounting. Since the business he
works for has no money coming in, he has been forced to do whatever is
necessary to keep the business afloat. Another one of my roommates has an
advanced degree in chemistry. What is his job? His high level of education is
called upon to ensure quality control at a factory that produces a drink. He
spends the whole day making sure that the ratio of ingredients for the drink is
always proper. To my astonishment, he is extremely appreciative of his job
even though, he concedes, the job is terribly boring. He is happy because he
makes a relatively high salary and his job is very stable. His dream is to one
day be able to do research to try and cure diseases for people. But he holds out
little hope for such an eventuality because international investors find it far too
risky to invest money in Palestinian laboratories during this volatile political
situation.
****************************************************************
The routinized suffering that results from economic factors is extensive.
Little or no economic investment by international corporations and governments
has left the Palestinian economy with fewer job choices for its workers which
leads to another kind of routinized suffering. While all of my roommates had at
least a college-level education, they were rarely able to get jobs in the field in
which they were trained. They were also usually unable to get jobs
commensurate with their levels of education. As a result, most of the young
Palestinian men I met were unsatisfied with their jobs and were looking for

278
other jobs. This routinized suffering is partly a result of the current political
situation between Palestine and Israel and Israel’s control over the Palestinian
economy.
Another form of routinized social suffering that has not yet been
investigated in the literature on social suffering is non-violent corporeal
suffering. While I was talking to a Palestinian friend of mine in Los Angeles a
year before conducting my research in Palestine, he told me the greatest luxury
in the United States was being able to take a long hot shower every day. I did
not question him any further about this since I thought I understood what he
meant. When I lived in Jerusalem as a young man, I never took showers in the
middle of the day because the person who owned the building I lived in turned
off the hot water until evening to conserve power. Although conservation of
electricity was one of the reasons why my friend did not take too many showers
in Palestine, it turned out that a limited water supply was the more important
factor.
****************************************************************
I have finished moving in with my five Palestinian roommates and
things have been going really well so far. One thing I was surprised to learn
today is that I will only be taking two showers a week. There is not enough
water for more than that. There is also not going to be any hot showers in my
future since it is too expensive to keep the water heated. Apparently, the best
time to take a shower is in the middle of the day when the water being stored on

279
the roof gets somewhat warmed by the sun. From what I could understand,
there is a water bin on top of the roof and it contains all the water we will have
for two weeks. Once the water is finished, there is no way to get any more until
the water man comes by again to fill up the bin. Ziad told me that they had run
out of water on the second to last day of the cycle last time and that we would
need to be more conservative using the water in this cycle. The other thing I
found out is that I will have to dispose of my toilet paper in a garbage can and
not flush it down the toilet. The best explanation I could understand for this is
that the piping system here is too old to handle the toilet paper.
****************************************************************
A number of studies have examined the historical significance of how
water has played a central role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Davis, et al.
1980; Dillman 1989; Naff and Matson 1984). Over time a great disparity has
been created between Israel’s and Palestine’s water supply because of Israel’s
control over many of the available water resources. The result is that “Israel’s
unilateral, lopsided appropriation of the common Palestinian-Israeli waters has
left Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a substandard level of
consumption and has created a wide water gap between them and the Israelis
(Elmusa 1993:73).” It is broadly understood that these water shortages have
negatively impacted Palestinian agriculture and potable water supplies. What is
less considered is how water shortages impact other elements of Palestinian
lives and this is the cause for routinized suffering. While conducting research in

280
Jerusalem, I never heard complaints from Israelis about not being able to take
regular showers because of water shortages. In Palestine, if a person takes too
many showers, they simply run out of water. There is no drinking water or
water with which to cook. So instead of being forced to buy expensive water,
many Palestinians are forced to conserve water by not taking showers. While
shower restrictions are not life threatening, they are clearly a form of non-
violent corporeal suffering.
There are other ways that suffering is corporeal but not violent. On a
number of occasions, I attempted to take the short trip from Ramallah to Nablus.
I was looking forward to this trip for a variety of reasons. First, my closest
Palestinian friend’s family lived in Nablus and I had wanted to meet them for a
long time. Second, there was a woman who was from Africa who lived in
Nablus that I was interested in interviewing about racial undercurrents in
Palestinian society. Finally, I had long wanted to go to Nablus to try their
famous dessert called knafeh. I planned to go to Nablus the first weekend I was
in Palestine, but the day before I was ready to leave my friend told me that it
was too dangerous for me to visit. The IDF were in the middle of military
operations in Nablus. By the next weekend, the situation had become a little
less tense and my friend told me that it would be safe for me to come and visit.
As is the norm in Palestinian society, a great deal of effort was made by my
friend’s family to provide me with the proper hospitality. They arranged for my
lodging at a nearby hotel. They planned a special meal for me as well as trips to

281
different relatives’ houses. They also arranged a tour of the city for me where I
would be able to try knafeh. So, on a Thursday morning, I got into a car service
with other Palestinians and headed to Nablus.
****************************************************************
Once we arrived in Nablus I encountered a very serious checkpoint (the
semi-permanent Hawara checkpoint) that looked more like a border crossing
than a checkpoint. There were many IDF vehicles, including tanks, and a lot of
soldiers. Everybody arriving at the checkpoint had to get into two lines, one for
men and the other for women and children. Since people were carrying large
bags and the soldiers painstakingly checked each one, waiting on the line took a
long time. One person would move closer to the soldier – who was pointing a
large gun at that person – then stop halfway between the people in line and the
soldier, put down the bag on the ground, open up the bag and take out all of the
contents, close it, go to the soldier with an identification card, and then be
allowed to pass. When it was finally my turn, it was a Russian soldier who
started speaking in Arabic to me. As I was putting my bag down and emptying
the contents of my bag, I told him I only speak English. When he saw the video
camera come out of my backpack, he asked if I was a journalist and if I had a
press pass. As he motioned to me to come closer, I told him that I was only a
tourist visiting friends. The camera was for my personal use only. He said that
no tourists were allowed into Nablus – it was too dangerous. If I want to be a
tourist I should go to Jerusalem where it is safe. I asked him if there was any

282
way he would let me pass through this one time since a whole family was
waiting to greet me at the central bus station. He said no. With no other choice,
I had to turn around and go back to Ramallah.
One week later:
I got up early in the morning to go to Nablus with Ramzi and James.
Over the week, Palestinian friends told me to try going to Nablus again – they
did not think Nablus was permanently closed and that I had just been unlucky
last week. But just like last week, when we got to the checkpoint, we were
turned away. Leading up to the checkpoint was a large makeshift market that
sells drinks, food and some touristy things. I asked Ramzi, who was a lot better
at speaking Arabic than me, to ask the man who sold the coffee if there was any
other way to get into Nablus. As it turned out, the man said, there was. We got
into another taxi service and started driving to what I thought was going to be a
different checkpoint. As it turned out, we began driving up a very rough road
that led us up the mountain. After a fairly long ride, we were let out of the van
at the head of a dirt path. We, along with four young Palestinian men who were
in the van with us, began to hike. At the beginning of the hike, we were
chatting with two of the Palestinians while the other two quickly got ahead of
us.
Only a few minutes into the hike, we saw an IDF vehicle off in the
distance approaching us. The two Palestinians who were a little ahead of us
kept going but the rest of us kind of stopped dead in our tracks and started to

283
walk backwards – the wrong way since that’s where the road was that the Israeli
military vehicle was traveling on. When they got close enough to us, the
soldiers motioned us over and did the usual stuff – put our bags on the ground,
open them up to make sure there were no bombs in our bags. They then asked
us for our passports and asked us what we were doing here. The soldiers did not
really speak English very well. We told them that we were just tourists trying to
get to Nablus to try the knafeh. As James was unpacking the contents of his
backpack, he pulled out an Israeli travel guide book. One of the soldiers asked
James if he knew where the picture on the front of the book was (it was a
picture of Jerusalem). James said no and the soldier said that it was his home.
It was lucky for us that he had that book because it seemed to prove to the
soldiers that we were tourists (instead of peace activists) and it diffused what
was looking like it could become a very tense situation. After checking the rest
of us more thoroughly, they let us and the two other Palestinians go. The
soldiers added to the Palestinians that they never wanted to see them here again.
After hiking about an hour and a half, we made it to the edge of a village
where a driver wanted to take us to the village for fifteen shekels, which
sounded like way too much. So we continued to walk. Soon we got into the
small village on top of the mountains and a woman offered us cold water –
incredibly nice considering she must see tens, if not hundreds, of people like us
every day. Apparently we were headed in the wrong direction, so she redirected
us.

284
After walking ten more minutes, another cab picked us up and drove us
part way down the mountain for two shekels. We were not quite sure why he let
us out before we got to Nablus until we saw another IDF vehicle on the horizon.
Apparently, having a car full of young men in the countryside is a bad position
for a driver to be in if he meets Israeli soldiers. After getting dropped off, we
then had to hike up a steep uphill for about thirty minutes. When we made it to
the top there was another cab waiting and this one brought us all the way to the
center of town. This whole tour of the mountainside took us over three hours.
By the time we got to Nablus, we realized that what we had done was probably
illegal. And I was getting worried about how we were going to get out of
Nablus since our choices were to do another hike (which would have been
harder because there were more uphill climbs on the way out of Nablus) or to go
straight through the checkpoint and risk getting into trouble with the Israeli
military.
****************************************************************
I found out later during my fieldwork that many IDF checkpoints can be
circumnavigated by Palestinians if they are willing to take a long (and often
bumpy) car ride and/or a hike. Although being forced to make a difficult hike is
not physically violent against Palestinians, it is nonetheless a form of corporeal
suffering. The three-hour hike we made into Nablus was at times grueling
because there were steep uphill climbs and we were hiking in very hot weather.
Young Palestinian men are often forced to do this when they travel between

285

cities or risk having to have a face-to-face confrontation with the Israeli military
at checkpoints. For most Palestinian men who are traveling between cities for
work or education, in almost all circumstances trying to pass through a
checkpoint is undesirable. IDF soldiers automatically suspect young Palestinian
men of being terrorists since they are the ones most likely to carry out attacks
against Israel. With great restrictions placed on young men’s movement
between cities,
3
then, often the most desirable way to travel is to endure a long
hike and avoid as many Israeli checkpoints as possible.
In addition to this non-violent corporeal form of suffering, Palestinians
often talk about how much they suffer from all the inconvenience they are put
through because of the checkpoints. An ordinary trip between the center of
Ramallah and the center of Nablus would take less than an hour if there were no
Israeli military obstructions. Our trip took us over six hours and during the
course of the trip we had five direct meetings with IDF soldiers at roadblocks,
checkpoints or in the mountains. Putting aside the fear of being bullied by a
soldier or getting arrested, there is another great inconvenience when
confronting an IDF soldier. One never knows how long it will take for the IDF
soldiers to allow you to pass. When leaving Nablus to go back home to

3
Palestinians endure severe restrictions on traveling between cities in the West Bank.
According to my Palestinian friends, this is how I was told it works. Each Palestinian has an
identity card that says in what city or area he or she lives. Technically, Palestinians are not
allowed to leave that city. If a Palestinian decides to travel, when s/he arrives at an IDF
checkpoint, Israeli soldiers always ask to see their identity card. It is at this point that a soldier
decides whether a Palestinian can pass through the checkpoint or whether s/he will be turned
back. These restrictions are particularly enforced against young men.

286
Ramallah, we were detained for over two hours at the Hawara checkpoint. The
soldiers only wound up releasing us because James’ incessant complaining was
not allowing them to do their inspection work properly. Any confrontation with
an IDF soldier has the potential to last a long time and these meetings are
always inconvenient.
Routinized Palestinian suffering experiences are almost never
narrativized by the Israeli media. This is largely because the IDF does not feel
it is necessary to get involved in the narrativization process if there are no
Palestinian injuries or deaths. When the IDF does not get involved in the
narrativizing process, it is difficult for the Israeli media to gather information
about Palestinian routinized suffering experiences. This is because the state
places great limits on the flow of information from Palestine into Israel. Israeli
citizens are not allowed to enter the West Bank or the Gaza Strip unless they are
residents of one of the Israeli settlements. Though there are a few Israeli
reporters who get permission to work in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, their
efforts are generally put toward reporting the more extreme forms of suffering.
The fact that Israel does not get involved in narrativizing routinized
Palestinian suffering shows that the state unflinchingly believes the suffering
they cause is justified. In addition, the Israeli state knows that a vast majority of
its Jewish citizens also believe Palestinian routinized suffering is justified and
therefore does not need to spend time in the narrativizing process. Almost all
Jewish-Israelis perform mandatory military service after high school, and during

287
that time, are exposed to or cause routinized Palestinian suffering. If an Israeli
does not witness routinized suffering first-hand, he certainly hears about it from
other friends who have served in the military. Both the Israeli state and its
citizens do not seem to conceptualize routinized Palestinian suffering as
suffering. Instead, it is conceptualized as mild inconvenience to Palestinians or
as an unfortunate but necessary side-effect of fighting Palestinian terrorism.

Suffering from Everyday Violence
While almost all routinized forms of suffering are narrativized by
Palestinians and for Palestinians, suffering from everyday violence is frequently
narrativized by the Israeli state and the Israeli media. Suffering from everyday
violence is the result of violent events where no one gets seriously injured. This
suffering most often occurs at Palestinian demonstrations or during Israeli raids
to arrest Palestinians. In these situations, the more violent a confrontation
becomes or the more serious the injuries sustained by either Palestinians,
internationals or Israeli soldiers, the more likely the Israeli state is to get
involved in the narrativizing process. The Israeli state and media are also likely
to narrativize events where the military is successful at capturing wanted
Palestinian militants.
The following section considers three different cases of suffering from
everyday violence which were caused as a result of violent confrontations with
the IDF. The first case occurred during a rock throwing demonstration when no

288
one was injured but there were gunshots, sound bombs and property damage.
This suffering story was not narrativized by the IDF or the Israeli media. The
second case occurred at a peaceful demonstration involving both Palestinians
and international peace activists against the Israeli wall. During the
demonstration, people were injured and as a result the story was narrativized by
the IDF and the Israeli media. The final case was an Israeli arrest raid where
there was Palestinian rock throwing, rubber bullets fired by the IDF and the
emptying of an apartment complex at gunpoint to find wanted militants. This
event was also narrativized in the Israeli media.
****************************************************************
Tonight was the closest I have ever come to being a victim of the IDF.
While I was sitting at George’s restaurant with friends from Bir Zeit, some kids
started pelting a passing IDF Hummer with rocks. This was not the first time
this happened outside George’s restaurant. But usually when the kids started to
throw rocks, the soldiers just ignored it and drove right through the stones as
they harmlessly bounced off of the protected Hummers. This time, though, one
of the kids got lucky and broke a mirror or some glass on the front of the
Hummer. The vehicle immediately stopped and all of a sudden I heard a
paralyzing noise which I later heard was a “percussion grenade.” It had a
devastatingly stunning effect that is difficult to explain. I just could not move
for a few instants. After everyone in the restaurant regained their senses,
George [the restaurant owner] told us to get down to the ground. After getting

289
down, we heard gunshots being fired. Then, two bullets went through the glass
wall of the restaurant. The glass did not actually shatter but the fact that we
were so close to the bullets was a terrifying experience. It is hard to understand
why the IDF were shooting since the kids ran away after they broke the glass on
the Hummer.
After the IDF vehicles left, George told us that he had built the outdoor
portion of the restaurant with this scenario in mind. The bottom two feet of the
building’s structure was built with heavy concrete so that if there were gunshots
people could quickly get down and be protected. In order for the restaurant to
retain aesthetic appeal, the remainder of the front wall was made of glass. The
restaurant was built this way in order to protect his customers. Also, this was
not the first time the IDF shot bullets through the restaurant windows. George
showed us the different bullet holes left by previous IDF firefights.
****************************************************************
Children and young men throwing rocks at passing Israeli military
vehicles is an ordinary occurrence in Palestine and something I witnessed many
times. Right outside George’s restaurant, this is something that happened
almost every night. The restaurant was situated twenty feet away from a road
that was the main passage/thoroughfare between Nablus and Ramallah and was
therefore subject to a great deal of Israeli military movement. Every single
night, numerous groups of Israeli military vehicles passed through this road.

290

It is quite difficult to classify the suffering that occurred that night. No
one was actually physically injured. Still, there was the stunning effect of the
percussion bomb and the incredible fear of having live bullets being fired so
close to us. As George pointed out, the fact that the bullets were shot through
the glass of the restaurant – and not into the sky – proved that the soldiers had
malicious intent. Also, there was physical damage done to the restaurant and
George joked that the military never stops to offer money to repay the damage.
For my group of friends, as well as the other patrons in the restaurant, this was
undoubtedly a social suffering experience. Everyone talked about what
happened for the rest of the night and George gave everyone free drinks and
argilleh.
4
Yet, the next morning when I read Haaretz and Jerusalem Post
online, this event had not been narrativized by the Israeli media. Since there
was no one injured or arrested, it was just on ordinary occurrence that needed no
IDF justification or narrativization.
Another kind of suffering that occurs from everyday violence is the
result of the Israeli “security fence,” also referred to by Palestinians as the
“Apartheid Wall.”
5
According to the Israel government, the security fence is
necessary in order “to stop the deadly [Palestinian] terrorist attacks… The
absence of a barrier makes infiltration into Israel communities a relatively easy
task for terrorists. No terrorists have infiltrated from the Gaza Strip into Israel

4
Or “hooka” as it is called in English, a tobacco-based communal water pipe.
5
The term is used by Palestinian to refer to the Israeli-constructed separation fence between
Israel and the West Bank. The meaning of this term was discussed in Chapter 2, footnote 30.

291

in recent years, because an electronic anti-terrorist fence already exists there.”
6

When in Palestine, I heard about and experienced the harmful effects of the
Israeli wall against different Palestinian communities. In some communities or
even cities (Qalqiliya) that I visited, the wall completely encircled an area so
that passage was possible only through one road. This one passage was
frequently guarded by the Israeli military and getting in and out required official
Israeli permission. The Israeli wall could even impact a single family. I visited
a family who lived in a house that was surrounded by the wall on all four sides.
The family needed permission to leave their home in order to go to work, go
shopping or even go to school. Also, I met a Palestinian farmer who had the
great misfortune of having his farm on the Israeli side of the wall. He was
required to get permission from the Israeli authorities to work his land every
day. Even when this did happen, there were many times that the soldiers at the
checkpoint did not let him pass for reasons that were not explained. He was
also limited to the amount of time he was allowed his farm since the checkpoint
he used closed for the night at some point in the afternoon.
I bring attention to the Israeli wall only partly to discuss the social
suffering that it causes ordinary Palestinians. I also raise the issue to discuss
some of the side-effects of the wall. The next case of suffering from everyday
violence was the result of an organized effort to peacefully demonstrate against

6
Official Israeli government document found online at http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/mfaarchive/
2000_2009/2003/11/saving%20lives-%20israel-s%20anti-terrorist%20fence%20-%20answ

292

the Israeli wall. During the course of my research, I heard about different
demonstrations against the wall that occurred all over Palestine. Some of the
people I met were organizers of these demonstrations. While I never personally
attended a demonstration, my British friend James wrote me a personal account
of one he had attended which was to protest a section of the wall that was being
constructed between the large Israeli settlement of Ariel and a number of small
Palestinian villages.
****************************************************************
“My leg is almost completely better, after the Israeli army's unkind
application of a rubber bullet to it last week. I was at Qalandia with a great body
of people protesting the Separation Wall and of course the Shebab
7
started
throwing stones. The whole thing went to shit very quickly. I managed to avoid
the gas, but Gilbert and I ended up trapped in a doorway for about an hour with
a party of 6 Palestinian girl scouts! Sweet little things in their woggles and red
scarves, they spent the time trying to break a huge boulder into smaller bits so
they could lob them at the soldiers. Gilbert and I picked the wrong time to make
our getaway; he got stoned and I got shot! This was a source of considerable
annoyance to him and great good fortune for me, as I have dined out on the
bruise for the last ten days. Still, a lesson learnt!”
****************************************************************

7
Shebab is the Arabic word for “young men.”

293

An Haaretz article the following day narrativized this event in the
following way:
At least 15 protesters were injured in clashes Thursday with
IDF troops at an anti-fence demonstration held by Palestinians
and left-wing activists in the West Bank. Palestinian sources
said IDF troops at the demonstration, near the village of al-
Zawiya, were firing rubber bullets and dispersing tear gas at
the protesters, including left-wing Israeli and foreign activists.
The IDF, however, said troops were using tear gas only.
8

Aside from the scant details about the demonstration, this article
presented what appeared to be a very basic factual account of what happened.
This ‘objective’ style of presenting the events effectively hid a number of
problems with the account. First, the article discussed the “clashes” between
the IDF and protestors as though the two had an equal amount of power in the
confrontation. However, the protestors only were armed with stones. The IDF
used guns and tear gas (though the military did not acknowledge its use of
guns). Still, my friend came back with an injured leg from one of these rubber-
coated bullets. Second, none of the demonstrators were interviewed for the
article. Since Israeli reporters are rarely allowed in the West Bank, only the
military’s perspective was taken into consideration for the purposes of
constructing the Israeli narrative. Had any of the demonstrators been
interviewed, a different narrative surely would have emerged. Third, by
conflating Palestinian protestors with “left-wing activists” and “left-wing Israeli

8
Arnon Regular, “At Least 15 Hurt in Anti-Fence Protest in West Bank,” Haaretz, June 10,
2002.

294
and foreign activists,” the article immediately conveys the idea that these people
are as suspicious and deserving of suffering as the Palestinians themselves.
Finally, the narrative presented in the Israeli media completely suppresses and
depersonalizes the experiences of those who have suffered. No personal details
whatsoever are provided about the sufferers.
The last case of suffering from everyday violence I present is about an
incident I witnessed that occurred when the IDF raided Ramallah to try and
arrest Palestinian militants. The incident itself was not terribly violent – some
Palestinians kids threw stones at the IDF vehicles as they were passing through
the city center and I heard what I thought were gunshots. Aside from that,
though, it appeared as though no one was injured or no physical damage was
being done to Palestinian buildings or businesses. The reason I discuss this
particular suffering experience is because of how it was narrativized by the
Israeli media the following day. The account was in stark contrast to what I
personally witnessed and the personal accounts of other Palestinians that I later
heard.
****************************************************************
July 2
When we (James, Yussef, Andy and I) got to Yussef’s family’s ice
cream shop we saw a lot of people running chaotically about. We finally heard
someone screaming in Arabic “il jaish, il jaish, il jaish” – “the [Israeli] army, the
army, the army.” Some people were waving and pointing frantically to warn

295
others about which direction the IDF was coming from. There were also kids
running around with large rocks in their hands. In the background, I heard some
loud mumbling being projected by a loudspeaker a little off in the distance.
Though I knew that this must have been Hebrew, I couldn’t actually understand
the words since they were quite distorted. Then, I saw what appeared to be a
large truck with very bright lights approaching. It was moving very slowly and
even though it was starting to get really close I still could not understand what
the soldiers were saying in Hebrew. One message was definitely being
conveyed effectively though – they wanted the Palestinians to know they were
coming. The display with the lights, the garbled words, and the jeep moving so
slowly was clearly a show of force and an intimidation tactic.
Even though we were all curious to find out why the IDF was invading
Ramallah, we decided it was too dangerous to stick around. With luck, there
was a taxi waiting at the side of the road and it picked us up even though the
IDF jeep was now less than one hundred yards away. So we got into the cab.
The cab driver went full throttle in reverse screeching, and went around the
side-streets to avoid the IDF. The funny thing about this whole event was that
we had heard earlier in the day from other Palestinians that something bad was
going to happen. I definitely believed them but had forgotten all about it seven
or eight hours later. As we circumvented the IDF and were on our way back
home, we got onto the main road from Ramallah to Bir Zeit. It was just our
luck because the road was completely blocked off by a flying checkpoint. We

296
waited for a while not knowing exactly what to do. I was carrying my backpack
with my video camera in it and didn’t think it was such a great idea to approach
the soldiers with something so big – they might think I was carrying a bomb or
something. Besides, who knew if they would confiscate it? After a while,
James got the courage to go up to the soldiers and ask them if we could pass the
checkpoint by walking through. I stayed behind in the cab with our belongings.
When he came back, he told us the Israeli soldiers were going to let us go
through. So we collected all of our things and walked up to the checkpoint. We
actually couldn’t see a thing until we got right to the soldiers – there was a
spotlight pointed down on the road where we were coming from that totally
blinded us. When we did get to the checkpoint there were some young soldiers
with guns drawn in the middle of the road aiming towards the dark hills on the
side of the road. There were also a whole slew of other higher ranking and
older soldiers in a makeshift office in the middle of the road – they seemed to be
looking at maps and did not pay much attention to us. Though their guns were
not pointed at us it was uncomfortable knowing that these soldiers were ready to
shoot anything that moved. When we did make it to them they asked us in
English where we were going. We said that we were going back to our homes
in Bir Zeit. That simple explanation satisfied them and they let us pass.
On the other side of the checkpoint, there was a long line of cars trying
to get into Ramallah in a single-file line off of the side of the road. All of the
car’s engines were turned off and the people inside the cars were starting to

297
prepare to go to sleep. On the side that I had come from everyone had been
trying to move up to the front of the line and left their engines on. I translated
this to mean that people who were hoping to be let out of Ramallah would soon
be able to do so. But the people wanting to enter Ramallah knew that they
would be forced to wait for a while. We were still a distance away from our
home so we asked a couple of the taxi drivers if they wouldn’t mind turning
around and driving us home. One driver agreed to take us. While waiting for
James and Yussef to come back from looking for a cab, we heard from one of
the cab drivers smoking on the side of the road that there were 25 IDF vehicles
in Ramallah. Was it true? Who knows?
July 5
We ate some lunch and then Ziad [my new Palestinian roommate] and I
tried to find a mattress for me. We went to a few stores that had mattresses and
found the prices to be reasonable. But before buying one, Ziad wanted to take
me to see a friend of his that wanted to sell his used mattress for less. When we
got to this guy’s apartment, I found out that Ziad’s friend was getting ready to
move back to Gaza (where he was from) after being a student at Bir Zeit for
four years and working in Ramallah for a year. He was here legally while he
was a student but was now living in Ramallah illegally. He was worried that the
Israelis would find out about him and deport him back to Gaza before he could
make work arrangements there. So instead of leaving it up to Israel when he
was going to go back to Gaza, he took the initiative and got a job with a large

298
American investment firm. Now he’s going to be the person responsible for
setting up their offices in Gaza. I asked how he was going to travel to Gaza
since I knew Palestinians had no easy way of getting there from Ramallah. I
thought that he might try to travel through Jordan, into Egypt, and then come
back up through Gaza. Apparently, though, the easiest thing to do is to hire a
driver who knows how to avoid Israeli checkpoints and soldiers.
Just coincidentally, the IDF invasion that occurred the other night
happened at this guy’s apartment complex. He said that the building was
surrounded by 15 Israeli jeeps and that they made him go outside while a bunch
of soldiers went into the building to get the guys they were looking for. Once
he got outside, there were a whole bunch of soldiers pointing their weapons at
him. He said that he felt as if he were living in an American action movie. In
the end, they arrested some guys who were living in a different apartment. The
Israeli soldiers treated him well, he said. They didn’t tie him up or blindfold
him. But Ziad and his friend were laughing because the guys that the IDF had
taken away were definitely not Palestinian activists.
****************************************************************
This is how the event was narrativized by the Jerusalem Post internet
edition the day after the IDF invaded Ramallah:
Early Friday, IDF forces in Ramallah caught a potential suicide
bomber with an explosive belt weighing 12 kilograms. The
belt, intended for an attack on Jerusalem, was detonated safely
later Friday morning by IDF sappers. The army discovered the
would-be suicide bomber among four men detained for

299

questioning. The explosives belt was later found in a garbage
can on the roof of a building next to the Ramallah central bus
station.”
9

Having experienced this first-hand, I was taken aback by this article’s
narrativization of this event. To begin with, there is not even the slightest
suggestion that suffering took place. Most everyone on the street was scared
(although perhaps some were excited too). One can only imagine what it must
be like for families in their houses or apartments as the IDF vehicles move by
blaring out commands in a foreign language that is indecipherable. Parents and
children do not know whether this is the time that the IDF might come into their
apartment complex or apartment to arrest somebody. Owners of stores were
forced to quickly close their businesses in order to ensure that they did not
become the site for violent confrontations. Hundreds of people had to wait to
get in and out of Ramallah at the flying checkpoint. Most of these people have
families who also probably suffer as they wonder if anything bad will happen to
their loved ones. As for my own personal experience, it was scary both to be
forced to find a way around the IDF forces and to have to wait at a flying
checkpoint. Throughout the experience I was thinking about all the unlucky
Palestinians I had read about in the past, who were killed simply because they
were at the wrong place at the wrong time and hoping this was not going to be
one of those times.

9
Arieh O’Sullivan, “IDF Operation Can’t Halt Kassams,” Jerusalem Post, July 5, 2004.

300
When the IDF finally did make it to their ultimate destination to make
the arrest, everyone in the apartment complex was forced to leave their homes.
The ordeal lasted well beyond midnight. Families, including children, were
forced to go to the street as Israeli soldiers watched them with their weapons
drawn. People’s apartments were entered and young men were frisked and
questioned. In the end, it is impossible to calculate the suffering that was
caused during this confrontation. What was clear in the Jerusalem Post article is
that the suffering was missing from the narrative.
What these three examples show is that it is rarely simple to classify
social suffering as either routinized or extreme. No one was physically injured
in any of these three incidents yet what happened cannot be thought of as
routine. The IDF raid into Ramallah was completely unexpected. The same can
be said for the suffering that occurred at the restaurant. While the
demonstration at the wall was clearly more violent than the other two incidents,
I do not believe that the suffering endured is nearly as extreme as the suffering
that takes place when people are killed or badly wounded by the IDF. For most
of the people involved in suffering from everyday violence, similar to those
people who endure routinized suffering, the experience is more about causing
fear, inconvenience and humiliation. Also, most suffering occurs to people who
are not directly involved in the IDF violence but those who are innocent
bystanders.

301
Is there any way to distinguish what kind of experiences of suffering
from everyday violence will become narrativized by the Israeli media from
those that will not? As a rule, it seems that the Israeli media will narrativize
these suffering experiences whenever the IDF first narrativizes the events by
releasing a statement. The more severely people are injured, the more likely the
IDF will narrativize the event in order to justify the actions they took. Another
instance when the IDF gets involved in the narrativizing process is when it is
successful at capturing Palestinian militants (which is described as stopping a
Palestinian attack against Israel).
There are a number of formulaic stylistics about these narrativized
stories in the Israeli media. The headline usually begins with how many people
have been injured and where the incident occurred. The narrative within the
article then describes very generally why the confrontation has taken place. It
then gets a quote from the IDF justifying any injuries sustained and/or the
military action taken (“fighting the terrorist infrastructure,” “capturing a suicide
bomber,” or “clashing with the IDF”). After reading the innocuous “facts” of
the story in the article, one is presented with a narrative that leaves out almost
any detail about personalized suffering. There are rarely interviews or first-
hand accounts of the confrontation.
Ultimately, through the narrativizations of the IDF and the Israeli media,
an Israeli narrative of the nation emerges from these various Palestinian
suffering experiences of everyday violence. This narrative explains that

302
Palestinian suffering, though unfortunate and unwanted by Israel, is brought
upon by the Palestinians themselves because they and their government refuse
to stop terrorists from acting against Israel. Also, no more suffering is inflicted
on Palestinian civilians (or internationals) than is absolutely necessary and
justified. Most importantly, if the IDF does not act to capture and kill
Palestinian terrorists, Israelis will suffer a great deal more as a result of their
attacks. It is the conglomeration of all of these justifications that produces the
“moral IDF” Israeli narrative of the nation.

Extreme Palestinian Suffering Narrativized in the Israeli Media
Almost all of the extreme cases of Palestinian suffering are narrativized
in the Israeli media. The remainder of this chapter explores the various ways in
which this occurs. The first part of my discussion presents the most common
form of narrativization in the Israeli media. As is the case in suffering that
results from everyday violence, the headlines and the text of these newspaper
articles usually present only a depersonalized account of the extreme suffering
along with the IDF’s justification for its actions. The second part of my
discussion presents two Israeli reporters’ narrativizations of extreme Palestinian
suffering that contest previous narrativizations in Haaretz. The point of this
part of the discussion is that even though alternative narratives are presented in
the Israeli media, they are summarily dismissed by most Jewish-Israelis. Not
only does this leave the plot of the “moral IDF” Israeli narrative of the nation in

303

tact, it also reinforces the Israeli “democracy” narrative of the nation as
evidenced when Israeli officials talk about how the democratic Israeli state
allows for the most severe of critiques. The third part of my discussion
examines how the narrativization process unfolded in the Israeli media when
Israel attacked Jenin in April 2002. When core Israeli narratives of the nation
were put at risk, as they were in Jenin (both the “moral IDF” and the
“democracy” narrative), the Israeli state mobilized many of its resources in
order to keep their narratives of the nation cohesive. This shows how important
the Israeli state believes core narratives of the nation are to the cohesion of the
Israeli nation.
Over the course of my research in Jerusalem, I got the sense that reports
about Palestinian deaths in the Israeli media were a lot like sports headlines in
the United States media. People pay attention to the headlines and articles
because they want to know if their team is winning. Regardless of whether or
not this is true, the headlines in Haaretz describing Palestinian deaths and
injuries are extremely formulaic and this causes a person over time to focus on
the impersonal numbers rather than the personal stories of extreme suffering.
The Haaretz articles that discussed extreme Palestinian suffering during the
month of August in 2004 were titled as follows:
“Woman, 60, Shot Dead in Khan Yunis Raid”
10
;
“IDF kills 2 Suspected Terrorists, Detain 2 Others”
11
;

10
Amos Harel and Yoav Stern, “Woman, 60, Shot Dead in Khan Yunis Raid,” Haaretz, August
3, 2004.

304

“2 Palestinian Said Killed During Attempted Attack in Gaza”
12
;
“Three Palestinians Killed in Territories”
13
;
“Boy, 12, Killed by Troops”
14
;
“Qassams Falls in Negev; 15 Said Hurt in IAF Strike in Gaza”
15
;
“IDF Troops Shoot Dead Unarmed Man in Nablus”
16
;
“Army Kills Unarmed Man in Nablus, and Two Firing a Qassam”
17
;
“Boy, 8, Said Killed in Nablus”
18
;
“IDF Sources: Troops Shoot, Kill Palestinian in Central Gaza”
19
;
“Palestinians: Man Killed by IDF Gunfire in Rafah”
20
;
“IDF Kills Palestinian Man Near Rafah”
21
;
“IDF Troops Kill Gunman at Gaza Fence Near Negev Kibbutz”
22
;
“IDF Kills 14 Year Old in Rafah.”
23

Like many of the other headlines from Haaretz about Palestinian social
suffering, these headlines about extreme Palestinian suffering are most notable
for their impersonal presentation.
24
The headlines describe only the amount of

11
Haaretz Service, “IDF kills 2 Suspected Terrorists, Detain 2 Others,” Haaretz, August 6,
2004.
12
“2 Palestinian Said Killed During Attempted Attack in Gaza,” Haaretz, August 7, 2004.
13
Amos Harel and Arnon Regular, “Three Palestinians Killed in Territories,” Haaretz, August
8, 2004.
14
Amos Harel, “Boy, 12, Killed by Troops,” Haaretz, August 10, 2004.
15
Arnon Regular and Amos Harel, “Qassams Falls in Negev; 15 Said Hurt in IAF Strike in
Gaza,” Haaretz, August 11, 2004.
16
Jonathan Lis and Arnon Regular, “IDF Troops Shoot Dead Unarmed Man in Nablus,”
Haaretz, August 16, 2004.
17
Amos Harel, Arnon Regular, and Jonathan Lis, “Army Kills Unarmed Man in Nablus, and
Two Firing a Qassam,” Haaretz, August 17, 2004.
18
Amos Harel, Arnon Regular, “Boy, 8, Said Killed in Nablus; IDF Finds Two Qassam
Rockets,” Haaretz, August 17, 2004.
19
Haaretz Service, “IDF Sources: Troops Shoot, Kill Palestinian in Central Gaza,” Haaretz,
August 21, 2004.
20
Haaretz Service, “Palestinians: Man Killed by IDF Gunfire in Rafah,” Haaretz, August 23,
2004.
21
Jonathan Lis and Arnon Regular, “IDF Kills Palestinian Man Near Rafah,” Haaretz, August
24, 2004.
22
Haaretz Service, “IDF Troops Kill Gunman at Gaza Fence near Negev Kibbutz,” Haaretz,
August 29, 2004.
23
Amos Harel, “IDF Kills 14 Year Old in Rafah,” Haaretz, August 31, 2004.
24
This is in great contrast to the Israeli headlines when Israelis experience extreme suffering. In
these headlines (and the ensuing articles), details such as people’s names, the personal details of
their family’s suffering, and a biography of the person who was killed are included in the article,
personalizing the experience for the reader.

305

Palestinians killed or injured and where the incident occurred. Within the body
of the article itself, any personal details about the person killed or the personal
suffering experiences of family members and friends are almost never
mentioned. No details about the person’s life or family are revealed. Witnesses
are not interviewed to discuss their rendition of events that led to the person’s
death. Family members and friends are never asked to describe how the
extreme suffering will impact their lives. What the reading audience does
invariably receive within the body of the article is repeated information about
how many Palestinians were killed by the IDF and where the people were
killed, the names of the people killed (occasionally), and always a reason or
justification as to why the person was killed.
Several kinds of justifications are used by the IDF to account for their
actions which cause extreme Palestinian suffering. These justifications – the
IDF is fighting terrorism, the Palestinian who was killed or injured was
engaging in suspicious activity, the IDF is protecting Israeli soldiers or civilians
– are recycled over and over again. The articles below show a few of these
examples:
In the Haaretz article “Qassams Falls in Negev; 15 Said Hurt in IAF
Strike in Gaza,”
25
Regular and Harel wrote “At least 15 people were wounded
in the missile strike, three critically, Palestinian hospital officials said. IDF

25
Arnon Regular and Amos Harel, “Qassams Falls in Negev; 15 Said Hurt in IAF Strike in
Gaza,” Haaretz, August 11, 2004.

306

officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that an operation
‘against the terrorist infrastructure’ was in progress.” In this case, the wounding
of fifteen Palestinian citizens, three critically, was justified because they were
near the IDF when it was fighting the Palestinian “terrorist infrastructure.”
In the Haaretz article “Army Kills Unarmed Man in Nablus, and Two
Firing a Qassam,”
26
Harel, Regular and Lis present another kind of IDF
justification often used. “… [T]he army also shot dead an unarmed man in
Nablus when it tried to cope with rock throwing Palestinians.” In this case, the
innocent man was killed because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time –
while the Israeli military was trying to deal with rock throwers. In the Haaretz
article “IDF Troops Shoot Dead Unarmed Man in Nablus,”
27
Lis and Regular
present a different justification for a Palestinian being killed:
Israel Defense Forces soldiers conducting searches in the West
Bank city of Nablus on Monday shot dead an unarmed 29-year-
old Palestinian man, Palestinian sources reported. According
to the sources, the man was shot in the head as he climbed onto
the roof of his home during a curfew imposed during the IDF
operation.
28

In this case, the IDF made a mistake by killing the Palestinian man but it
was because the man was engaging in suspicious and dangerous activity after
curfew. The message Haaretz conveys in these articles is that Palestinians
themselves are responsible for their own deaths since they were engaged in

26
Amos Harel, Arnon Regular, and Jonathan Lis, “Army Kills Unarmed Man in Nablus, and
Two Firing a Qassam,” Haaretz, August 17, 2004.
27
Jonathan Lis and Arnon Regular, “IDF Troops Shoot Dead Unarmed Man in Nablus,”
Haaretz, August 16, 2004.
28
Ibid.

307

suspicious activity or were in places where Israel had no choice but to fight.
Again, the “moral IDF” narrative is reinforced as the IDF soldiers were doing
their job fighting terrorism.
Even when Palestinian children or old people get killed, the IDF, using
the Israeli media, finds justifications for the extreme suffering caused. In the
Haaretz article “Boy, 8, Said Killed in Nablus,”
29
Harel and Regular wrote:
Palestinian sources said Tuesday that an 8-year-old boy had
been killed by Israeli fire in the Casbah area of the West Bank
town of Nablus earlier in the day. The sources said the boy,
identified as Khaled Kusta, was killed during clashes between
IDF forces and youths in the area…
30

The article leads the reader to believe that Kusta was one of the guilty
“youths” who were clashing with the IDF and this is why he died. In Harel’s
article “IDF Kills 14 Year Old in Rafah,”
31
a boy’s death was justified because
Israel was saving its own troops by destroying a building from which militants
were firing:
Israel Defense Forces soldiers killed early on Thursday a 14-
year-old Palestinian during an incursion into the Rafah refugee
camp in the southern Gaza Strip, witnesses said. IDF sources
said forces entered the camp to demolish an abandoned
structure used as cover by Palestinian gunmen who have been
firing machineguns and mortar bombs at soldiers.
32

29
Amos Harel, Arnon Regular, “Boy, 8, Said Killed in Nablus; IDF Finds Two Qassam
Rockets,” Haaretz, August 17, 2004.
30
Ibid.
31
Amos Harel, “IDF Kills 14 Year Old in Rafah,” Haaretz, August 31, 2004.
32
Ibid.

308

Finally, in the Haaretz article “Woman, 60, Shot Dead in Khan Yunis
Raid,”
33
Harel and Stern wrote:
A 60-year-old Palestinian woman was killed by IDF gunfire
during a house-demolition operation on the outskirts of Khan
Yunis. Golani forces razed four deserted homes that had been
used by Palestinian gunmen as positions from which to fire on
IDF outposts and [Jewish] settlements in the Katif Bloc,
primarily in the Neve Dekalim area.

This time, the old woman’s death was justified because the IDF was
saving Israeli civilians’ lives.

Competing Narrativizations of Extreme Suffering in the Israeli Media
Though articles such as those cited above account for the vast majority
of information about Palestinian suffering experiences in the Israeli media, there
is another kind of article that appears about once or twice a week in Haaretz.
Two Israeli reporters, Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, work in the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip and their accounts of extreme Palestinian suffering provide
detailed and personalized stories using first-person testimony (they also write a
number of articles about Palestinian suffering from everyday violence). Even
the headlines are more personal than other headlines about extreme Palestinian
suffering. Their works serve as contestations of other Haaretz articles and
officially-sanctioned IDF narratives about Palestinian extreme suffering.

33
Amos Harel and Yoav Stern, “Woman, 60, Shot Dead in Khan Yunis Raid,” Haaretz, August
3, 2004.

309

For example, on April 23, 2004, a Haaretz article written by Harel
reported about a Palestinian man who was killed near Nablus. The following is
how the event was narrativized in the article:
…in the village of Taluza, troops backed by a helicopter
gunship came to arrest four wanted militants, the army said.
Two of the wanted men opened fire, drawing return fire that
killed one man and wounded another. The IDF said that the
fatality was a wanted Hamas member. However paramedics,
who were called by the dead man’s family, said relatives told
them that he was a university tutor, who was caught in the
crossfire. Palestinian news agencies reported that the dead man
was Dr. Yasser Ahmed Abu Laimun, 32, a lecturer at the Arab-
American University in Jenin.
34

Five days later, Amira Hass wrote an article in Haaretz titled “Was It
Just Some Guy Who’s Afraid of Dogs?” that contested the Israeli media’s
previous narrativization of this event:
Last Friday, April 23, Israel Defense Forces soldiers killed Dr.
Yasser Abu Laimun, 32, a resident of the village of Taluza,
north of Nablus in the West Bank, and a lecturer in hospital
management at the Arab-American University in Jenin…
According to the military sources, an IDF unit was in an open,
hilly area, filled with pits and overgrown with thick brush,
outside Taluza, last Friday. The goal was to arrest two Hamas
activists, A’sam Fuka and Imad Jinajara (who, according to the
army, are responsible for attacks against soldiers and civilians
in the northern West Bank) - certainly not the university
lecturer. An undercover force identified two armed men and
opened fire immediately. One was wounded, but the two
“disappeared from the sight of the force” (the wounded man
was Fuka, who was later caught.) At this stage, the force
released its attack dog, which is trained in seizing wanted
individuals (by means of signs the army prefers not to divulge).

34
Amos Harel, “Four Palestinians Killed in West Bank; Rally Planned for Ramallah,” Haaretz,
April 23, 2004.

310
A few seconds later, the soldiers saw that the dog had attacked
a man who was running, and they assumed this was one of the
two wanted men. They shot and killed him. A few hours later,
the sources said, a makeshift weapon was found in the bushes
at the site. The IDF is hoping Fuka’s interrogation will shed
light on what now has no explanation: What Yasser Abu
Laimun was doing in an open field and why he was running.
No one was running in a field and there was no dog: that is
what Delal Abu Laimun, the dead man’s widow, said. In a
telephone conversation with Haaretz, she said that last Friday
morning, at about 10:30, she had gone, along with her husband
and sister-in-law, to the family’s plot of land, which is about 20
meters from the house…
No more than five minutes passed after they left the house,
Delal Abu Laimun said: she and her sister-in-law were about
10 meters away from her husband when gunfire suddenly
erupted from the direction of the oak tree, behind which, it
turned out, soldiers were hiding. She estimates she was about
200 meters from the tree. She and her sister-in-law
immediately lay down on the ground. “We heard Yasser’s
voice, he said `ay.’ I thought he was wounded. I called his
name but he didn’t answer.” The shooting - “like rain” - went
on above their heads and she couldn’t get closer to her
husband. The soldiers who emerged from behind the tree, their
rifles aimed at the two women, also prevented them from
approaching their loved one. The soldiers went over to Abu
Laimun and turned him over onto his back…
The dog, Delal Abu Laimun said, appeared when the soldiers
came out from behind the tree. No dog attacked her husband
before he was killed. The shots that struck him were the first
ones she heard. He was hit by a number of bullets, in all parts
of his body.
Let’s say the widow made up the whole story. Let’s say the
true version is the one given by the military. Even so, from the
reply of the military sources to Haaretz (which was based on
the account of the soldiers), it is not clear whether Abu Laimun
was shot while running alone or next to someone else who was
also running. The sources said only that “the force first saw
two armed men, and afterward again saw two people, and
didn’t know that one of them had been replaced.”
If Abu Laimun was running not far from a second running
person, wouldn’t it have made more sense to shoot the other
person first - the one the dog didn’t catch? And if he was alone,

311

couldn’t the group of armed soldiers have let the dog complete
its mission by knocking down the suspect and seizing his
clothes in its jaws, and then approach, see that the man was
unarmed, and arrest him? Maybe it was just some guy who’s
afraid of dogs?
35

The man who was killed was described in Harel’s article as “a wanted
Hamas member.” Harel’s account also stated that the man who was killed shot
at the IDF troops first and was killed only after the IDF returned fire. The more
complete IDF narrativization of the event, which was presented in Hass’ article,
had details that were missing from Harel’s account. After a brief exchange of
gunfire, the two Hamas militants ran away. An attack dog was released in order
to capture one of the wanted Hamas men. When the IDF troops reached the dog
and the Hamas man it captured, the man was shot. The IDF hoped that the
interrogation of the Hamas member they did catch would explain why Abu
Laiman was in the field running away from the IDF. The presumption here is
that although this was not the man they thought they were going to catch, he
must have also somehow been involved with Hamas.
Hass’ account problematizes the narrativization of the event presented in
both Harel’s article and the official IDF narrativization. As it turned out, the
man who was killed was not a wanted Hamas member at all but Dr. Yasser
Ahmed Abu Laimun – a university lecturer. By interviewing the wife of Abu
Laimun, Hass learned that there was no dog and no chase. According to Delal

35
Amira Hass, “Was it just Some Guy Who’s Afraid of Dogs?” Haaretz, April 28, 2004.

312
Abu Laimun, her husband was outside with his family working on their land
when a number of bullets shot by the IDF killed him.
As opposed to Harel’s article (and other articles like his), Hass’ article
employed a first-hand witness to discover whether there was an alternative
narrative to the one presented by the IDF. Hass also wrote some personal
details about the man who was killed. He was a lecturer at the Arab-American
University in Jenin and a man who worked on his land. He had a wife and a
sister-in-law. She also wrote about one of the particularly grueling suffering
details: “We heard Yasser’s voice, he said `ay.’ I thought he was wounded. I
called his name but he didn’t answer.” In short, Hass presented the story as a
suffering experience allowing the audience to have sympathy for an ordinary
man and his suffering family.
In another attempt to challenge Haaretz’s narrativization of a case of
extreme Palestinian suffering, Gideon Levy investigated the details of an IDF
killing of a young Palestinian man and later reported it in Haaretz. The original
article describing the Palestinian death, written by Harel and published on
November 9, 2005, was narrativized in the following way:
Israel Defense Forces troops yesterday shot dead Muhammad
Abu Salha, 16, near the West Bank town of Nablus. The army
said Abu Salha was trying to place a bomb.
The IDF said he was killed when soldiers opened fire on four
youths attempting to plant a bomb on a road used by military
vehicles on the slopes of Mt. Eival, wounding three of them.
Abu Salha was evacuated by the Red Crescent Society to a
Nablus hospital, where he died. The other suspects escaped.

313

Palestinian sources said that four Palestinians were injured in
the incident, in addition to Abu Salha.
36

Levy followed-up Harel’s article on November 24, 2005 with a more
detailed and personalized report. The following is an abbreviated version of
Levy’s article:
It was afternoon, and the four boys, all of them high school
students, set out on a hike on the heights of Mt. Ebal
overlooking Nablus. They climbed on the rocks in the direction
of the “French Park,” a small forest planted near the top of the
mountain, the only green area of Nablus, which serves as the
city’s picnic site. No one can explain why the place is called
the French Park. Just as it is not exactly clear what the boys
were doing there. Perhaps it was a peaceful afternoon hike, as
the boys claim, or perhaps it was a terror activity, as the Israel
Defense Forces claim.
The boys say that they were armed with a family-sized bottle
of water, their only baggage. The IDF claims the four boys
were a terrorist band that was about to plant a roadside bomb.
Shortly before they got to French Park, fire was opened on the
boys: Mohammed Abu Salha, 15, was shot in the head and
apparently died on the spot; Ala Shishtri, 15, was shot in the
stomach and is lying injured at home; Ramzi Saka, 17, was
shot in the leg; and Ahmed al-Fahuri, 17, emerged unhurt, after
managing to flee…
Were the high school students Mohammed, Ala, Ramzi and
Ahmed members of a dangerous terrorist band, or an innocent
group of hikers? Did Mohammed deserve to die? And if they
really were about to plant a roadside bomb, as the IDF claims,
how is it that none of the survivors were arrested? After all,
they have been at home since the incident, and we had no
problems meeting them this week. Ala lay injured and bleeding
on the slopes of the mountain when the soldiers approached
him after shooting at him, and they didn’t evacuate him to a
hospital or arrest him, either…
37

36
Amos Harel, “IDF Kills Palestinian Teen Planting Bomb,” Haaretz, November 9, 2005.
37
Gideon Levy, “Death in French Park,” Haaretz, November 24, 2005.

314

In terms of style, I immediately noticed that Levy’s full account of what
happened to the Palestinian boys is approximately ten times longer than Harel’s
account. Also, whereas Harel’s narrativization does not question the official
IDF narrativization of events, like Hass, Levy’s full account uses interviews as
the basis in which to gather narrative details not originally reported. As a result,
a contested narrative emerges. The IDF claimed that the boys “were attempting
to plant a bomb,” while the boys themselves said they were “on a hike” only
carrying “a family-sized bottle of water.” Harel’s article also stated that “Abu
Salha was evacuated by the Red Crescent Society to a Nablus hospital, where he
died,” while Levy’s article stated that “[t]he boy was apparently dead when they
[international volunteers] reached him; his body was cold. On both sides of his
head, there were bullet wounds. Ayash carried the boy’s body down the slope,
shouting for help.” Aside from the competing accounts of how Muhammad was
taken away from where he was killed, Levy’s employment of the term “boy” for
Muhammad calls into question whether it is possible to conceptualize him as a
terrorist. Finally, Harel wrote simply that “four Palestinians were injured.”
Levy’s article transforms the mundane numbers of people injured into real
people, with real injuries:
Mohammed Abu Salha, 15, was shot in the head and
apparently died on the spot; Ala Shishtri, 15, was shot in the
stomach and is lying injured at home; Ramzi Saka, 17, was
shot in the leg; and Ahmed al-Fahuri, 17, emerged unhurt, after
managing to flee.
38

38
Ibid.

315

Many details were included in Levy’s article that personalized the story
allowing the reader to have sympathy for the victims. Levy used commentary
from one of the young men involved, the family of the victim, and the doctor
who treated him:
In his home in the city, the injured Ala Shishtri lies
convalescing from his injury. Smiling, with a long scar along
the length of his stomach, a red kaffiyeh covering the wound.
He also says that they were fired on suddenly, when they
approached French Park…The father, Hamdi, and the mother,
Rana, are very restrained for parents who lost their eldest son
only a few days ago. They welcome us with a friendly smile,
impossible to understand…[W]ithout tears, the mother recalls
her son’s [Muhammad’s] last hours. ‘He took a bottle of water
with him,’ adds his grandmother, Jihad…With [the man who
carried Muhammad down the mountain after he was killed]
was the boy’s uncle, Amjad Abu Salha, who had joined the
search. The desperate parents were waiting near their home,
also on the mountainside… [I]n light of the tiny entry wound
and the relatively large exit wound, it looked to [the doctor] as
though the boy was shot at short range.
39

The article also included personal details about Muhammad’s life:
“Mohammed was in 10th grade, and dreamed of becoming a doctor. They say
that he wanted to make his father happy…Mohammed saved his pocket money
for a cellular phone with a camera, G2 or G3.”
40
Like Hass’ articles, interviews
allow for alternative narratives of the extreme suffering and personal details
allow the audience to have sympathy for those who suffered. In the style Harel
writes in, these two things cannot occur.

39
Ibid.
40
Ibid.

316
What happens when Israelis are presented with Palestinian suffering
narratives such as the ones written by Hass and Levy? In some situations these
voices are altogether silenced. In my ulpan classes, which seek to indoctrinate
new Israeli immigrants into the larger Israeli society, these kinds of articles
were never read. On a number of occasions when I suggested that we read a
Hass articles in class, Rachael refused saying that the stories were much too
‘political.’ An even more common Israeli reaction to these stories is dismissal
of the person who wrote the article because, it is claimed, he or she is an “Arab
lover,” sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. The author’s subjectivity makes
the article itself not objective or balanced enough to be believed. This widely
felt Israeli sentiment is discussed in Dor’s work (2005) on how the Israeli media
reports IDF activity in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The work cites a
famous Israeli’s reaction to one of Levy’s articles:
…novelist-celebrity Irit Linor publishes an open letter to
Ha’aretz – on the cover of Ma’ariv’s daily supplement. In the
letter, Linor accuses Ha’aretz of adopting the Palestinian
perspective on the conflict, and she ceremoniously declares
that she intends to cancel her subscription to the paper. Linor
is most infuriated by reporter Gideon Levy, who, for years, has
been publishing a weekly column in Ha’aretz’s weekend
supplement, highlighting the daily suffering of Palestinians
under occupation.
…This, then, is the entire story in a nutshell: Gideon Levy’s
perspective can be easily rejected by the consensual reader,
because he is personally identified with a certain political
position. (my italics) (Dor 2005:91)

The Israeli reaction to articles such as these is certainly more complex
than presented thus far. There are Israelis who simply do not need justification

317

for the IDF’s actions. They believe that Palestinians deserve whatever suffering
is inflicted upon them because “they” inflict suffering on “us.” Beyond
ignoring and dismissing Palestinian suffering, there are some Israelis who are
extremely sympathetic to Palestinian suffering. Regardless of whether an Israeli
believes these contesting narratives, the fact that they are presented at all in the
Israeli media helps affirm the Israeli “democracy” narrative of the nation. Since
Israeli reporters are allowed to provide competing narratives to the state’s
officially-sanctioned narratives, this implies that there is freedom of speech in
the Israeli media. The following letter to the editor of Haaretz by Ron Dubin
sums up this belief best:
Perhaps what impresses me the most is that you publish articles
by journalists like Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, who report
the Palestinian perspective of events. It is a tribute to Israeli
democracy and freedom of speech that in difficult times like
these, the media has not come under “state control” and is still
able to criticize the actions of both the government and the
military. Without this kind of free press, Israeli democracy
will be under threat.
41

Extreme Suffering in Jenin
There are times when extreme Palestinian suffering is so intense that the
Israeli state (not only the IDF) has had to actively engage the narrativizing
process in order to create a palatable narrative both domestically and
internationally. This is what occurred in Jenin, Palestine beginning April 2,

41
Ron Dubin, “Necessary Criticism” (In Letters to the Editor), Haaretz, May 10, 2002.

318
2002 when IDF surrounded the city and began to attack Palestinian militants in
the Jenin refugee camp. The Israeli attack was part of the larger operation
Defensive Shield that was carried out in a number of areas in the West Bank.
The offensive in Jenin lasted about a week and as reports began to leak out
about the severe destruction and killing, the Palestinian Authority employed
terms such as “massacre,” “war crimes,” “atrocities,” and “genocide” to
describe what had happened.
Unsure about whether a massacre had in fact occurred, the Israeli state
put together a public relations plan that would offset the Palestinian suffering
narratives and images that would surely emerge from Jenin. As the battle
continued in Jenin, the “moral IDF” narrative of the nation was continually
employed by Israeli officials and the Israeli media to assure the Jewish-Israeli
public that whatever was happening in Jenin was justified. Then the
narrativizing process of Palestinian social suffering began. As the hostilities in
Jenin ended, there was a fight over how and when dead Palestinian bodies were
to be taken away from the battlefield. Israel wanted to remove the bodies as fast
as possible and move them to the Jordan Valley (a good distance away from
Jenin), while the Palestinians wanted the bodies to remain in place so that they
could be used as proof that a massacre had occurred. The Israeli court system
ruled that the bodies needed to be left where they were. Once the fighting was
finished and people were allowed to see what actually happened, Israel became
confident that no massacre had occurred – although a great deal of structural

319

damage had been done to the buildings in the Jenin refugee camp. With a
conviction that whatever extreme Palestinian suffering had occurred was
justified, the Israeli state stopped being an active participant in the
narrativization process. At this point, descriptions of the massive damage and
presentations of the extreme Palestinian suffering narratives were written in the
Israeli media. A few weeks later the United Nations met to discuss what had
happened in Jenin and in the end concluded that no massacre had occurred. I
will now present the Israeli state and media’s narrativization of extreme
Palestinian suffering in Jenin chronologically.
Immediately before the Israeli attack on Jenin began, the IDF closed off
the city as a “closed military zone.” No reporters or medical teams were
allowed in Jenin for over a week as the fighting continued. Before many of the
facts were known about how many Palestinians were killed and what kind of
destruction had occurred in Jenin, Shimon Peres and IDF officers were already
concerned about how the extreme Palestinian suffering experiences and images
would become narrativized in the Israeli and international media:
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres is very worried about the
expected international reaction as soon as the world learns the
details of the tough battle in the Jenin refugee camps, where
more than 100 Palestinians have already been killed in fighting
with IDF forces. In private, Peres is referring to the battle as a
“massacre.”
42

42
Amos Harel, “Peres Calls IDF Operation in Jenin a ‘Massacre,’” Haaretz, April 9, 2002.

320

Unidentified IDF officers were also quoted as saying “[t]he bulldozers
are ‘shaving’ the homes and causing terrible destruction. When the world sees
the pictures of what we have done there, it will do us immense damage.”
43

Recognizing that they needed to play an active role in the narrativizing
process, the Israeli state put a public relations plan into place that attempted to
counteract any of the negative images and Palestinian “propaganda” that
resulted from the Jenin attack. Israel’s plan was clearly laid out in the Israeli
newspaper Yediot Ahronoth. The article included excerpts from two different
Haaretz articles:
“The Foreign Ministry is mobilizing forces to counter
Palestinian allegations that IDF forces conducted ‘a massacre’
in the Jenin refugee camp” (Ha’aretz, April 10, 2002). A
special PR center of the IDF and the Foreign Ministry was
formed in Jerusalem, and its representative, Gideon Meir,
passed to the press the major principles of the Israeli version:
a) “What happened in Jenin was a fierce battle and not a
massacre.” (“The main diplomatic ammunition” in the
campaign’s “arsenal is that 22 Israeli soldiers have been killed
in the fighting”). b) “The battle was fierce because the IDF
sought to minimize civilian suffering.” c) The PR campaign
should direct attention to the Israeli casualties in terror attacks.
(Anat Cigelman and Aluf Ben, Ha’aretz, Hebrew edition, April
10, 2002.).
44

The underlying logic behind principle “c)” was the recent wave of
Palestinian attacks that killed one hundred and twenty-one Israeli citizens in
March 2002. This culminated on March 27 when a Palestinian militant blew
himself up in the Netanya Plaza Hotel as Jews were celebrating the holiday of

43
Ibid
44
Tanya Reinhart, “Jenin: The Propaganda War,” Yediot Ahronoth, April 21, 2002.

321
Passover, killing twenty-nine Israelis. All of the principles laid out by Gideon
Meir’s public relations plan were employed on the news broadcasts of both of
Israel’s main television stations, Channel 1 and Channel 2. On March 29,
Channel 1 news anchor Gilad Adin opened the newscast by saying, “[f]ollowing
the murderous terror attacks in Netanya, the IDF is moving large numbers of
troops in Judea and Samaria…(Adin quoted in Dor 2005:54).” The connection
between the recent attack in Netanya and the ensuing IDF action was made and
this was used as the primary justification for undertaking operation Defensive
Shield.
According to Dor (2005), after the Israeli invasion in Jenin began, “Both
channels…concentrate[d] on a single message…[that] the 13 soldiers were
killed because they made a special effort to avoid harming Palestinian civilians
at the camp, and their deaths are thus proof of the IDF’s high moral standards
(2005:60).” On April 9, 2002, Moshe Nussbaum, a correspondent for Israel’s
Channel 2 news, discussed the moral difficulty IDF soldiers faced because they
were forced to fight Palestinian fighters in urban areas where innocent
Palestinian civilian lives were put at risk. Later on in the same broadcast, an
expert witness reinforces that even though these are trying circumstances, the
Israeli military still conducts itself with the highest of moral standards. Ehud
Yatom, the former Head of Operations at the Shin-Bet (Israeli Secret Service)
said “[o]ur ethics are irreproachable. If we had used helicopters and [our] air

322
force, I think we would have spared ourselves – I wouldn’t say all, but a great
part of – the [Israeli] casualties (Yatom quoted in Dor 2005:61).”
On the Israeli news on Channel 1, a similar message about the IDF’s
high moral standards is conveyed:
The broadcast begins with correspondent Gur Tsalal-Yachin
reporting “from the ground,” somewhere near Jenin, and moves
on directly to Major General Eytan’s briefing. “Action from the
air,” says the general, “would have taken a very high toll on
people who are not involved in the fighting, so the solution of
using air force and heavy shelling is impossible in this type of
fighting.” Correspondent Amir Bar Shalom then repeats the
very same words: “The option of a massive attack from the air
was discarded because of the concern about civilians
casualties,” a comment which is immediately followed by
another excerpt from General Eytan: “Unfortunately, these
terrorists don’t show any concern for their own civilian
population, and they use them as a living shield in order to
fight us.” A little later, anchor Yavin asks commentator Ron
Ben-Yishay about the heavy [Israeli] casualties in Jenin, and
Ben-Yishay, visibly moved, replies as follows:
“What causes the really heavy losses is the fact that IDF
soldiers cannot use the air force or bulldozers, for fear of
hurting the innocent civilian population. That’s the basic,
fundamental reason for the IDF’s losses in the camp – not just
in this camp, but elsewhere too. Because I have seen how the
Russian did it in Grozny: they simply razed a town of 40,000
people. The IDF doesn’t do this, and it takes losses.” (Dor
2005:62-3)

While work was being done to create a palatable official Israeli narrative
of the events in Jenin in the Israeli media, ‘facts on the ground’ which were
slowly being reported made this effort difficult. After the battle had come to an
end and reporters were able to circumvent the Israeli military closure, it became
increasingly clear that something terrible might have happened. The issue

323

shifted from concern over whether the IDF’s actions caused extreme Palestinian
suffering to a concern over how bad the extreme Palestinian suffering narratives
and images were going to be:
Television networks yesterday carried the first pictures from
the camp since the IDF offensive began. In the pictures,
apparently shot by Palestinian crews, destruction can be seen
throughout the camp’s streets, although no bodies were spotted.
One Palestinian woman, speaking to a reporter, said “they [IDF
soldiers] dragged the bodies of our young martyrs and threw
them into the gutter so that you reporters wouldn’t see them.”
45

In the first few days after the end of the Jenin attack, the question of
what happened to the dead Palestinian bodies became the central issue because
this could determine whether or not a massacre had actually taken place. The
dead bodies would be used as evidence to help reveal how many Palestinians
had been killed, how many of those killed were civilians and how many of those
were fighters, and if the IDF had committed any war crimes in the process.
Israel seemed to be aware of the political problems that the dead Palestinian
bodies could pose and that is why they wanted to bury the bodies relatively
quickly. It was reported that:
[t]he IDF intends to bury today Palestinians killed in the West
Bank camp. Around 200 Palestinians are believed to have been
killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers since the start of the
operation last week, although it is unclear how many of the
bodies can be buried…One Israeli source said that the decision
to bury the bodies was taken to prevent the Palestinians from
using the bodies for propaganda purposes.
46

45
Amos Harel and Amira Hass, “IDF Bulldozers Buried Jenin Dead, Palestinians Claim,”
Haaretz, April 12, 2002.
46
Ibid.

324
t

After the Israeli attack in Jenin had been completed, the most important
question for the Israeli state was whether or not the operations would be
conceptualized as a massacre by the Israeli public and perhaps more importantly
by the international community. A Haaretz opinion editorial defined a
massacre as an event when “[n]o order from above was given, nor was a local
initiative executed, to deliberately and systematically kill unarmed people.”
47

In the initial stages of discovering what happened, it was unclear whether or no
something like this might have occurred.
It was at this point that a second battle began between the Israeli state
and the Palestinian Authority – the fight was over whose Jenin narrative would
be believed by the international community. It started off in this way:
The IDF buried the bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed in
fighting in the Jenin refugee camp in a huge mass grave and
used bulldozers to cover them up, Palestinian sources said
yesterday. The army vehemently denied the allegations…The
Palestinian Authority has expressed concerns that Israel is
trying to hide the large number of dead, since it has blocked
Palestinian medical teams from evacuating the dead and
wounded from the camp during the past week.
48

A petition was then submitted to the Israeli Supreme Court to stop the
IDF from removing or burying the Palestinian bodies from Jenin. In response,
the court decided to make an interim order that temporarily stopped the IDF

47
Haaretz Editorial, “There was no Massacre in Jenin,” Haaretz, April 19, 2002.
48
Amos Harel and Amira Hass, “IDF Bulldozers Buried Jenin Dead, Palestinians Claim,”
Haaretz, April 12, 2002.

325

from removing bodies until the court could more closely consider the
circumstances:
The decision came in response to a petition presented by
attorney Jamil Dakaur from the “Adala” organization…Signers
of the petition - which also included the “Kanon” non-profit
organization, MK Mohammed Barakeh (Hadash) and MK
Ahmed Tibi (Ta’al-Arab Movement for Renewal) - made the
request after Ha’aretz reported that the IDF intended to bury
those identified by the army as terrorists in a special cemetery
for fallen enemy troops in the Jordan Valley.
49

This matter was resolved the next day when:
…[a] panel of three High Court justices rejected three petitions
Sunday demanding that the IDF be barred from moving out the
bodies of dead Palestinians from the Jenin refugee camp in the
West Bank. Prior to the ruling, an understanding was reached
between the IDF and the petitioners regarding the manner of
removing the bodies, according to which no bodies will be
buried in a special cemetery in the Jordan Valley.
50

After it was clear that IDF would not be able to remove any of the
Palestinian bodies, the focus shifted to determining how many Palestinians had
actually been killed:
As of Saturday afternoon, some 23 [Palestinian] bodies had
been located in the camp, though not removed, with their
current location marked on maps. Among the dead were the
bodies of two women and a child. A military source said that
the other bodies were of armed militants.
51

49
Amos Harel, Anat Cygielman and Jala Bana, “Court: IDF Can’t Move Bodies: Lieberman:
Barak Must Be Ousted,” Haaretz, April 13, 2002.
50
Amos Harel, Gideon Alon, and Jalal Bana, “Court Rejects Petitions Demanding IDF Not
Remove Jenin Dead,” Haaretz, April 14, 2002.
51
Ibid.

326

Upon seeing that only three citizens had been counted amongst the dead
so far, Israeli officers in the IDF were critical of the state’s decision to keep the
media out of Jenin:
The first Israeli reporter was allowed into the camp Saturday,
while other journalists are expected to gain access to the camp
Sunday. Military sources were critical of the decision not to
allow the media into the camp earlier, saying “The world has
already formed its opinion and it is too late to change it. They
think, wrongly, that we carried out a massacre in the camp.”
52

By April 15, the military became increasingly confident that the media
would not find evidence of a massacre in Jenin. The title of two articles in
Haaretz, “Destruction Everywhere, No Sign of Massacre,”
53
and “IDF: Dozens
– Not Hundreds – of Dead in Jenin Refugee Camp”
54
reflected this belief. This
belief was greatly supported by the specific details of the death tolls:
As of last night, 46 Palestinian corpses have been located in the
camp. Updated estimates concerning the total number of
Palestinian fatalities in the camp now range between 70 and a
little over 100. Officials believe that some of the corpses are
still buried under the rubble of houses demolished by IDF
bulldozers.
55

We talked with soldiers in Jenin, officers and rank-and-file
troopers, and all vehemently denied the accusations of a
massacre of civilians. The Palestinian residents who escaped
gave reporters a completely different version. But on the
ground, yesterday, only one Palestinian body was to be found
in the open, in an area where most of the fighting took place…
So what happened to the rest of the bodies? The Palestinians
say there were 500 killed. The IDF estimates the number of

52
Ibid.
53
Amos Harel, “Destruction Everywhere, No Sign of Massacre,” Haaretz, April 15, 2002.
54
Amos Harel and Gideon Alon, “IDF: Dozens – Not Hundreds – of Dead in Jenin Refugee
Camp,” Haaretz, April 15, 2002.
55
Ibid.

327

Palestinian casualties at between 100 to 200. IDF Spokesman
Brigadier General Ron Kitri said on Friday there were some
200, but then corrected himself with a much lower figure.
Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said yesterday that
Palestinian casualties numbered “in the dozens, not hundreds.”
So far, the IDF says it has counted some 40 bodies. At least 26
were found inside the camp and left in their place, because of
the court hearing. Two were women, and one a child. The rest
were men in the age range of fighters. Another eight were
handed over to the hospital on the edges of the camp and
another body was given to the hospital in the center of town.
Two bodies were given directly to the families, for burial.
Officers in the reserves brigade said they believe some 70
Palestinians were killed. The Palestinian explanation for the
gap between the number of bodies found in the camp and their
estimates is simple: Israel hid the bodies and buried them in a
mass grave, possibly in the cemetery for enemy soldiers in the
Jordan Valley, near Adam Bridge, as it had originally intended
until the plan was stopped by the High Court injunction on
Friday. IDF officers deny that. They say that no bodies have
been removed from the camp so far.
56

After Israel was convinced that a massacre had in fact not occurred,
more access was granted to reporters to collect the suffering narratives that took
place. In this first phase of Israel’s Jenin narrative a comprehensive and
depersonalized description of the destruction was given:
One thing that is not in dispute is the enormous amount of
destruction that the operation caused to the camp in Jenin. A
rectangle about 100 meters long and about the same wide, in
the northeast corner of the camp, was reminiscent of the
images from the earthquakes in Turkey in recent years. This is
where most of the Palestinian resistance took place…Any
house used as a sniper’s nest was simply leveled by bulldozers.
By the end of the operation, dozens of houses were demolished
in that rectangle. Instead, rubble remains: twisted iron poles,
broken cement blocks, nothing of what was a lively corner of
the camp up until a week ago…

56
Amos Harel, “Destruction Everywhere, No Sign of Massacre,” Haaretz, April 15, 2002.

328

Around the rectangle was more destruction. Courtyards and
front rooms in houses were destroyed. Three-story buildings
were partially destroyed, with the signs of hundreds of bullets
holes in the walls, and sometimes the dark smoke stains of
where an anti-tank rocket fired by a helicopter struck. One
house, not untypical, had lost its facade. Inside, one could see a
sewing machine and open drawers in a dresser. On the exposed
wall were photographs of well-known shaheeds holding their
Kalashnikovs against the background of Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa
mosque. A poster of Ra’ed Karmi, the Fatah fighter from Tul
Karm who was killed by Israel three weeks into a lull that came
after Yasser Arafat announced a cease-fire on December 16,
hangs on the wall, as well.
The soldiers explain what caused the destruction. It wasn’t only
the bulldozers. There was fire from helicopters, from machine
guns, and sometimes even tanks. But what is clear is that the
mines and booby traps laid by the Palestinians also greatly
contributed to the destruction. The wires meant to set off the
mines are everywhere, as are the remains of the mines. Every
once in a while there is the sound of an explosion, as IDF
sappers continue scouring the area for remaining mines.
57

On April 16, in the larger context of a report about burying the bodies,
the first suffering narratives were presented to the Israeli public. The
description was not quite personal, never mentioning names. It only talked
about the destruction that was visible:
Refugee camp residents are still searching for, and finding,
Palestinians who have been trapped between demolished
houses and were seriously injured during the operation. Certain
they would find only dead bodies under the mounds of
concrete, residents were surprised to hear a young, weak voice
crying out “help, help” under a pile of rubble. People quickly
brought food and used their bare hands to remove the stones
and blocks of wood, pulling out a young man.
Women, children and the elderly all move among the rubble,
entering demolished houses without any concern that they will
step on a mine, thus contradicting the IDF’s explanation for not

57
Ibid.

329

allowing journalists into the camp for fear of bombs. Residents
of the camp yesterday told Ha’aretz that the bombs laid to
strike at soldiers and tanks were primitive contraptions that had
to be manually activated, so there is nothing to fear from
stepping on them.
Two weeks after the IDF began its offensive in the camp, many
residents are still searching for their loved ones. Only about
half of the camp’s residents remain.
58

While other Haaretz articles confirmed and reconfirmed that Israel had
not committed a massacre, more of the suffering narratives were collected and
published by Amira Hass:
Leaning on a cane, the man stood on a huge pile of ruins: a
jumble of crushed concrete, twisted iron rods, shreds of
mattresses, electric cables, fragments of ceramic tiles, bits of
water pipes and an orphaned light switch. “This is my home,”
he said, “and my son is inside.” His name is Abu Rashid; his
son is Jamal, 35, and confined to a wheelchair. The bulldozer
began to gnaw into the house when members of the family
were inside it. And where would they be, if not in the house,
seeking - like all the inhabitants of the refugee camp in Jenin -
the safest place to hide from the firing of the mortars and the
rockets and the machine guns, and waiting for a brief respite?...
Mohammed al-Sba’a, 70, was not so lucky. On Monday, April
8, the bulldozers thundered near his home in the Hawashan
neighborhood, in the middle of the camp. He went out of his
house to tell the soldiers that there were people inside - he and
his wife, his two sons, their wives and seven children. He was
shot in his doorway, hit in the head and killed, related one of
his sons this week...
A.S. [a Palestinian] was wounded in the course of performing
an IDF mission: A foot patrol took him out of his house to
accompany soldiers, walk ahead of them and open the doors of
the neighborhood for them. A.S. did as he was told, and as he
stood by one of the doors, another unit of soldiers appeared.
Perhaps they thought he belonged to the mukawamin
(insurgents, armed activists), because no one else dared to

58
Amira Hass, “Court Told: IDF Leaving Dead to Rot in Jenin,” Haaretz, April 16, 2002.

330

roam the streets during those first days of the IDF takeover of
the camp. He was shot and wounded…
Al-Haija was killed on one of the first days of the IDF attack,
hit by a rocket. On Tuesday of last week his scorched body was
still lying in one of the rooms of the half-destroyed house. Al-
Haija was an activist in Hamas, who together with members of
other armed groups had sworn to defend the camp to the death.
J.Z., two of whose nephews were among the armed men who
were killed, estimates that they numbered no more than 70.
“But everyone who helped them saw himself as active in the
resistance: those who signaled from afar that soldiers were
approaching, those who hid them, those who made tea for
them.” According to him, no door in the camp was closed to
them when they fled from the soldiers who were looking for
them, the people of the camp, he said, decided not to abandon
him, not to leave the fighters to their own devices. This was the
decision of the majority, taken individually by each person…
59

A few articles discussed what happened when the United Nations
Security Council convened on April 28, 2002 to discuss Israel’s decision not to
allow any United Nations investigators into Jenin during the operations. This
issue was followed up in the Israeli media when the United Nations officially
rejected that there was a massacre in Jenin.
Aside from the articles about the United Nations, there were only two
other articles that further addressed the fighting in Jenin. The first one was
Ze’ev Schiff’s article published in Haaretz on July 17, 2002. It asked, “What
was the spark that set off the rumors about a massacre in Jenin’s refugee
camp?”
60

At one point in the fighting, the army used loudspeakers calling
on all the men between the ages of 16 and 50 to turn

59
Amira Hass, “‘What Kind of War is This?’” Haaretz, Aril 20, 2002.
60
Ze’ev Schiff, “Back to Jenin,” Haaretz, July 17, 2002.

331

themselves in. Many came out and were sent to Kafr Salem for
questioning. Some of those questioned were sent for further
questioning to Shin Bet facilities, while the rest were not
allowed to go back to the city, where the battle continued. They
were transferred to mosques in the villages of Rumna and
Zabuba and the northern West Bank. Their families did not
receive word from them or about them, and rumors began to fly
that they had been executed.
At the same time, another story developed. Toward the end of
the fighting, the army sent three large refrigerator trucks into
the city. Reservists decided to sleep in them for their air
conditioning. Some Palestinians saw dozens of covered bodies
lying in the trucks and rumors spread the Jews had filled trucks
full of Palestinian bodies.
61

In the rest of the article, Schiff rearticulates principle “a) [w]hat
happened in Jenin was a fierce battle and not a massacre,” (emphasizing that
many Israeli soldiers were killed) and “b) [t]he battle was fierce because the
IDF sought to minimize civilian suffering” of the original Israeli state’s public
relations plan:
After 13 soldiers were killed in Jenin, there was indeed a
tendency on the part of some soldiers to be quick on the
trigger. Nonetheless, even during the combat and explosions
there were efforts made to assist the civilian population,
including supplying food, oxygen canisters and an Israeli
generator to the Palestinian hospital, the transfer of 83 patients
from that hospital to Israeli hospitals, sending technicians from
the Jerusalem Electric Company to fix damaged lines in Jenin,
repairs to the drinking water pipes, and repairs to a well that
ceased to function. This was all documented, and sometimes
photographed by Lt. Col. Halhal.
62

61
Ibid.
62
Ibid.

332

This final paragraph strongly reinforces the “moral IDF” Israeli narrative
of the nation. Even in the middle of the fighting, the author asserts, the IDF did
everything within reason to help the Palestinians.
Then on July 14, 2003, there was a report published in the Israeli media
that reinforced the “moral IDF” narrative – although this time Palestinian
fighters from Jenin supported the narrative:
The study indicates for the first time that Palestinian terror
organizations saw themselves as ‘armed combatants’ and not as
civilians who died in a deadly massacre. The study’s
significance is that it uses Palestinian sources to rebut the
original Palestinian claims. ‘The study directly contradicts the
baseless charges made by PA leaders, including Saeb Erekat,
that Israel had massacred 500 Palestinians in Jenin,’ said Dore
Gold, director of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
which sponsored the study. ‘That blatant lie made its way from
the screens of CNN to the UN Security Council.’
63

Unlike all of the other forms of social suffering, this radical case of
extreme Palestinian suffering forced the Israeli state to temporarily control the
narrativizing process. For over a week, no one was allowed into or out of Jenin.
This effectively stalled the process of narrativizing the social suffering in Jenin.
Only after it became clear that a massacre had not occurred (at least, in Israel’s
eyes) did the Israeli state allow reporters into Jenin and end its control over the
narrrativing process. While the United Nations eventually concluded that a
massacre had not occurred in Jenin, the Palestinians and other Middle Eastern
and Muslim countries were more ambivalent about what happened. Palestinian

63
Joel Leyden, “Palestinians Confirm No Massacre in Jenin – Study,” The Jerusalem Post, July
14, 2003.

333

fighters looked at Jenin as a legitimate battle between them and the IDF.
However, when I visited Jenin two years after operation Defensive Shield, all of
the ordinary Palestinians I spoke with still referred to what had happened as a
massacre.
What the narrativizing process of Jenin shows is that when the veracity
of a core Israeli narrative of the nation is put at risk – and the “moral IDF”
narrative of the nation would have been put at risk had their been a massacre in
Jenin – the Israeli state is compelled to control, and then become active in, the
narrativing process. This is to ensure to the best of its ability that the narrative
of the nation does not implode. There are very pragmatic reasons why this is
necessary. Had it been proven to the United Nations that a massacre had
occurred, there might have been very serious repercussions for Israel (sanctions,
for example). Even worse, had the IDF been proved to have acted immorally, it
could have had a profound impact on the deep trust currently felt by Israeli
citizens towards the IDF. However, while the Israeli state was attempting to
protect the “moral IDF” narrative, there were other narrativizing processes
(Palestinian, Arab, United Nations) that challenged Israel’s narrative. In the
end, the Israeli state’s narrativization of the events in Jenin was believed by the
countries and institutions most important to Israel.
64

64
In the summer of 2006, there were two new events that put the “moral IDF” narrative into
question. The Israeli state was compelled by these events to make a great narrativizing effort in
order to maintain the cohesiveness of the “moral IDF” narrative. The first event occurred on
June 10, 2006 after the IDF was accused of killing eight innocent Palestinian civilians on a Gaza
Strip beach. The sole survivor of this attack was a twelve year old girl named Huda Ghalia and

334

Jenin - Two Years Later
Though the Israeli media continues to report IDF actions in Jenin that
cause extreme Palestinian suffering, other articles about suffering in Jenin are
scant. What happened in operation Defensive Shield has been forgotten almost
completely in Israel. As part of my research, I wanted to go to Jenin to
interview people and see what they had thought about their experiences two
years after the Israeli invasion. Had life moved on or were people still suffering
from the Israeli attack? When I traveled to Jenin, I discovered a place that was
still very much affected by the events in April 2002. While many of the visual
signs of the battle had faded, the social suffering it caused was still clearly on
people’s minds. I knew this because every person I spoke with in Jenin made a
concerted effort to narrativize what had happened in April 2002 and discuss its
long-term effects.
****************************************************************
Today, I went to Jenin with James, Andrew and Yussef. We took a
service because if were stopped on the bus by the IDF it would take us forever
to get there. Once we did get there (which took a long time since we took

she became an orphan after her entire immediate family was killed. In response to the great
domestic and international condemnation of this event, Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
said, “The IDF is the most ethical army in the world, and I reject any attempt to question its
morality. The army has never made it its strategy to target civilians, and this is also true today.”
(“PM: IDF most ethical army in world,” Yediot Ahronoth, June 11, 2006) Also, on July 7, 2006
when Israel killed forty Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip after the kidnapping of IDF
soldier Gilad Shalit, Defense Minister Amir Peretz said that “IDF soldiers and commanders are
fighting while maintaining moral codes which no other army in the world would have
maintained.” Shmulik Hadad, “Peretz: Operation achievements extraordinary,” Yediot
Ahronoth, July 7, 2006.

335
mountain roads to avoid checkpoints), we decided to walk around a little. We
quickly ran into a guy who showed us the first of two martyr cemeteries we
were going to see – what seemed to be unique about this cemetery was that it
was right in the middle of Jenin. The young man told us stories about some of
the people that were buried there – 5 people crushed by a tank, a brother-sister
death, a father-son death, and a few babies. This place was nothing less than a
Palestinian Arlington Cemetery without all the money and manicured lawns.
The people that were buried here, the shahids, were undoubtedly seen as war
heroes by the local Palestinians. Although the cemetery was very small, it was
extremely well kept. Many of the graves had fresh flowers on them. After
finishing at the cemetery, we left hoping to go to the Jenin refugee camp.
As were walking back to the central bus station, we ran into a guy
working in a store who also happened to be a cab driver. He drove us to a
building right inside the Jenin refugee camp. It was not exactly clear what this
place was but once we got inside it seemed like some kind of museum. It also
happened to be a place where volunteers were willing to give people tours of the
refugee camp. After a brief discussion about the camp’s recovery efforts with a
number of people that worked there, we began our free two-hour tour. Over
two years after Israel’s operation Defensive Shield and this place was still not
yet rebuilt. The structures of the buildings were all in place but it looked like it
was going to be quite some time before all of these places were going to be
inhabitable. Reading the different accounts about Jenin a couple years ago –

336

about the destruction and the death – did not do justice to what happened to this
place. Even though the part of the Jenin refugee camp that was totally
destroyed was described as a relatively small space [about 100 by 100 meters], I
was surprised to see just how much could fit into such an area. It was clear that
this was a place where a lot of peoples’ lives were destroyed.
As we were driving around the camp, I saw a number of signs in English
saying that the camp was being rebuilt with funds provided by the United Arab
Emirates ($29 million) and the reconstruction efforts were being led by the
United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
65
When we got to some smaller
roads, I remembered an article I had read last month by Gideon Levy talking
about the controversy of the refugee camp’s rebuilding.
66
The roads’ width was
expanded by the planners in order to ensure that if Israeli tanks or bulldozers
were to ever come through here again in the future (which seems like a very
likely possibility), they would not necessarily have to knock down all the
apartment buildings in their way. Also, the new buildings were quite nice and it
seems that this was not appreciated by the residents. The niceness had a way of

65
The UNRWA was established by United Nations General Assembly resolution 392 (IV) on
December 8, 1949 to carry out relief and work programs for Palestinian refugees. Its website
states that “UNRWA is unique in terms of its long-standing commitment to one group of
refugees and its contributions to the welfare and human development of four generations of
Palestinian refugees. Originally envisaged as a temporary organization, the Agency has
gradually adjusted its programmes to meet the changing needs of the refugees. Today,
UNRWA is the main provider of basic services – education, health, relief and social services –
to over 4.3 million registered Palestinian refugees in the Middle East.”
(http://www.un.org/overview/index.html)
66
Gideon Levy, “This Week in Rebuilt Jenin,” Haaretz, June 10, 2004.

337
ruining the identity of the refugee camp. Still, all this rebuilding cannot hide
what once happened here.
After about ten minutes of driving around the refugee camp and
discussing the destruction, Akram, our guide, described to us all of the horrific
details about the Jenin massacre. He told us that 58 people were killed – only
13 of whom were fighters. There was a 17-day siege, with helicopters, tanks,
and bombs going off day and night. We then walked to one end of the camp
and saw the second martyrs’ cemetery where most of the Palestinians who were
killed by the IDF were buried. After walking around the cemetery for a few
minutes, we were driven up to the top of the mountain which the Jenin refugee
camp expands into. Akram told us that this is where the IDF command center
was – Mofaz and Sharon were personally here to oversee the battle. Looking
down at Jenin was quite spectacular. It is a beautiful place. Jenin really is
pretty small though. From the vantage point we were at, the refugee camp stuck
out to us because of all the new buildings that were there (in relation to
everywhere else)…
****************************************************************
Levy’s article about social suffering in Jenin, that I referred to in this
ethnographic passage, was written in June 2004, only one month before I went
there to see how people were coping with operation Defensive Shield. Levy
discussed what happened to all the people who were made homeless – “[a]ll the
homeless lived until now in rented houses whose rental was also paid for by the

338

emirs of the Gulf.”
67
He discussed the ongoing social suffering – “[o]n the new
white facade of the house opposite, there are already bullet holes. At night there
were soldiers here.”
68
He discussed the travails of rebuilding the Jenin refugee
camp – “[w]ork began last June, and was frozen in October for about five
months because of the killing of the UNRWA project manager, Ian Hook, by
the IDF.”
69
He discussed the absurdity of having to plan the building of the
refugee camp taking into consideration that there will be future IDF operations
in Jenin:
Last week the first families moved into their new homes, and
by the end of the summer, the Jenin camp will have a new and
well-designed center, the width of whose streets has been
especially adapted to the dimensions of Israeli tanks.
70

He even discussed how an innocent civilian was killed during operation
Defensive Shield:
Now Jamal is on the wall, looking at his family's designer
living room from the heights of his commemorative poster.
During the IDF invasion, he left their house by order of the
soldiers who were gathering together all the men in the camp,
his bag of medications in hand. He was diabetic. Eyewitnesses
said that the soldiers asked him to remove his shirt, and then
his pants. When they saw the bag, they shot him. He was 38 at
the time of his death, a plasterer, unarmed and not a fighter.
71

The narrativizing process in the Israeli media of social suffering
narratives from Jenin continues to a small degree. Both contemporary social

67
Ibid.
68
Ibid.
69
Ibid.
70
Ibid.
71
Ibid.

339

suffering experiences and the extreme suffering experiences from the past were
written about in Levy’s article. Its impact on Israeli audiences is undoubtedly
limited though. Many of the Israelis I met thought of Jenin as a Palestinian
terrorist haven. In their view, what happened and happens between Palestinian
terrorists and the IDF in Jenin is all part of the ‘cycle of violence.’ The
suffering Palestinians endure because of this is justified.
Visiting Jenin two years after operation Defensive Shield taught me two
important lessons about social suffering and narratives of the nation. When the
Palestinians I met in Jenin discussed their suffering, I did not believe they
shared their stories with me as a way to benefit from their victimhood. Nobody
asked for money from me or if there was some way I could help. As discussed
earlier in this chapter, I believe that Palestinians create shared experiences
during everyday performances in order to help someone understand what it is
like to be a Palestinian. It also showed me that narratives of the nation have
vital real-world implications. When the United Nations decreed that Israel had
not committed a massacre against the Palestinians, Israel won the narrativization
battle in the most important domain – the “international community.”
72
Israel
was absolved of any responsibility to the Palestinians whose lives were ruined
by operation Defensive Shield. They did not have to pay for or rebuild the
houses they destroyed or apologize to the families who lost loved ones. Perhaps

72
I put international community in quotes because in this situation the United Nations did not
represent many of the Arab and Muslim countries who believed that a massacre had in fact
taken place.

340
most importantly, when Israel was absolved of serious wrongdoing by the
United Nations, it ensured that other invasions like operation Defensive Shield
would occur in the future.

Conclusion
This chapter has examined three kinds of Palestinian social suffering –
routinized suffering, suffering that results from everyday violence, and extreme
suffering – to show how and when personal experiences of Palestinians become
appropriated in the Israeli media for the purpose of constructing and
reconstructing the “moral IDF” and “Israeli democracy” Israeli narratives of the
nation.
The routinized suffering that Palestinians endure is not violent but it is
characterized by intense inconvenience and humiliation. Over a long period of
time, routinized suffering has a cumulative effect that can make people feel
claustrophobic. Through everyday performances, routinized suffering
narratives are often transformed into Palestinian narratives of the nation. The
purpose of performing routinized suffering narratives is at least as much for
creating shared experiences as it is for creating a sense of personhood, political
community, or strategic way of claiming victimhood. Palestinian suffering that
results from everyday violence is characterized by violent situations where
people are not severely injured. Most of the social suffering in these situations
occurs to people who are not directly involved in, or are completely peripheral

341
to, the confrontations with the IDF. These events are narrativized in the Israeli
media either when people are injured or wanted Palestinian militants are
captured by the IDF. Extreme Palestinian suffering is characterized by violent
situations where people are severely injured or killed by the IDF. These social
suffering experiences are always narrativized in the Israeli media.
It seems counterintuitive that Palestinian social suffering experiences
would be transformed into Israeli narratives of the nation at all. After all, how
could narrativizing Palestinian social suffering possibly be beneficial to the
Israeli nation? Taking an in depth look at the narrativization process reveals
how and why appropriating Palestinian suffering experiences indeed benefits
the Israeli nation. The first part of the narrativization process occurs when an
official IDF spokesperson or “unidentified IDF sources” narrativize Palestinian
social suffering experiences. They do this by reporting when and where a social
suffering event occurred, give details about how many people were injured,
killed or captured, and discuss the basic reason why the confrontation occurred.
Embedded in the reason why a confrontation took place is a justification for
why the IDF caused Palestinian social suffering. Usually, the Palestinians who
are killed are “terrorists” and this fact alone justifies most any action the
military takes – even if Palestinian civilians are killed or severely injured in the
process. While the IDF is narrativizing social suffering events, the Israeli state
represses contesting narrativizations by severely restricting the number of Israeli
reporters legally allowed to enter the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In this

342
way, the initial part of the narrativization process is highly controlled by the
Israeli state.
The next part of the narrativization process occurs when the Israeli
media publishes information, primarily quoted from official IDF reports, about
Palestinian social suffering. The Israeli media must rely on the IDF
narrativizations because they are usually the only ones both available and likely
to be believed by the Israeli public (Arab or Palestinian narrativizations are
generally considered prejudicial and biased – and therefore untrustworthy).
What is noteworthy about these Israeli media narrativizations is how the
Palestinian social suffering experiences are so highly depersonalized. Details
such as the sufferer’s name, how her or his family is dealing with the suffering,
and how the community is reacting to the death, for example, are all left out of
the narratives. Even if one were to have the inclination to be sympathetic to the
suffering of Palestinians, the style of the articles refuses such sentiment. Most
importantly, by relying on IDF narrativizations of and justifications for
Palestinian social suffering experiences, the Israeli media narrativizations
reinforce the “moral IDF” Israeli narrative of the nation.
In most situations, the narrativization of Palestinian social suffering
experiences in the Israeli media ends at this point. On some occasions, though,
contesting narratives are offered to the Israeli audience. This happens when the
few Israeli reporters who are permitted to report from the West Bank and Gaza
Strip further investigate the confrontations between Palestinians and the IDF.

343
These Israeli reporters interview people who witnessed the confrontation to see
whether accounts that contradict official IDF versions exist. Their articles also
offer personal life details of the people who suffered, friends and family
experiences of suffering as a result of the confrontation. This allows for the
possibility that Israeli audiences can sympathize with the Palestinians who
suffered. These contesting narratives are only somewhat effective though
because most Israelis ignore or dismiss these accounts, do not believe the
information provided by the Palestinians, or simply believe that Palestinians
deserve to endure the social suffering. Still, the very fact that these contesting
narratives are permitted in the Israeli media allows an argument to be made that
freedom of speech is allowed in Israel. This enables the “Israeli democracy”
narrative of the nation to be perpetuated.
Israel’s operation Defensive Shield in Jenin showed what happens when
a core Israeli narrative of the nation, the “moral IDF” narrative, is threatened.
The Israeli state, which usually allows the IDF to justify their own actions, took
complete control over the narrativizing process. Largely this was because an
external competing narrative was emerging that asserted a massacre had taken
place in Jenin. With that, Israel mobilized a great deal of its state’s resources in
order to wage a battle over the narrativization of Jenin. About two weeks after
the invasion of Jenin, Israel felt certain it could justify the extreme Palestinian
suffering in its narrativization. After this, Israel allowed reporters to enter Jenin
and narrativize the event without restrictions. From Israel’s perspective, the

344
stakes of the narrativization battle were probably considered higher than the
battle of Jenin itself. When the United Nations proclaimed that no massacre had
occurred, Israel won the narrativization battle. As a result, Israel avoided
having to take responsibility for the destruction in Jenin. It was also able to
fully keep intact its “moral IDF” Israeli narrative of the nation. This probably
also ensured that IDF invasions such as these would be permitted again in the
future.

345
Conclusion

Taken as a whole, this work discussed different processes of
constructing, conveying, and personal assimilation of Israeli and Palestinian
narratives of the nation. I depart from other scholars who employ the term
“national narratives” and use “narratives of the nation” as a way to emphasize
both the national and literary components of these national stories. Narratives
of the nation are constructed by a wide variety of nation people and are not
simply narrativized by the state for its own purposes, as is often implied by
scholars. Narratives of the nation are the many political, economic, social and
religious stories that nations tell about themselves. As such, narratives of the
nation are often heavily contested and their meanings are almost always
problematic.
Most scholarly works on national narratives have not incorporated
narrative theory in their analyses in any substantive way. By incorporating
narrative theory and tracing the process of narrative construction, I have shown
how narratives of the nation act similarly to what we consider to be more
conventional narratives. Narratives of the nation are aesthetic stories that are
suspenseful, driven forward by a plot and have a moral to the story.
At the level of the individual, most narratives of the nation are
constructed in private. However, a more public construction occurs during

346
everyday performances when individuals share their knowledge about narratives
of the nation and then jointly construct new narratives of the nation. Many
power dynamics play a role in who can participate in a performance, what
narrative information can be included in a performance and the construction
process of narratives of the nation – and these ultimately shape the kinds of
narratives that are possible to produce. The new narratives of the nation that are
produced during performances provide people with new belief structures. These
belief structures become resources that can shape people’s beliefs about a
narrative of the nation. However, when considering how this process works,
one must approach belief in terms of individual tendencies over the course of
various performances rather than settled belief.
In addition to addressing literary issues concerning narrative, power and
performance, this work also contributes to Israeli and Palestinian scholars’
discussions about nationalism. I emphasize the importance of focusing on and
tracing specific narratives of the nation in order to get a better understanding of
specific nationalisms. One of the major theoretical points I make in this work
grows out of the fact that “demography” is one of the key Israeli narratives of
the nation. When the plot changes to a degree that fundamentally reshapes a
narrative of the nation, that nation is in danger of not being able to continue
narrating itself into being. At this point, it is possible for the nation, as it is
presently narrated, and the nation-state itself, to collapse. This idea has far
reaching implications for other studies on nationalism.

347
Finally, narratives of the nation are not simply constructed using only
the events and experiences within one’s own nation. A vital dimension of the
process of constructing narratives of the nation – particularly at the level of the
nation – is reformulating, or even appropriating, the narratives of other nations.
There are many occasions when the narratives of another nation directly
contradict one’s own narratives of the nation. Without attempting to
renarrativize these other narratives, the plot of one’s own narrative can change
in a way that threatens the moral of story. For this reason, nation-states and
their institutions usually make great efforts to renarrativize other nations’
narratives.
Below is a summary of the contributions this work has made to narrative
theory and studies on Israeli and Palestinian nationalism.

Focus on Narrative, Power and Performance
A wide range of ideas employed in narrative theory are useful in
understanding narratives of the nation and how they function. First, narratives
of the nation are like all other narratives in that they employ regular narrative
conventions to create an aesthetic effect. In order for narratives of the nation to
have resonance, they must contain drama, unfolding in a suspenseful way by
subjunctivizing reality. Similar to other narratives, they almost always have
transitional beginnings, middles, and indeterminable ends. Also, the story of a
narrative of the nation must be extremely flexible in order for it to adapt to new

348
events that dramatically change the direction of the virtual plot. Most
importantly, narratives of the nation must contain a moral that connects
disparate events and experiences in order to create important stakes for readers
and listeners. How effectively a national narrative builds up a drama that
matters to people determines whether it will be successful in transmitting a
national message.
When tracing a narrative of the nation, one becomes aware of the
incredible ability of plots and narratives to change, often in a very dramatic
form. This can occur over a short or long period of time and does so with great
flexibility and unpredictability, depending upon current political, economic and
social circumstances. For example, the Israeli “demography” narrative – that is,
whether Jewish-Israelis can maintain a population majority over Palestinians –
has undergone radical plot shifts over the history of Israel. What first started
out as a plot about demography in all of historic Palestine, the “demography”
narrative split at some point after 1967 to not only include the original narrative
about historic Palestine but also the narrative about demography within Israel
proper as well. Public discourse about demography in Israel often conflates
these two narratives.
Further, how a Jewish majority has been narrativized has changed over
Israeli history. When the narrative was first being constructed, it was
understood that a sixty percent to forty percent Israeli-Jewish to Palestinian ratio
would not suffice in maintaining a “stable” Jewish majority. Contemporary

349
Israeli politicians and scholars have agreed with this early assessment and called
this kind of demographic ratio more reminiscent of a binational state than a state
with a clear and distinct religio-ethnic majority (Jewish-Israeli) and minority
(Muslim- and Christian-Palestinians). While at first no specific Jewish-Israeli
population majority was agreed upon, over time, mainstream Israeli politicians
and scholars have agreed generally that the ratio must exist somewhere near
eighty percent to twenty percent – which is the level that has been historically
kept within Israel (even as the geopolitical meaning of Israel has changed over
time) since 1948. As the actual population ratio slowly begins to dip below
eighty percent, new narrativizations of the “demography” narrative have
dropped the ideal ratio closer to seventy-five percent to twenty-five percent. As
demographic pressures continue to erode the Jewish-Israeli majority, it seems
highly possible that the narrativing process will allow for the conceptualization
of an even smaller Israeli-Jewish majority. The demographic ratio at which
Jewish-Israelis can no longer narrativize themselves as the majority remains to
be seen. It is certain, though, that the plot of the “demography” narrative will
continue to undergo changes as political and social factors dictate.
This work discussed how narratives of the nation can be constructed at
the level of the nation and at the level of the individual (while acknowledging
that there are also other levels worth exploring, such as the international level
and the individual level in the private domain). At the level of the nation, I
showed how the media is one of the primary social spaces where narratives of

350
the nation are constructed. The media provides a space where many nation
people are able to contribute – though often times the main contributors are
various intellectual and political elites – to the ongoing construction efforts of
narratives of the nation. The tracing of this process reveals that narratives of the
nation are not simply constructed by the state for its own benefit, as many works
on national narratives have implied. Instead, they are constructed through a
highly competitive and unpredictable process that does not allow any one actor
to dictate the ultimate course of a narrative.
The main way I explored how narratives of the nation are constructed at
the level of the individual is through participant-observation of small group
discussions in ulpan classes. In these situations, Palestinian and new Israeli
immigrant students discuss Israeli narratives of the nation that have been
introduced by an Israeli teacher – through ulpan textbooks or through the Israeli
media – into class discourse. Unlike a situation where individuals learn about
narratives of the nation in a more private setting, the ulpan is a public space
where narrative construction can be highly contested. The teacher and students
all have different facts and narrative information about particular narratives of
the nation and their versions often conflict with other individual’s versions. In
this often contentious context, people must be far more active in their narrative
of the nation construction processes because their constructions are often
challenged.

351
Whether at the level of the nation or at the level of the individual in
small group performances, a narrative of the nation is constructed by using other
narratives of the nation (which I have termed “subnarratives” in this work) and
narrative fragments (the narrative information that goes into the construction of
a subnarrative or narrative of the nation). As I have shown, the Israeli
“demography” narrative is constructed partly by the Israeli “natural growth” and
“immigration/emigration” subnarratives. Each narrative fragment – be it a new
or reformulated narrative fragment – ultimately introduces a new narrative
element into the ongoing story of these subnarratives which in turn reconstructs
the “demography” narrative. For example, each time new census data is
released about the population of Israel, a new narrative fragment is introduced
to “the natural growth” narrative. If the data shows that there are population
losses for Jewish-Israelis, narrativizing efforts are made to define whether these
losses are part of a broader trend or a temporary anomaly. All changes in “the
natural growth” narrative ultimately impact the “demography” narrative.
Like narratives, subnarratives are rarely finished stories since they are
constantly being changed and shaped by fluid political, economic and social
situations. As a result, there is an ongoing interplay between the different
subnarratives and the larger narrative of the nation to which they contribute. In
the early to mid 1990s, Israel experienced a massive immigration influx from
the former Soviet Union that offset the natural growth of Palestinian citizens of
Israel. Therefore, the subnarrative about the “natural growth” of Palestinians

352
did not have as large of an impact on the Israeli “demography” narrative as the
Jewish-Israeli “immigration/emigration” subnarrative. However, once Russian
Jewish immigration to Israel slowed down by the late 1990s, the “natural
growth” of Palestinians once again became a prominent subnarrative in the
“demography” narrative.
Since many national subnarratives are often independent narratives of
the nation (stories in and of themselves), it is difficult to predict in what ways
they will ultimately impact the larger narrative of the nation. At times,
subnarratives become completely subsumed into a larger narrative of the nation,
while at other times they can evolve into completely independent narratives.
The Israeli “unilateral separation,” “natural growth,” and
“immigration/emigration” narratives of the nation all initially emerged as
subnarratives within the “demography” narrative of the nation. Today, the
“natural growth” and immigration/emigration” subnarratives are still primarily
conceptualized in terms of their impact on the “demography” narrative. The
“unilateral separation” narrative, however, has transformed into something quite
different.
Unilateral separation was initially an Israeli policy developed to separate
Palestinians from Israelis and, more importantly, to influence the demographic
balance in the most beneficial way for Israeli-Jews. By the time unilateral
separation was actually enacted in August 2005, the narrative had already
undergone a radical reformulation. At that point, the plot of the “unilateral

353

separation” narrative was less about demographic concerns or decreasing
tensions between Israelis and Palestinians as much as it was about whether it
was legitimate for the Israeli government to forcibly remove Jews from their
homes (even though those homes were in the Gaza Strip – part of the planned
future Palestinian state).
Jewish-Israelis undoubtedly benefited demographically from the
unilateral separation because it was viewed by a few important international
actors as a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Israel tried to argue that this meant
it was no longer responsible for the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip since
Israel was not longer occupying that part of Palestine.
1
With over one million
Palestinians no longer being the responsibility of Israel, the demographic ratio
in Israel, East and West Jerusalem, and the West Bank (which many believe is a
target of Israeli expansionism) is at a non-critical demographic level. Despite
the obvious demographic gains, by the time Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip
the separation was rarely discussed in terms of its impact on the demographic
balance. In other words, the original plot of the “unilateral separation”
narrative, which was about ensuring a favorable Jewish-Israeli demographic
ratio, had completely changed over the short existence of the narrative. When
unilateral separation was achieved, it was not primarily viewed as a major
achievement for Jewish-Israeli demography.

1
Israel maintains this position even though it has full control over the Gaza Strip’s airspace,
ports and borders - although Israel has given up most of its control of the Gaza Strip’s border
with Egypt.

354
Since the Israel-Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, the “unilateral
separation” narrative has undergone another change. Merely sixteen months
after the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Israelis rarely discuss the
unilateral separation as primarily a demographic issue or as an issue about
forcibly moving Jews out of their homes. The new plot about the “unilateral
separation” narrative is whether it gave encouragement to “terrorist”
organizations in Palestine and Lebanon to fight Israel with more determination.
It is impossible to have access to each and every one of the many
subnarratives and narrative fragments that comprise a narrative of the nation. It
is therefore nearly impossible to construct a complete narrative of the nation at
the level of the nation, but it is particularly difficult at the level of the
individual. The “natural growth,” “immigration/ emigration” and “unilateral
separation” subnarratives are only three of the subnarratives in the larger
“demography” narrative I presented. There are, however, other subnarratives at
play in the “demography” narrative, perhaps most importantly the “Palestinian
right of return” narrative. This narrative is about where Palestinian refugees and
their descendants will return to in historic Palestine after a peace agreement is
reached between Israel and Palestine. Israeli leaders have argued vehemently
that only a symbolic number of Palestinian refugees can return to Israel proper.
Otherwise, allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into Israel would
fundamentally undermine the Israeli-Jewish demographic majority.

355
Even if people are aware of all of the subnarratives, it is impossible for
them to know each and every narrative fragment about a narrative of the nation.
This is because there is an almost limitless amount of available narrative
fragments. Whatever narrative fragments are learned by an individual can also
be easily forgotten due to the fallibility of human memory. Despite this, people
do not need to know many of the narrative fragments or national subnarratives
in order to construct narratives of the nation that are complete enough to engage
in a discussion or to reinforce their belief about a given narrative.
Every day, the ulpan class was inundated with Israeli narratives of the
nation by the introduction of narrative fragments and subnarratives. Most of the
time, these narratives went uncontested by both new Israeli immigrant students
and Palestinian students – though there often were short discussions about the
topic. Occasionally, though, a narrative would get challenged by a student and
this would lead to an everyday performance of a narrative of the nation. During
everyday performances, the teacher and students would share their knowledge
about narratives of the nation with one another and this would often lead to the
production of new narratives of the nation. There were other occasions when it
appeared as though performances led to what Kirmayer calls “broken”
narratives” (Kirmayer 2000), that is, narratives that are not fully formed. In
both situations, students were often left with the desire to continue narrativizing
efforts in the future.

356
The narratives of the nation that were being constructed in our
performances offered new belief structures that could alter individuals’ belief
tendencies. In the heat of a performance, it was difficult to detect to what extent
these belief structures impacted a students personal beliefs. However, during
new performances of narratives of the nation at the ulpan or in discussions
outside the context of the ulpan, one could begin to see their impact on belief
tendencies. Employing the term belief tendencies is an acknowledgement that it
is impossible to say for certain whether a person truly believes in a particular
version of a narrative of the nation. People’s beliefs often change over time.
Instead, it is more useful to approach the question of belief by tracing how
people perform narratives of the nation over time in different social contexts.
Both before and during ulpan classroom performances, a large number
of power dynamics affected which narrative fragments and national
subnarratives were permitted to enter the classroom discourse, and thus, what
kinds of narratives of the nation were able to be constructed. There were a
number of situations where the power of an institution impacted the
construction of narratives; most particularly the Israeli Ministry of Education
and Culture’s control over curriculum and the Israeli teacher’s ability to control
the content and direction of performances.
There were also everyday issues of Israeli-Palestinian power relations
that impacted the Palestinian students’ desire and capability (in the case of
being forced to miss the class) to actively participate in the narrative

357
construction process. Just as Palestinian students felt silenced in their
interactions with Israelis outside of the ulpan classroom, they also felt a strong
inclination to remain silent during our performances. The result of this power
dynamic was a process of narrative construction that did not allow equal access
for the introduction of Palestinian narratives of the nation or Palestinian
contestations of Israeli narratives of the nation. Since students mainly had
access to Israeli narratives of the nation, they were limited in their ability to
construct new personal versions of narratives of the nation that also included
Palestinian narratives.
As in all cases, there is the potential for resistance to unequal power
relations. In the performances at the ulpan, Palestinian students regularly
employed resistance strategies as a way to problematize the construction
process of Israeli narratives of the nation. Palestinian students, for example,
decided to enact silence as a strategy of avoiding having to respond to requests
by the ulpan teacher to participate in the construction of Israeli narratives of the
nation. Palestinian students also murmured in Arabic as a way to articulate
dissatisfaction with how an Israeli narrative of the nation was being constructed.
This served as an alternative way of contributing to the narrativing process.

Focus on the Impact of Narratives of the Nation
When originally deciding which narrative of the nation to trace, I
thought it was important to choose one so fundamental to the nation’s

358
narrativizing project that without its continued narrativization, the very
existence of the nation-state could be cast into doubt. Scholars such as
Anderson, Bhabha and Anagnost had already established that the nation was a
tenuous narrative construct and discussed how this resulted in the impossible
unity of the nation. My work takes this assertion in a different direction by
saying that a nation or nation-state can potentially collapse because of the
nation’s tenuous narrative construct. This can happen when the nation’s most
core narratives of the nation fail to sustain their plots. The fact that such wide-
ranging political, economic, social and religious efforts were put toward
ensuring a Jewish-Israeli majority proved how important the “demography”
narrative is to the Israeli nation.
It is presently unclear what demographic ratio between Jewish-Israelis
and Palestinian citizens of Israel is required for the Israeli nation-state to be
undermined to the point of a collapse. Academics and political figures have
argued that Israel could only continue to exist as a Jewish democracy with a
Jewish-Israeli majority well in excess of sixty percent. What would happen if
the demographic ratio were to fall below sixty percent? Would the Israeli
nation be able to redeploy the plot of the “demography” narrative so that a
Jewish-Israeli majority could be constructed as fifty percent? What if the
demographic ratio were then to fall below that number? Some have argued that
the Israeli nation would be able to find ways to continue narrativizing itself as a
majority regardless of the actual population numbers. Perhaps Israel would find

359

a way to cede major population centers of Palestinians within Israel to a future
Palestinian state or coerce Palestinians to move out of Israel. The former idea
has already been attempted in the larger context of peace negotiations between
Israeli and Palestinian leaders. This latter idea, which has been referred to as
‘transfer’ in both Israeli and Palestinian discourse, has also already occurred
over the years of the Israeli state’s existence.
2

However, given that one of the Israeli nation’s most central narratives is
its “democracy” narrative – that Israel is a “beacon of democracy in the Middle
East” – I believe it is equally as likely that the Israeli nation would no longer be
able narrate itself as a Jewish democracy if the Jewish-Israeli population
reached less than sixty percent. This could certainly lead to an implosion of the
Israeli nation-state where Jewish-Israelis would be forced to more equitably
share power with the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Within this work, I have
presented a number of Israeli scholars who have portrayed ‘doomsday’
demographic projections in order to warn Jewish-Israeli citizens about this very
real possibility occurring within the next twenty or thirty years. For them, the
worse case scenario if this were to play out would be an Israeli-Palestinian
binational state. This would clearly mean the destruction of the Israeli nation-
state as it is presently constructed and a radical reformulation of the Israeli
nation as a narrative entity.

2
In fact, Smooha (2002) argued that the discourse of demography is simply a pretense to
legitimize Palestinian transfer in the Israeli public.

360
A surprising finding in this work is that a nation-state (and the nation)
must selectively attempt to appropriate the ‘other’s’ narratives in order to
maintain the plot of its own narratives of the nation. Many Israeli scholars have
described Israel as a “military-industrial” society (Kleiman and Pedatzur 1991;
Kimmerling 2001; Lomsky-Feder and Ben-Ari 1999; Mintz 1985) – that is, a
society that has “a coalition of powerful groups and bodies that share economic,
institutional, or political interests in intensifying defense expenditure (Mintz
1985:624).” With defense playing such a pivotal role in Israeli society, it is
easy to understand the deep connection and support Jewish-Israeli citizens have
for the IDF. In order for the military to maintain a high level of support
amongst the Jewish-Israeli public, it must continually be narrated as a fair and
just military. Therefore, whenever the IDF causes Palestinian suffering, it is of
the utmost importance that the Israeli public construes that suffering as justified.
It is for this reason that the state narrates Palestinian suffering in order to
reinforce the plot of the “moral IDF” narrative of the nation. If these
narrativizing efforts were not made, it is quite likely that the narratives of
suffering would be transmitted, through text and images, to Israeli citizens.
In fact, by considering Palestinian social suffering experiences, it
became clear to me when and where it was necessary that they social suffering
in Palestine to be transformed into Israeli narratives of the nation through the
Israeli media. The routinized suffering that Palestinians endured was not
violent but it was characterized by intense inconvenience and humiliation. It

361
was rare that these kinds of social suffering experiences were narrativized in the
media. Palestinian suffering that results from everyday violence is
characterized by violent situations where people are not severely injured. These
events are narrativized in the Israeli media either when people are injured or
wanted Palestinian militants are captured by the IDF. Extreme Palestinian
suffering is characterized by violent situations where people are severely injured
or killed by the IDF. These social suffering experiences are always narrativized
in the Israeli media. In the most extreme cases of Palestinian suffering, the
state gets highly involved in the narrativizing process so that core narratives of
the nation, such as the “moral IDF” narrative and the “Israeli democracy”
narrative, can maintain their cohesiveness.
In sum, then, this work has made theoretical contributions to the body of
literature in narrative theory, national narratives (narratives of the nation) and
studies on Israeli and Palestinian nationalism. I employ narrative theory in my
analysis of narratives of the nation primarily as a new approach to
understanding national narratives. As such, I have borrowed a number of ideas
from narrative theory and used them to analyze narratives of the nation.
One of the main contributions my work has made to narrative theory is
showing in great detail how power differentials can affect everyday
performances – and therefore, how power radically shapes the construction of
new narratives during performances. Another contribution this work has made
to narrative theory is to show that narratives constructed during performances

362
produce belief structures about narratives of the nation. These belief structures
are available resources that may be used (immediately, in the near future or in
the distant future) or may be ignored by participants in a performance. The
other major contribution this work has made has been to highlight how
narratives of the nation are constructed at many different levels and social
contexts. Narratives of the nation are not simply a construction of the state
apparatus.
My work also contributes to studies of national narratives and
nationalism. Firstly, a nation’s narrativizing efforts must include not only
experiences and events that occur to its own nation people but those that occur
to other nation people. This is a surprising finding considering that the
narratives of other nations can directly contradict a nation’s narratives. In
addition, narratives of the nation not only narrate a nation into being but also
can potentially narrate a nation (and nation-state) out of being, or at the very
least, radically reformulate a nation. Lastly, this work argues that a nation
cannot exist without the successful construction, conveyance and assimilation of
its narratives of the nation.

363
Bibliography

Adler, Shmuel
1997 Israel's Absorption Policies since the 1970s. In Russian Jews on
Three Continents: Migration and Resettlement. Noah Lewin-Epstein,
Yaacov Ro'i, and Paul Ritterband, eds. Pp. 135-144. London: Frank
Cass.

Anagnost, Ann
1997 National Past-Times: Narrative, Representation, and Power in
Modern China. Durham: Duke University Press.

Anderson, Benedict
1991 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. Verso: London.

Apple, M.W.
1979 Ideology and Curriculum. London: Routledge.

Arad, Uzi
2001 The Balance of National Strength and Security: Policy Directions.
Written with the assistance of Amos Gilboa, Aviezer Ya'ari, and Ilan
Amit. New York, New York: The American Jewish Committee.

Aristotle
1997 Poetics 6-11. In Aristotle Poetics. Stephen Halliwell, ed. and trans.
London: Williman Heinemann Ltd. Pp. 47-67.

Asad, Talal
1994 Ethnographic Representation, Statistics and Modern Power. Social
Research 61(1):55-88.

Aviad, Riva and Meir Peretz
2003 A Quiet Revolution in Language Education: Final Examinations in
the Ulpan. Adult Education in Israel. 8:30-39.

Avidor, Moshe
1957 Education in Israel. Jerusalem: The Jewish Agency.

364
Bacchi, Roberto
1974 The Population of Israel. Jerusalem: Institute of Contemporary
Jewry.

Balibar, Etienne
1991 The Nation Form: History and Ideology. In Race, Nation, Class:
Ambiguous Identities. Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, eds.
Pp. 86-106. London: Verso.

Bakhtin, Mikhail M.
1981 The Dialogic Imagination: Four essays. Michael Holquist, ed. Caryl
Emerson and Michael Holquist, trans. Austin: University of Texas Press.
1984 Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Caryl Emerson ed. and trans.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Barkin, J. Samuel, Bruce Cronin
1994 The State and the Nation: Changing Norms and the Rules of
Sovereignty in International Relations. International Organization.
48(1):107-130.

Becker, Gay
1997 Disrupted Lives: How People Create Meaning in a Chaotic World.
Berkeley: University of California Press.

Benvenisti, Meron
2000 Sacred Landscapes: The Buried History of the Holy Land since
1948. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bhabha, Homi K.
1990 Dissemination: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern
Nation. In Nation and Narration. Homi K. Bhabha, ed. Pp. 291-322.
New York: Routledge.
1990 Introduction: Narrating the Nation. In Nation and Narration. Homi
K. Bhabha, ed. Pp: 1-7. New York: Routledge.

Borneman, John
1992 State, Territory, and Identity Formation in the Postwar Berlins,
1945-1989. Cultural Anthropology. 7(1):45-62.

Brown, Jacqueline Nassy
2005 Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail: Geographies of Race in Black
Liverpool. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

365
Bruner, Edward
1986 Experience and its Expressions. In The Anthropology of Experience.
Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner, eds. Pp. 3-32. Urbana.
University of Illinois Press.

Bruner, Edward M. and Phyllis Gorfain
1984 Dialogic Narration and the Paradoxes of Masada. In Text, Play, and
Story: The Construction and Reconstruction of Self and Society. Stuart
Plattner and Edward M. Bruner, eds. Washington D.C.: The American
Ethnological Society.

Butler, Judith
2003 Giving an Account of Oneself: A Critique of Ethical Violence.
Amsterdam: Koninklijke Van Gorcum.

Campbell, David
1998 National Deconstruction. Violence, Identity, and Justice in Bosnia,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Clifford, James and George E. Marcus, eds.
1986 Writing culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography: A School
of American Research Advanced Seminar. Berkeley: University of
California Press.

Crapanzano, Vincent
1980 Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.

Daniel, E. Valentine
1996 Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropology of Violence.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Das, Veena, Arthur Kleinman
2000 Introduction. In Violence and Subjectivity. Das, Veena, Arthur
Kleinman, Mamphela Ramphele, and Pamela Reynolds, eds. Berkeley:
University of California Press.

Davis Uri
1997 Conceptions of Citizenship in the Middle East: State, Nation, and People.
49-69.

Davis, Uri, Antonia E. L. Maks, and John Richardson
1980 Israel’s Water Policies. Journal of Palestine Studies 9(2):3-31.

366
de Lauretis, Teresa
1984 Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.

Deshen, Shlomo
1997 The Situational Analysis of Religious Change Revisited. In
Comparing Jewish Societies. Todd M. Endelman, ed. Pp. 343-358. Ann
Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Dillman, Jeffrey
1989 Water Rights in the Occupied Territories. Journal of Palestine
Studies (19)1:46-71.

Doleve-Gandelman, Tsili
1989 “Ulpan” Is Not “Berlitz”: Adult Education and the Ethiopian Jews in
Israel. Social Science Information 28:121-144.

Dominguez, Virginia
1989 People as Subject, People as Object: Selfhood and Peoplehood in
Contemporary Israel. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Dor, Daniel
2005 The Suppression of Guilt: The Israeli Media and the Reoccupation of
the West Bank. Ann Arbor: Pluto Press.

Elmusa, Sharif S.
1993 Dividing the Common Palestinian-Israeli Waters: An International
Water Law Approach. Journal of Palestine Studies 22(3):57-77.

Eriksen, Thomas Hylland
1993 Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives. London:
Pluto Press.

Ettinger, Yoram
2004 West Bank/Gaza Demography Study: The 1.5 Million Population
Gap. http://yoramettinger.newsnet.co.il/IOS/Users/
yoramettinger.newsnet.co.il/Files/7709012221.doc

Falk, Richard
2002 Azmi Bishara, the Right of Resistance, and the Palestinian Ordeal.
Journal of Palestine Studies. 31(2):19-33.

367
Feldman, Allen
1991 Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political
Terror in Northern Ireland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Fischer, Michael J. and Mehdi Abedi
1990 Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in Postmodernity and
Tradition. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press.

Finkelstein, Norman
1989 The Holocaust Industry. Verso: London.

Foucault, Michel
1977 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Alan Sheridan, trans.
New York: Pantheon Books.
1984 Polemics, Politics and Problematizations: An Interview. In The
Foucault Reader. Paul Rabinow, ed. New York: Pantheon.
1991 Governmentality. In The Foucault Effect: Studies in
Governmentality with Two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel
Foucault. Burchell, Graham, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller, eds. Pp. 87-
104. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Freitag, Ulrike
1999 In Search of ‘Historical Correctness’: The Ba’th Party in Syria.
Middle East Studies 35(1):1-16.

Freundlich, Yehoshua, ed.
1981 Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel. vol. 1, 14 May-30
September 1948. Jerusalem: Israeli State Archives

Garro, Linda C.
2000 Cultural Knowledge as Resource in Illness Narratives: Remembering
Through Accounts of Illness. In Narrative and the Cultural Construction
of Illness and Healing. Cheryl Mattingly and Linda C. Garro, eds. Pp.
70-87. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gellner, Ernest
1983 Nations and Nationalism. Ithica: Cornell University Press.

Goffman, Erving
1959 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, New York:
Doubleday.

368
Golden, Deborah
2001 “Now, like real Israelis, let's stand up and sing”: teaching the
national language to Russian newcomers in Israel. Anthropology &
Education Quarterly 32(1):52-79.

Good, Byron
1994 Medicine, Rationality, and Experience: An Anthropological
Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hacking, Ian
1990 The Taming of Chance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Haramati, Shlomo
1966 Teaching Hebrew to Immigrants in Israel. The Modern Language
Journal (50)8:526-534.

Horowitz, Tamar, and Elazar Leshem
1998 The Immigrants from the FSU in the Israeli Cultural Sphere. (In
Hebrew.) In Profile of an Immigration Wave: The Absorption Process of
Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union, 1990-1995. Moshe Sicron
and Elazar Leshem, eds. Pp. 291-367. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew
University.

Hymes, Dell
1975 Breakthrough Into Performance. In Folklore: Performance and
Communication. Dan Ben-Amos and Kenneth S. Goldstein, eds. Pp. 11-
74. The Hague: Mouton.

IMFA (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
1998 National Insurance Institute and Social Services.
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Archive/Communiques/1998/THE%20NA
TIONAL%20INSURANCE%20INSTITUTE%20AND%20SOCIAL%2
0SERVIC.

Jakubowska, Longina
1992 Resisting “Ethnicity”: The Israeli State and Bedouin Identity. In The
Paths to Domination, Resistance, and Terror. Carolyn Nordstrom and
JoAnn Martin, eds. Pp. 85-105. Berkeley: University of California Press.

JPS (Journal of Palestine Studies)
2001 The Herzliya Conference on the Balance of National Strength and
Security in Israel. Journal of Palestine Studies 31(1):50-61.

369
Kalpagam, U.
2000 The Colonial State and Statistical Knowledge. History of the Human
Sciences. 13:37-55.

Kanaaneh, Rhoda Ann
2001 Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel.
Berkeley: University of California Press.

Katz, Pearl
1982 Ethnicity Transformed: Acculturation in Language Classes in Israel.
Anthropological Quarterly 55(2):99-111.

Khalidi, Walid
1988 Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine. Journal of
Palestine Studies 18(1):4-33.

Kimche, Jon
1959 A Clash of Destinies: The Arab-Jewish War and the Foundation of
the State of Israel. New York: Praeger.

Kimmerling, Baruch
2001 The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Society, and the
Military. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2003 Politicide: Ariel Sharon’s War Against the Palestinians. New York:
Verso

Kimmerling, Baruch and Joel S. Migdal
2002 Palestinians: The Making of a People (Enlarged Edition). New York:
Free Press.

Kirmayer, Laurence J.
2000 Broken Narratives: Clinical Encounters and the Poetics of Illness
Experience. In Narrative as Construct and Construction. In Narrative and
The Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing. Cheryl Mattingly and
Linda C. Garro, eds. Pp. 153-180. Berkeley: University of California
Press.

Kleiman, Aharon and Reuven Pedatzur
1991 Review of Rearming Israel: Defense Procurement Through the
1990s. Boulder: Westview Press.

370
Kleinman, Arthur
1980 Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture: An Exploration of the
Borderland Between Anthropology, Medicine, and Psychiatry. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
1988 The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human
Condition. New York: Basic Book, Inc., Publishers.

Kleinman, Arthur, Veena Das and Margaret Lock
1996 Introduction: In Social Suffering. Pp. ix-xxvii. Berkeley: University
of California Press.

Kleinman, Arthur and Joan Kleinman
1991 Suffering and its Professional Transformation: Toward and
Ethnography of Interpersonal Experience. Culture, Medicine, and
Psychiatry 15(3):275-301.
1996 The Appeal of Experience; The Dismay of Images: Cultural
Appropriations of Suffering in Our Times. In Social Suffering. Arthur
Kleinman, Veena Das and Margaret Lock, eds. Pp. 1-23. Berkeley:
University of California Press.

Knesset Document (State of Israel)
2003a The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (temporary provision)
5763-2003. Unofficial Translation. http://www.knesset.gov.il/laws/
special/eng/ citizenship law.htm
2003b Jerusalem Day – A Historical Introduction. http://www.knesset.gov.
il/holidays/eng/jer_intro.htm

Kondo, Dorinne
1990 Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a
Japanese Workplace. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Kretzmer, David
1990 The Legal Status of the Arabs in Israel. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Lavie, Smadar
1996 Blowups in the Borderzones: Third World Israeli Authors groping
for Home. In Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity.
Smadar Lavie and Ted Swedenburg, eds. Durham: Duke University
Press. Pp. 55-96.

Leibler, Anat and Daniel Breslau
2005 The Uncounted: Citizenship and Exclusion in the Israeli Census of
1948. Ethnic and Racial Studies 28(5):880-/902.

371
Leont’ev, Alexei N.
1981 The problem of activity in psychology. In The concept of activity in
Soviet psychology. James Wertsch, ed. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.

Lomsky-Feder, Edna and Eyal Ben-Ari
1999 The Military and Militarism in Israeli Society. Edna Lomsky-Feder
and Eyal Ben-Ari, eds. Albany : State University of New York Press.

Lotman, Yuri
1988 Text within a text. Soviet Psychology. 26(3): 32– 51.

Mahmood, Saba
2005 Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Malkki, Liisa,
1995 Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory and National Cosmology
among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.

Manke, Mary Philips
1997 Classroom Power Relations: Understanding Student-Teacher
Interaction. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Mankekar, Purnima
1999 Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television,
Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India. Durham: Duke
University Press.

Mattingly, Cheryl
1998 Healing dramas and clinical Plots: The Narrative Structure of Experience.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2000 Emergent Narratives. In Narrative and the Cultural Construction of
Illness and Healing. Pp. 181-211. Berkeley: University of California
Press.

Malkki, Liisa
1994 Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology
Among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.

372
Mintz, Alex
1985 The Military-Industrial Complex: American Concepts and Israeli
Realities. The Journal of Conflict Resolution. 29(4):623-639.

Morris, Benny
1987 The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Naff, Thomas and Ruth C. Matson
1984 Water in the Middle East: Conflict or Cooperation? Boulder.
Westview Press.

Ong, Aihwa
1997 Chinese Modernities: Narratives of Nation and Capitalism. In
Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese
Transnationalism. Aihwa Ong and Donald M. Nonini, eds. Pp. 171-202.
New York: Routledge.

Paletz, David L., Jonathan Y. Short, Helen Baker, Barbara Cookman Campbell,
Richard J. Cooper, and Rochelle M. Oeslander
1980 Polls in the Media: Content, Credibility, and Consequences. Public
Opinion Quarterly. 44:495-513.

Pappé, Ilan
1994 The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-1951. London: I.B.
Tauris.
1997 Post-Zionist Critique on Israel and the Palestinians: Part I: The
Academic Debate. Journal of Palestine Studies. 26(2):29-41.
2004 A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Pease, Donald E.
1997 National Narratives: Postnational Narration. Modern Fiction Studies.
43(1):1-23.

Porter, Theodore
1986 The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.

Rabinowitz, Dan
1997 Overlooking Nazareth: The Ethnography of Exclusion in Galilee.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

373
Ramphele, Mamphela
1996 Political Widowhood in South Africa: The Embodiment of Ambiguity. In
Social Suffering. Pp. 99-118. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Rhodes, Lorna A.
1991 Emptying Beds: The Work of an Emergency Psychiatric Unit.
Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ricoeur, Paul
1976 Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort
Worth: The Texas Christian University Press.
1978 The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: An Anthology of his Work. C.E.
Reagan and D. Stewart, eds. Boston: Beacon Press.
1980 Narrative Time. Critical Inquiry. 7(1):169-190.
1981 The Narrative Function. In Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences:
Essays on Language, Action, and Interpretation. John B. Thompson, ed.
Pp. 274-305. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1984, 1985 and 1987 Time and Narrative (3 volumes), (vols. I and II,
Kathleen McLaughlin and D. Pellauer, trans., vol. III Kathleen Blamey
and D. Pellauer). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Rodinson, Maxime
1968 Israel and the Arabs. London: Penguin.

Rofel, Lisa
1999 Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after Socialism.
Berkeley: University of California Press.

Rose, Jacqueline
1996 States of Fantasy. Oxford: Clarendon.

Ross, Fiona C.
2001 Speech and Silence: Women’s Testimony in the First Five Weeks of
Public Hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation
Commission. In Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering, and
Recovery. Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman, Margaret Lock, Mamphela
Ramphele, and Pamela Reynolds, eds. Pp. 250-279. Berkeley:
University of California Press.

Said, Edward W.
1978 Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.
1994 The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-
Determination, 1969-1994. New York: Pantheon Books.

374
Schectman, Joseph
1952 The Arab Refugee Problem. New York: Philosophical Library.

Schieffelin, Edward
1994 On Failure and Performance: Throwing the Medium Out of the
Séance. In The Performance of Healing. Carol Laderman and Marina
Roseman, eds. Pp. 59-89. New York: Routledge.

Selwyn, Tom.
1986 Word Building or World Building? Nationalism in the Teaching of
Hebrew to Immigrants to Israel. Unpublished MS.

Shafir, Gershon
1988 Land, Labour, and the Israeli Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1920.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Shalev, Michael
1989 Jewish Organized Labor and the Palestinians: A Study in
State/Society Relations in Israel. In The Israeli State and Society:
Boundaries and Frontiers. Baruch Kimmerling, ed. Pp. 93-133. Albany,
N.Y.: State University of New York Press.

Shlaim, Avi
1988 Collusions Across Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement,
and the Partition of Palestine. New York: Columbia University Press.
2000 The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. New York: W.W. Notron.

Shokeid, Moshe
2001 On the Sins We Did Not Commit in the Research of Oriental Jews.
Israel Studies 6(1):15-33.

Stewart, Pamela J. and Andrew Strathern
2002 Violence: Theory and Ethnography. London and New York:
Continuum.

Swirski, Shlomo and Barbara Swirski
1998 Higher Education in Israel. The Israel Equality Monitor 8:1-24.

Syrkin, Marie
1966 The Arab Refugees: A Zionist View. Commentary. 41(1):23-30.

Taylor, Charles
2002 Modern Social Imaginaries. Public Culture 14(1): 91-124.

375
Turner, Victor
1979 The Anthropology of Performance. In Process, Performance and
Pilgrimage. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Co.

Visweswaran, Kamala
1994 Fictions of Feminist Ethnography. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.

Weber, Max
1978 Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology.
Voulmes 1, 2, 3. Edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Ephraim
Fischoff, trans. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Wertsch, James
2001 Voices of Collective Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

White, Hayden
1980 The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality. In On
Narrative. W.J.T. Mitchell, ed. Pp. 1-23. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
1987 The Content of Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical
Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Woolf, Laura L.
2005 A Guide to Ulpan Study – Fourth Edition. Jerusalem: the
Publications Department of the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption.

Yagdar, Yaacov
2002 From the Particularistic to the Universalistic: National Narratives in
Israel’s Mainstream Press, 1967-97. Nations and Nationalism 8(1):55-
72.

Young, Allan
1996 Suffering and the Origins of Traumatic Memory. In Social Suffering.
Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das and Margaret Lock, eds. Pp. 245-260.
Berkeley: University of California Press.

Zacharias, Usha
2001 Trial by Fire: Gender, Power, and Citizenship in Narratives of the
Nation. Social Text. 19(4):29-51.

376
Zangwill, Israel
1901 The Return to Palestine. New Liberal Review, 11 December 1901.
(Cited in David Gilmour, Dispossessed: The Ordeal of the Palestinians.
London: Sphere Books. 1982. p. 44)

Zimmerman, Bennett and Roberta Seid
2005 Arab Population In the West Bank & Gaza: The Million and a Half
Person Gap. Presented at the American Enterprise Institute on January
10, 2005. Washington, DC.

Zureik, Elia
2002 Demography and Transfer: Israel’s Road to Nowhere. Third World
Quarterly. 24(4):619-630.

377
APPENDIX A
BALFOUR DECLARATION

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's
Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist
aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to
facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing
shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-
Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by
Jews in any other country.”

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the
Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely,

Arthur James Balfour

378
APPENDIX B
UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY RESOLUTION 181
FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF PALESTINE
NOVEMBER 29, 1947

The General Assembly, Having met in special session at the request of the
mandatory Power to constitute and instruct a Special Committee to prepare for
the consideration of the question of the future Government of Palestine at the
second regular session;

Having constituted a Special Committee and instructed it to investigate all
questions and issues relevant to the problem of Palestine, and to prepare
proposals for the solution of the problem, and

Having received and examined the report of the Special Committee (document
A/364)(1) including a number of unanimous recommendations and a plan of
partition with economic union approved by the majority of the Special
Committee,

Considers that the present situation in Palestine is one which is likely to impair
the general welfare and friendly relations among nations;

Takes note of the declaration by the mandatory Power that it plans to complete
its evacuation of Palestine by l August 1948;

Recommends to the United Kingdom, as the mandatory Power for Palestine,
and to all other Members of the United Nations the adoption and
implementation, with regard to the future Government of Palestine, of the Plan
of Partition with Economic Union set out below;

Requests that

The Security Council take the necessary measures as provided for in the plan for
its implementation;

The Security Council consider, if circumstances during the transitional period
require such consideration, whether the situation in Palestine constitutes a threat
to the peace. If it decides that such a threat exists, and in order to maintain
international peace and security, the Security Council should supplement the
authorization of the General Assembly by taking measures, under Articles 39
and 41 of the Charter, to empower the United Nations Commission, as provided

379
in this resolution, to exercise in Palestine the functions which are assigned to it
by this resolution;

The Security Council determine as a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or
act of aggression, in accordance with Article 39 of the Charter, any attempt to
alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution;

The Trusteeship Council be informed of the responsibilities envisaged for it in
this plan;

Calls upon the inhabitants of Palestine to take such steps as may be necessary
on their part to put this plan into effect;

Appeals to all Governments and all peoples to refrain from taking any action
which might hamper or delay the carrying out of these recommendations, and

Authorizes the Secretary-General to reimburse travel and subsistence expenses
of the members of the Commission referred to in Part 1, Section B, Paragraph I
below, on such basis and in such form as he may determine most appropriate in
the circumstances, and to provide the Commission with the necessary staff to
assist in carrying out the functions assigned to the Commission by the General
Assembly.*

The General Assembly,

Authorizes the Secretary-General to draw from the Working Capital Fund a sum
not to exceed 2,000,000 dollars for the purposes set forth in the last paragraph
of the resolution on the future government of Palestine.

PLAN OF PARTITION WITH ECONOMIC UNION

Part I. - Future Constitution and Government of Palestine

A. TERMINATION OF MANDATE, PARTITION AND INDEPENDENCE

The Mandate for Palestine shall terminate as soon as possible but in any case
not later than 1 August 1948.

The armed forces of the mandatory Power shall be progressively withdrawn
from Palestine, the withdrawal to be completed as soon as possible but in any
case not later than 1 August 1948.

380
The mandatory Power shall advise the Commission, as far in advance as
possible, of its intention to terminate the mandate and to evacuate each area.
The mandatory Power shall use its best endeavours to ensure that an area
situated in the territory of the Jewish State, including a seaport and hinterland
adequate to provide facilities for a substantial immigration, shall be evacuated at
the earliest possible date and in any event not later than 1 February 1948.

Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for
the City of Jerusalem, set forth in Part III of this Plan, shall come into existence
in Palestine two months after the evacuation of the armed forces of the
mandatory Power has been completed but in any case not later than 1 October
1948. The boundaries of the Arab State, the Jewish State, and the City of
Jerusalem shall be as described in Parts II and III below.

The period between the adoption by the General Assembly of its
recommendation on the question of Palestine and the establishment of the
independence of the Arab and Jewish States shall be a transitional period.

B. STEPS PREPARATORY TO INDEPENDENCE

A Commission shall be set up consisting of one representative of each of five
Member States. The Members represented on the Commission shall be elected
by the General Assembly on as broad a basis, geographically and otherwise, as
possible.

The administration of Palestine shall, as the mandatory Power withdraws its
armed forces, be progressively turned over to the Commission, which shall act
in conformity with the recommendations of the General Assembly, under the
guidance of the Security Council. The mandatory Power shall to the fullest
possible extent coordinate its plans for withdrawal with the plans of the
Commission to take over and administer areas which have been evacuated.

In the discharge of this administrative responsibility the Commission shall have
authority to issue necessary regulations and take other measures as required.
The mandatory Power shall not take any action to prevent, obstruct or delay the
implementation by the Commission of the measures recommended by the
General Assembly.

On its arrival in Palestine the Commission shall proceed to carry out measures
for the establishment of the frontiers of the Arab and Jewish States and the City
of Jerusalem in accordance with the general lines of the recommendations of the
General Assembly on the partition of Palestine. Nevertheless, the boundaries as
described in Part II of this Plan are to be modified in such a way that village

381
areas as a rule will not be divided by state boundaries unless pressing reasons
make that necessary.

The Commission, after consultation with the democratic parties and other public
organizations of the Arab and Jewish States, shall select and establish in each
State as rapidly as possible a Provisional Council of Government. The activities
of both the Arab and Jewish Provisional Councils of Government shall be
carried out under the general direction of the Commission.

If by 1 April 1948 a Provisional Council of Government cannot be selected for
either of the States, or, if selected, cannot carry out its functions, the
Commission shall communicate that fact to the Security Council for such action
with respect to that State as the Security Council may deem proper, and to the
Secretary-General for communication to the Members of the United Nations.

Subject to the provisions of these recommendations, during the transitional
period the Provisional Councils of Government, acting under the Commission,
shall have full authority in the areas under their control including authority over
matters of immigration and land regulation.

The Provisional Council of Government of each State, acting under the
Commission, shall progressively receive from the Commission full
responsibility for the administration of that State in the period between the
termination of the Mandate and the establishment of the State's independence.

The Commission shall instruct the Provisional Councils of Government of both
the Arab and Jewish States, after their formation, to proceed to the
establishment of administrative organs of government, central and local.

The Provisional Council of Government of each State shall, within the shortest
time possible, recruit an armed militia from the residents of that State, sufficient
in number to maintain internal order and to prevent frontier clashes.

This armed militia in each State shall, for operational purposes, be under the
command of Jewish or Arab officers resident in that State, but general political
and military control, including the choice of the militia's High Command, shall
be exercised by the Commission.

The Provisional Council of Government of each State shall, not later than two
months after the withdrawal of the armed forces of the mandatory Power, hold
elections to the Constituent Assembly which shall be conducted on democratic
lines.

382
The election regulations in each State shall be drawn up by the Provisional
Council of Government and approved by the Commission. Qualified voters for
each State for this election shall be persons over eighteen years of age who are
(a) Palestinian citizens residing in that State; and (b) Arabs and Jews residing in
the State, although not Palestinian citizens, who, before voting, have signed a
notice of intention to become citizens of such State.

Arabs and Jews residing in the City of Jerusalem who have signed a notice of
intention to become citizens, the Arabs of the Arab State and the Jews of the
Jewish State, shall be entitled to vote in the Arab and Jewish States respectively.

Women may vote and be elected to the Constituent Assemblies.

During the transitional period no Jew shall be permitted to establish residence in
the area of the proposed Arab State, and no Arab shall be permitted to establish
residence in the area of the proposed Jewish State, except by special leave of the
Commission.

The Constituent Assembly of each State shall draft a democratic constitution for
its State and choose a provisional government to succeed the Provisional
Council of Government appointed by the Commission. The Constitutions of the
States shall embody Chapters 1 and 2 of the Declaration provided for in section
C below and include, inter alia, provisions for:

Establishing in each State a legislative body elected by universal suffrage and
by secret ballot on the basis of proportional representation, and an executive
body responsible to the legislature;

Settling all international disputes in which the State may be involved by
peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and
justice, are not endangered;

Accepting the obligation of the State to refrain in its international relations from
the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political
independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purpose
of the United Nations;

Guaranteeing to all persons equal and non-discriminatory rights in civil,
political, economic and religious matters and the enjoyment of human rights and
fundamental freedoms, including freedom of religion, language, speech and
publication, education, assembly and association;

383
Preserving freedom of transit and visit for all residents and citizens of the other
State in Palestine and the City of Jerusalem, subject to considerations of
national security, provided that each State shall control residence within its
borders.

The Commission shall appoint a preparatory economic commission of three
members to make whatever arrangements are possible for economic co-
operation, with a view to establishing, as soon as practicable, the Economic
Union and the Joint Economic Board, as provided in section D below.

During the period between the adoption of the recommendations on the question
of Palestine by the General Assembly and the termination of the Mandate, the
mandatory Power in Palestine shall maintain full responsibility for
administration in areas from which it has not withdrawn its armed forces. The
Commission shall assist the mandatory Power in the carrying out of these
functions. Similarly the mandatory Power shall co-operate with the Commission
in the execution of its functions.

With a view to ensuring that there shall be continuity in the functioning of
administrative services and that, on the withdrawal of the armed forces of the
mandatory Power, the whole administration shall be in the charge of the
Provisional Councils and the Joint Economic Board, respectively, acting under
the Commission, there shall be a progressive transfer, from the mandatory
Power to the Commission, of responsibility for all the functions of government,
including that of maintaining law and order in the areas from which the forces
of the mandatory Power have been withdrawn.

The Commission shall be guided in its activities by the recommendations of the
General Assembly and by such instructions as the Security Council may
consider necessary to issue.

The measures taken by the Commission, within the recommendations of the
General Assembly, shall become immediately effective unless the Commission
has previously received contrary instructions from the Security Council.

The Commission shall render periodic monthly progress reports, or more
frequently if desirable, to the Security Council.

The Commission shall make its final report to the next regular session of the
General Assembly and to the Security Council simultaneously.

C. DECLARATION

384
A declaration shall be made to the United Nations by the Provisional
Government of each proposed State before independence. It shall contain, inter
alia, the following clauses:

General Provision

The stipulations contained in the Declaration are recognized as fundamental
laws of the State and no law, regulation or official action shall conflict or
interfere with these stipulations, nor shall any law, regulation or official action
prevail over them.

Chapter 1: Holy Places, Religious Buildings and Sites

Existing rights in respect of Holy Places and religious buildings or sites shall
not be denied or impaired.

In so far as Holy Places are concerned, the liberty of access, visit, and transit
shall be guaranteed, in conformity with existing rights, to all residents and
citizen of the other State and of the City of Jerusalem, as well as to aliens,
without distinction as to nationality, subject to requirements of national security,
public order and decorum.

Similarly, freedom of worship shall be guaranteed in conformity with existing
rights, subject to the maintenance of public order and decorum.

Holy Places and religious buildings or sites shall be preserved. No act shall be
permitted which may in an way impair their sacred character. If at any time it
appears to the Government that any particular Holy Place, religious, building or
site is in need of urgent repair, the Government may call upon the community or
communities concerned to carry out such repair. The Government may carry it
out itself at the expense of the community or community concerned if no action
is taken within a reasonable time.

No taxation shall be levied in respect of any Holy Place, religious building or
site which was exempt from taxation on the date of the creation of the State.

No change in the incidence of such taxation shall be made which would either
discriminate between the owners or occupiers of Holy Places, religious
buildings or sites, or would place such owners or occupiers in a position less
favourable in relation to the general incidence of taxation than existed at the
time of the adoption of the Assembly's recommendations.

385
The Governor of the City of Jerusalem shall have the right to determine whether
the provisions of the Constitution of the State in relation to Holy Places,
religious buildings and sites within the borders of the State and the religious
rights appertaining thereto, are being properly applied and respected, and to
make decisions on the basis of existing rights in cases of disputes which may
arise between the different religious communities or the rites of a religious
community with respect to such places, buildings and sites. He shall receive full
co-operation and such privileges and immunities as are necessary for the
exercise of his functions in the State.

Chapter 2: Religious and Minority Rights

Freedom of conscience and the free exercise of all forms of worship, subject
only to the maintenance of public order and morals, shall be ensured to all.

No discrimination of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants on the
ground of race, religion, language or sex.

All persons within the jurisdiction of the State shall be entitled to equal
protection of the laws.

The family law and personal status of the various minorities and their religious
interests, including endowments, shall be respected.

Except as may be required for the maintenance of public order and good
government, no measure shall be taken to obstruct or interfere with the
enterprise of religious or charitable bodies of all faiths or to discriminate against
any representative or member of these bodies on the ground of his religion or
nationality.

The State shall ensure adequate primary and secondary education for the Arab
and Jewish minority, respectively, in its own language and its cultural traditions.

The right of each community to maintain its own schools for the education of its
own members in its own language, while conforming to such educational
requirements of a general nature as the State may impose, shall not be denied or
impaired. Foreign educational establishments shall continue their activity on the
basis of their existing rights.

No restriction shall be imposed on the free use by any citizen of the State of any
language in private intercourse, in commerce, in religion, in the Press or in
publications of any kind, or at public meetings.(3)

386
No expropriation of land owned by an Arab in the Jewish State (by a Jew in the
Arab State)(4) shall be allowed except for public purposes. In all cases of
expropriation full compensation as fixed by the Supreme Court shall be said
previous to dispossession.

Chapter 3: Citizenship, International Conventions and Financial Obligations

1. Citizenship Palestinian citizens residing in Palestine outside the City of
Jerusalem, as well as Arabs and Jews who, not holding Palestinian citizenship,
reside in Palestine outside the City of Jerusalem shall, upon the recognition of
independence, become citizens of the State in which they are resident and enjoy
full civil and political rights. Persons over the age of eighteen years may opt,
within one year from the date of recognition of independence of the State in
which they reside, for citizenship of the other State, providing that no Arab
residing in the area of the proposed Arab State shall have the right to opt for
citizenship in the proposed Jewish State and no Jew residing in the proposed
Jewish State shall have the right to opt for citizenship in the proposed Arab
State. The exercise of this right of option will be taken to include the wives and
children under eighteen years of age of persons so opting.

Arabs residing in the area of the proposed Jewish State and Jews residing in the
area of the proposed Arab State who have signed a notice of intention to opt for
citizenship of the other State shall be eligible to vote in the elections to the
Constituent Assembly of that State, but not in the elections to the Constituent
Assembly of the State in which they reside.

2. International conventions

The State shall be bound by all the international agreements and conventions,
both general and special, to which Palestine has become a party. Subject to any
right of denunciation provided for therein, such agreements and conventions
shall be respected by the State throughout the period for which they were
concluded.

Any dispute about the applicability and continued validity of international
conventions or treaties signed or adhered to by the mandatory Power on behalf
of Palestine shall be referred to the International Court of Justice in accordance
with the provisions of the Statute of the Court.

3. Financial obligations

The State shall respect and fulfil all financial obligations of whatever nature
assumed on behalf of Palestine by the mandatory Power during the exercise of

387
the Mandate and recognized by the State. This provision includes the right of
public servants to pensions, compensation or gratuities.

These obligations shall be fulfilled through participation in the Joint Economic
Board in respect of those obligations applicable to Palestine as a whole, and
individually in respect of those applicable to, and fairly apportionable between,
the States.

A Court of Claims, affiliated with the Joint Economic Board, and composed of
one member appointed by the United Nations, one representative of the United
Kingdom and one representative of the State concerned, should be established.
Any dispute between the United Kingdom and the State respecting claims not
recognized by the latter should be referred to that Court.

Commercial concessions granted in respect of any part of Palestine prior to the
adoption of the resolution by the General Assembly shall continue to be valid
according to their terms, unless modified by agreement between the concession-
holders and the State.

Chapter 4: Miscellaneous Provisions

The provisions of chapters 1 and 2 of the declaration shall be under the
guarantee of the United Nations, and no modifications shall be made in them
without the assent of the General Assembly of the United Nations. Any Member
of the United Nations shall have the right to bring to the attention of the General
Assembly any infraction or danger of infraction of any of these stipulations, and
the General Assembly may thereupon make such recommendations as it may
deem proper in the circumstances.

Any dispute relating to the application or interpretation of this declaration shall
be referred, at the request of either party, to the International Court of Justice,
unless the parties agree to another mode of settlement.

D. ECONOMIC UNION AND TRANSIT

The Provisional Council of Government of each State shall enter into an
undertaking with respect to Economic Union and Transit. This undertaking shall
be drafted by the Commission provided for in section B, paragraph 1, utilizing
to the greatest possible extent the advice and cooperation of representative
organizations and bodies from each of the proposed States. It shall contain
provisions to establish the Economic Union of Palestine and provide for other
matters of common interest. If by 1 April 1948 the Provisional Councils of

388
Government have not entered into the undertaking, the undertaking shall be put
into force by the Commission.

The Economic Union of Palestine

The objectives of the Economic Union of Palestine shall be:

A customs union;

A joint currency system providing for a single foreign exchange rate;

Operation in the common interest on a non-discriminatory basis of railways
inter-State highways; postal, telephone and telegraphic services and ports and
airports involved in international trade and commerce;

Joint economic development, especially in respect of irrigation, land
reclamation and soil conservation;

Access for both States and for the City of Jerusalem on a non-discriminatory
basis to water and power facilities.

There shall be established a Joint Economic Board, which shall consist of three
representatives of each of the two States and three foreign members appointed
by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. The foreign
members shall be appointed in the first instance for a term of three years; they
shall serve as individuals and not as representatives of States.

The functions of the Joint Economic Board shall be to implement either directly
or by delegation the measures necessary to realize the objectives of the
Economic Union. It shall have all powers of organization and administration
necessary to fulfil its functions.

The States shall bind themselves to put into effect the decisions of the Joint
Economic Board. The Board's decisions shall be taken by a majority vote.

In the event of failure of a State to take the necessary action the Board may, by
a vote of six members, decide to withhold an appropriate portion of the part of
the customs revenue to which the State in question is entitled under the
Economic Union. Should the State persist in its failure to cooperate, the Board
may decide by a simple majority vote upon such further sanctions, including
disposition of funds which it has withheld, as it may deem appropriate.

389
In relation to economic development, the functions of the Board shall be
planning, investigation and encouragement of joint development projects, but it
shall not undertake such projects except with the assent of both States and the
City of Jerusalem, in the event that Jerusalem is directly involved in the
development project.

In regard to the joint currency system, the currencies circulating in the two
States and the City of Jerusalem shall be issued under the authority of the Joint
Economic Board, which shall be the sole issuing authority and which shall
determine the reserves to be held against such currencies.

So far as is consistent with paragraph 2(b) above, each State may operate its
own central bank, control its own fiscal and credit policy, its foreign exchange
receipts and expenditures, the grant of import licences, and may conduct
international financial operations on its own faith and credit. During the first
two years after the termination of the Mandate, the Joint Economic Board shall
have the authority to take such measures as may be necessary to ensure that - to
the extent that the total foreign exchange revenues of the two States from the
export of goods and services permit, and provided that each State takes
appropriate measures to conserve its own foreign exchange resources - each
State shall have available, in any twelve months' period, foreign exchange
sufficient to assure the supply of quantities of imported goods and services for
consumption in its territory equivalent to the quantities of such goods and
services consumed in that territory in the twelve months' period ending 31
December 1947.

All economic authority not specifically vested in the Joint Economic Board is
reserved to each State.

There shall be a common customs tariff with complete freedom of trade
between the States, and between the States and the City of Jerusalem.

The tariff schedules shall be drawn up by a Tariff Commission, consisting of
representatives of each of the States in equal numbers, and shall be submitted to
the Joint Economic Board for approval by a majority vote. In case of
disagreement in the Tariff Commission, the Joint Economic Board shall
arbitrate the points of difference. In the event that the Tariff Commission fails to
draw up any schedule by a date to be fixed, the Joint Economic Board shall
determine the tariff schedule.

The following items shall be a first charge on the customs and other common
revenue of the Joint Economic Board:

390
The expenses of the customs service and of the operation of the joint services;

The administrative expenses of the Joint Economic Board;

The financial obligations of the Administration of Palestine, consisting of:

The service of the outstanding public debt;

The cost of superannuation benefits, now being paid or falling due in the future,
in accordance with the rules and to the extent established by paragraph 3 of
chapter 3 above.

After these obligations have been met in full, the surplus revenue from the
customs and other common services shall be divided in the following manner:
not less than 5 per cent and not more than 10 per cent to the City of Jerusalem;
the residue shall be allocated to each State by the Joint Economic Board
equitably, with the objective of maintaining a sufficient and suitable level of
government and social services in each State, except that the share of either
State shall not exceed the amount of that State's contribution to the revenues of
the Economic Union by more than approximately four million pounds in any
year. The amount granted may be adjusted by the Board according to the price
level in relation to the prices prevailing at the time of the establishment of the
Union. After five years, the principles of the distribution of the joint revenue
may be revised by the Joint Economic Board on a basis of equity.

All international conventions and treaties affecting customs tariff rates, and
those communications services under the jurisdiction of the Joint Economic
Board, shall be entered into by both States. In these matters, the two States shall
be bound to act in accordance with the majority of the Joint Economic Board.

The Joint Economic Board shall endeavour to secure for Palestine's exports fair
and equal access to world markets.

All enterprises operated by the Joint Economic Board shall pay fair wages on a
uniform basis.

Freedom of Transit and Visit

• The undertaking shall contain provisions preserving freedom of transit and
visit for all residents or citizens of both States and of the City of Jerusalem,
subject to security considerations; provided that each State and the City shall
control residence within its borders.

391
Termination, Modification and Interpretation of the Undertaking

The undertaking and any treaty issuing therefrom shall remain in force for a
period of ten years. It shall continue in force until notice of termination, to take
effect two years thereafter, is given by either of the parties.

During the initial ten-year period, the undertaking and any treaty issuing
therefrom may not be modified except by consent of both parties and with the
approval of the General Assembly.

Any dispute relating to the application or the interpretation of the undertaking
and any treaty issuing therefrom shall be referred, at the request of either party,
to the International Court Of Justice, unless the parties agree to another mode of
settlement.

E. ASSETS

The movable assets of the Administration of Palestine shall be allocated to the
Arab and Jewish States and the City of Jerusalem on an equitable basis.
Allocations should be made by the United Nations Commission referred to iii
section B, paragraph 1, above. Immovable assets shall become the property of
the government of the territory in which they are situated.

During the period between the appointment of the United Nations Commission
and the termination of the Mandate, the mandatory Power shall, except in
respect of ordinary operations, consult with the Commission on any measure
which it may contemplate involving the liquidation, disposal or encumbering of
the assets of the Palestine Government, such as the accumulated treasury
surplus, the proceeds of Government bond issues, State lands or any other asset.

F. ADMISSION TO MEMBERSHIP IN THE UNITED NATIONS

When the independence of either the Arab or the Jewish State as envisaged in
this plan has become effective and the declaration and undertaking, as
envisaged in this plan, have been signed by either of them, sympathetic
consideration should be given to its application for admission to membership in
the United Nations in accordance with article 4 of the Charter of the United
Nations.

Part II. - Boundaries

A. THE ARAB STATE

392
The area of the Arab State in Western Galilee is bounded on the west by the
Mediterranean and on the north by the frontier of the Lebanon from Ras en
Naqura to a point north of Saliha. From there the boundary proceeds
southwards, leaving the built-up area of Saliha in the Arab State, to join the
southernmost point of this village. There it follows the western boundary line of
the villages of 'Alma, Rihaniya and Teitaba, thence following the northern
boundary line of Meirun village to join the Acre-Safad Sub-District boundary
line. It follows this line to a point west of Es Sammu'i village and joins it again
at the northernmost point of Farradiya. Thence it follows the sub-district
boundary line to the Acre-Safad main road. From here it follows the western
boundary of Kafr-I'nan village until it reaches the Tiberias-Acre Sub-District
boundary line, passing to the west of the junction of the Acre-Safad and Lubiya-
Kafr-I'nan roads. From the south-west corner of Kafr-I'nan village the boundary
line follows the western boundary of the Tiberias Sub-District to a point close to
the boundary line between the villages of Maghar and 'Eilabun, thence bulging
out to the west to include as much of the eastern part of the plain of Battuf as is
necessary for the reservoir proposed by the Jewish Agency for the irrigation of
lands to the south and east.

The boundary rejoins the Tiberias Sub-District boundary at a point on the
Nazareth-Tiberias road south-east of the built-up area of Tur'an; thence it runs
southwards, at first following the sub-district boundary and then passing
between the Kadoorie Agricultural School and Mount Tabor, to a point due
south at the base of Mount Tabor. From here it runs due west, parallel to the
horizontal grid line 230, to the north-east corner of the village lands of Tel
Adashim. It then runs to the northwest corner of these lands, whence it turns
south and west so as to include in the Arab State the sources of the Nazareth
water supply in Yafa village. On reaching Ginneiger it follows the eastern,
northern and western boundaries of the lands of this village to their south-west
comer, whence it proceeds in a straight line to a point on the Haifa-Afula
railway on the boundary between the villages of Sarid and El-Mujeidil. This is
the point of intersection. The south-western boundary of the area of the Arab
State in Galilee takes a line from this point, passing northwards along the
eastern boundaries of Sarid and Gevat to the north-eastern corner of Nahalal,
proceeding thence across the land of Kefar ha Horesh to a central point on the
southern boundary of the village of 'Ilut, thence westwards along that village
boundary to the eastern boundary of Beit Lahm, thence northwards and north-
eastwards along its western boundary to the north-eastern corner of Waldheim
and thence north-westwards across the village lands of Shafa 'Amr to the
southeastern corner of Ramat Yohanan. From here it runs due north-north-east
to a point on the Shafa 'Amr-Haifa road, west of its junction with the road of
I'billin. From there it proceeds north-east to a point on the southern boundary of
I'billin situated to the west of the I'billin-Birwa road. Thence along that

393
boundary to its westernmost point, whence it turns to the north, follows across
the village land of Tamra to the north-westernmost corner and along the western
boundary of Julis until it reaches the Acre-Safad road. It then runs westwards
along the southern side of the Safad-Acre road to the Galilee-Haifa District
boundary, from which point it follows that boundary to the sea.

The boundary of the hill country of Samaria and Judea starts on the Jordan
River at the Wadi Malih south-east of Beisan and runs due west to meet the
Beisan-Jericho road and then follows the western side of that road in a north-
westerly direction to the junction of the boundaries of the Sub-Districts of
Beisan, Nablus, and Jenin. From that point it follows the Nablus-Jenin sub-
District boundary westwards for a distance of about three kilometres and then
turns north-westwards, passing to the east of the built-up areas of the villages of
Jalbun and Faqqu'a, to the boundary of the Sub-Districts of Jenin and Beisan at
a point northeast of Nuris. Thence it proceeds first northwestwards to a point
due north of the built-up area of Zie'in and then westwards to the Afula-Jenin
railway, thence north-westwards along the District boundary line to the point of
intersection on the Hejaz railway. From here the boundary runs southwestwards,
including the built-up area and some of the land of the village of Kh. Lid in the
Arab State to cross the Haifa-Jenin road at a point on the district boundary
between Haifa and Samaria west of El- Mansi. It follows this boundary to the
southernmost point of the village of El-Buteimat. From here it follows the
northern and eastern boundaries of the village of Ar'ara rejoining the Haifa-
Samaria district boundary at Wadi 'Ara, and thence proceeding south-south-
westwards in an approximately straight line joining up with the western
boundary of Qaqun to a point east of the railway line on the eastern boundary of
Qaqun village. From here it runs along the railway line some distance to the east
of it to a point just east of the Tulkarm railway station. Thence the boundary
follows a line half-way between the railway and the Tulkarm-Qalqiliya-Jaljuliya
and Ras El-Ein road to a point just east of Ras El-Ein station, whence it
proceeds along the railway some distance to the east of it to the point on the
railway line south of the junction of the Haifa-Lydda and Beit Nabala lines,
whence it proceeds along the southern border of Lydda airport to its south-west
corner, thence in a south-westerly direction to a point just west of the built-up
area of Sarafand El 'Amar, whence it turns south, passing just to the west of the
built-up area of Abu El-Fadil to the north-east corner of the lands of Beer
Ya'aqov. (The boundary line should be so demarcated as to allow direct access
from the Arab State to the airport.) Thence the boundary line follows the
western and southern boundaries of Ramle village, to the north-east corner of El
Na'ana village, thence in a straight line to the southernmost point of El Barriya,
along the eastern boundary of that village and the southern boundary of 'Innaba
village. Thence it turns north to follow the southern side of the Jaffa-Jerusalem
road until El-Qubab, whence it follows the road to the boundary of Abu-Shusha.

394
It runs along the eastern boundaries of Abu Shusha, Seidun, Hulda to the
southernmost point of Hulda, thence westwards in a straight line to the north-
eastern corner of Umm Kalkha, thence following the northern boundaries of
Umm Kalkha, Qazaza and the northern and western boundaries of Mukhezin to
the Gaza District boundary and thence runs across the village lands of El-
Mismiya El-Kabira, and Yasur to the southern point of intersection, which is
midway between the built-up areas of Yasur and Batani Sharqi.

From the southern point of intersection the boundary lines run north-westwards
between the villages of Gan Yavne and Barqa to the sea at a point half way
between Nabi Yunis and Minat El-Qila, and south-eastwards to a point west of
Qastina, whence it turns in a south-westerly direction, passing to the east of the
built-up areas of Es Sawafir Esh Sharqiya and 'Ibdis. From the south-east corner
of 'Ibdis village it runs to a point southwest of the built-up area of Beit 'Affa,
crossing the Hebron-El-Majdal road just to the west of the built-up area of 'Iraq
Suweidan. Thence it proceeds southward along the western village boundary of
El-Faluja to the Beersheba Sub-District boundary. It then runs across the tribal
lands of 'Arab El-Jubarat to a point on the boundary between the Sub-Districts
of Beersheba and Hebron north of Kh. Khuweilifa, whence it proceeds in a
south-westerly direction to a point on the Beersheba-Gaza main road two
kilometres to the north-west of the town. It then turns south-eastwards to reach
Wadi Sab' at a point situated one kilometer to the west of it. From here it turns
north-eastwards and proceeds along Wadi Sab' and along the Beersheba-Hebron
road for a distance of one kilometer, whence it turns eastwards and runs in a
straight line to Kh. Kuseifa to join the Beersheba-Hebron Sub-District
boundary. It then follows the Beersheba-Hebron boundary eastwards to a point
north of Ras Ez-Zuweira, only departing from it so as to cut across the base of
the indentation between vertical grid lines 150 and 160.

About five kilometres north-east of Ras Ez-Zuweira it turns north, excluding
from the Arab State a strip along the coast of the Dead Sea not more than seven
kilometres in depth, as far as 'Ein Geddi, whence it turns due east to join the
Transjordan frontier in the Dead Sea.

The northern boundary of the Arab section of the coastal plain runs from a point
between Minat El-Qila and Nabi Yunis, passing between the built-up areas of
Gan Yavne and Barqa to the point of intersection. From here it turns south-
westwards, running across the lands of Batani Sharqi, along the eastern
boundary of the lands of Beit Daras and across the lands of Julis, leaving the
built-up areas of Batani Sharqi and Julis to the westwards, as far as the north-
west corner of the lands of Beit-Tima. Thence it runs east of El-Jiya across the
village lands of El-Barbara along the eastern boundaries of the villages of Beit
Jirja, Deir Suneid and Dimra. From the south-east corner of Dimra the boundary

395
passes across the lands of Beit Hanun, leaving the Jewish lands of Nir-Am to
the eastwards. From the south-east corner of Beit Hanun the line runs south-
west to a point south of the parallel grid line 100, then turns north-west for two
kilometres, turning again in a southwesterly direction and continuing in an
almost straight line to the north-west corner of the village lands of Kirbet
Ikhza'a. From there it follows the boundary line of this village to its
southernmost point. It then runs in a southerly direction along the vertical grid
line 90 to its junction with the horizontal grid line 70. It then turns south-
eastwards to Kh. El-Ruheiba and then proceeds in a southerly direction to a
point known as El-Baha, beyond which it crosses the Beersheba-EI 'Auja main
road to the west of Kh. El-Mushrifa. From there it joins Wadi El-Zaiyatin just to
the west of El-Subeita. From there it turns to the north-east and then to the
south-east following this Wadi and passes to the east of 'Abda to join Wadi
Nafkh. It then bulges to the south-west along Wadi Nafkh, Wadi 'Ajrim and
Wadi Lassan to the point where Wadi Lassan crosses the Egyptian frontier.

The area of the Arab enclave of Jaffa consists of that part of the town-planning
area of Jaffa which lies to the west of the Jewish quarters lying south of Tel-
Aviv, to the west of the continuation of Herzl street up to its junction with the
Jaffa-Jerusalem road, to the south-west of the section of the Jaffa-Jerusalem
road lying south-east of that junction, to the west of Miqve Yisrael lands, to the
northwest of Holon local council area, to the north of the line linking up the
north-west corner of Holon with the northeast corner of Bat Yam local council
area and to the north of Bat Yam local council area. The question of Karton
quarter will be decided by the Boundary Commission, bearing in mind among
other considerations the desirability of including the smallest possible number
of its Arab inhabitants and the largest possible number of its Jewish inhabitants
in the Jewish State.

B. THE JEWISH STATE

The north-eastern sector of the Jewish State (Eastern Galilee) is bounded on the
north and west by the Lebanese frontier and on the east by the frontiers of Syria
and Trans-jordan. It includes the whole of the Huleh Basin, Lake Tiberias, the
whole of the Beisan Sub-District, the boundary line being extended to the crest
of the Gilboa mountains and the Wadi Malih. From there the Jewish State
extends north-west, following the boundary described in respect of the Arab
State. The Jewish section of the coastal plain extends from a point between
Minat El-Qila and Nabi Yunis in the Gaza Sub-District and includes the towns
of Haifa and Tel-Aviv, leaving Jaffa as an enclave of the Arab State. The
eastern frontier of the Jewish State follows the boundary described in respect of
the Arab State.

396
The Beersheba area comprises the whole of the Beersheba Sub-District,
including the Negeb and the eastern part of the Gaza Sub-District, but excluding
the town of Beersheba and those areas described in respect of the Arab State. It
includes also a strip of land along the Dead Sea stretching from the Beersheba-
Hebron Sub-District boundary line to 'Ein Geddi, as described in respect of the
Arab State.

C. THE CITY OF JERUSALEM

The boundaries of the City of Jerusalem are as defined in the recommendations
on the City of Jerusalem. (See Part III, section B, below).

Part III. - City of Jerusalem(5)

A. SPECIAL REGIME

The City of Jerusalem shall be established as a corpus separatum under a special
international regime and shall be administered by the United Nations. The
Trusteeship Council shall be designated to discharge the responsibilities of the
Administering Authority on behalf of the United Nations.

B. BOUNDARIES OF THE CITY

The City of Jerusalem shall include the present municipality of Jerusalem plus
the surrounding villages and towns, the most eastern of which shall be Abu Dis;
the most southern, Bethlehem; the most western, 'Ein Karim (including also the
built-up area of Motsa); and the most northern Shu'fat, as indicated on the
attached sketch-map (annex B).

C. STATUTE OF THE CITY

The Trusteeship Council shall, within five months of the approval of the present
plan, elaborate and approve a detailed statute of the City which shall contain,
inter alia, the substance of the following provisions:

Government machinery; special objectives. The Administering Authority in
discharging its administrative obligations shall pursue the following special
objectives:

To protect and to preserve the unique spiritual and religious interests located in
the city of the three great monotheistic faiths throughout the world, Christian,
Jewish and Moslem; to this end to ensure that order and peace, and especially
religious peace, reign in Jerusalem;

397

To foster cooperation among all the inhabitants of the city in their own interests
as well as in order to encourage and support the peaceful development of the
mutual relations between the two Palestinian peoples throughout the Holy Land;
to promote the security, well-being and any constructive measures of
development of the residents having regard to the special circumstances and
customs of the various peoples and communities.

Governor and Administrative staff. A Governor of the City of Jerusalem shall
be appointed by the Trusteeship Council and shall be responsible to it. He shall
be selected on the basis of special qualifications and without regard to
nationality. He shall not, however, be a citizen of either State in Palestine.

The Governor shall represent the United Nations in the City and shall exercise
on their behalf all powers of administration, including the conduct of external
affairs. He shall be assisted by an administrative staff classed as international
officers in the meaning of Article 100 of the Charter and chosen whenever
practicable from the residents of the city and of the rest of Palestine on a non-
discriminatory basis. A detailed plan for the organization of the administration
of the city shall be submitted by the Governor to the Trusteeship Council and
duly approved by it.

3. Local autonomy

The existing local autonomous units in the territory of the city (villages,
townships and municipalities) shall enjoy wide powers of local government and
administration.

The Governor shall study and submit for the consideration and decision of the
Trusteeship Council a plan for the establishment of special town units
consisting, respectively, of the Jewish and Arab sections of new Jerusalem. The
new town units shall continue to form part the present municipality of
Jerusalem.

Security measures

The City of Jerusalem shall be demilitarized; neutrality shall be declared and
preserved, and no para-military formations, exercises or activities shall be
permitted within its borders.

Should the administration of the City of Jerusalem be seriously obstructed or
prevented by the non-cooperation or interference of one or more sections of the

398
population the Governor shall have authority to take such measures as may be
necessary to restore the effective functioning of administration.

To assist in the maintenance of internal law and order, especially for the
protection of the Holy Places and religious buildings and sites in the city, the
Governor shall organize a special police force of adequate strength, the
members of which shall be recruited outside of Palestine. The Governor shall be
empowered to direct such budgetary provision as may be necessary for the
maintenance of this force.

Legislative Organization.

A Legislative Council, elected by adult residents of the city irrespective of
nationality on the basis of universal and secret suffrage and proportional
representation, shall have powers of legislation and taxation. No legislative
measures shall, however, conflict or interfere with the provisions which will be
set forth in the Statute of the City, nor shall any law, regulation, or official
action prevail over them. The Statute shall grant to the Governor a right of
vetoing bills inconsistent with the provisions referred to in the preceding
sentence. It shall also empower him to promulgate temporary ordinances in case
the Council fails to adopt in time a bill deemed essential to the normal
functioning of the administration.

Administration of Justice.

The Statute shall provide for the establishment of an independent judiciary
system, including a court of appeal. All the inhabitants of the city shall be
subject to it.

Economic Union and Economic Regime.

The City of Jerusalem shall be included in the Economic Union of Palestine and
be bound by all stipulations of the undertaking and of any treaties issued
therefrom, as well as by the decisions of the Joint Economic Board. The
headquarters of the Economic Board shall be established in the territory City.
The Statute shall provide for the regulation of economic matters not falling
within the regime of the Economic Union, on the basis of equal treatment and
non-discrimination for all members of thc United Nations and their nationals.

Freedom of Transit and Visit: Control of residents.

Subject to considerations of security, and of economic welfare as determined by
the Governor under the directions of the Trusteeship Council, freedom of entry

399
into, and residence within the borders of the City shall be guaranteed for the
residents or citizens of the Arab and Jewish States. Immigration into, and
residence within, the borders of the city for nationals of other States shall be
controlled by the Governor under the directions of the Trusteeship Council.

Relations with Arab and Jewish States. Representatives of the Arab and Jewish
States shall be accredited to the Governor of the City and charged with the
protection of the interests of their States and nationals in connection with the
international administration of thc City.

Official languages.

Arabic and Hebrew shall be the official languages of the city. This will not
preclude the adoption of one or more additional working languages, as may be
required.

Citizenship.

All the residents shall become ipso facto citizens of the City of Jerusalem unless
they opt for citizenship of the State of which they have been citizens or, if Arabs
or Jews, have filed notice of intention to become citizens of the Arab or Jewish
State respectively, according to Part 1, section B, paragraph 9, of this Plan.

The Trusteeship Council shall make arrangements for consular protection of the
citizens of the City outside its territory.

Freedoms of citizens

Subject only to the requirements of public order and morals, the inhabitants of
the City shall be ensured the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental
freedoms, including freedom of conscience, religion and worship, language,
education, speech and press, assembly and association, and petition.

No discrimination of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants on the
grounds of race, religion, language or sex.

All persons within the City shall be entitled to equal protection of the laws.

The family law and personal status of the various persons and communities and
their religious interests, including endowments, shall be respected.

Except as may be required for the maintenance of public order and good
government, no measure shall be taken to obstruct or interfere with the

400
enterprise of religious or charitable bodies of all faiths or to discriminate against
any representative or member of these bodies on the ground of his religion or
nationality.

The City shall ensure adequate primary and secondary education for the Arab
and Jewish communities respectively, in their own languages and in accordance
with their cultural traditions.

The right of each community to maintain its own schools for the education of its
own members in its own language, while conforming to such educational
requirements of a general nature as the City may impose, shall not be denied or
impaired. Foreign educational establishments shall continue their activity on the
basis of their existing rights.

No restriction shall be imposed on the free use by any inhabitant of the City of
any language in private intercourse, in commerce, in religion, in the Press or in
publications of any kind, or at public meetings.

Holy Places Existing rights in respect of Holy Places and religious buildings or
sites shall not be denied or impaired.

Free access to the Holy Places and religious buildings or sites and the free
exercise of worship shall be secured in conformity with existing rights and
subject to the requirements of public order and decorum.

Holy Places and religious buildings or sites shall be preserved. No act shall be
permitted which may in any way impair their sacred character. If at any time it
appears to the Governor that any particular Holy Place, religious building or site
is in need of urgent repair, the Governor may call upon the community or
communities concerned to carry out such repair. The Governor may carry it out
himself at the expense of the community or communities concerned if no action
is taken within a reasonable time.

No taxation shall be levied in respect of any Holy Place, religious building or
site which was exempt from taxation on the date of the creation of the City. No
change in the incidence of such taxation shall be made which would either
discriminate between the owners or occupiers of Holy Places, religious
buildings or sites or would place such owners or occupiers in a position less
favourable in relation to the general incidence of taxation than existed at the
time of the adoption of the Assembly's recommendations.

Special powers of the Governor in respect of the Holy Places, religious
buildings and sites in the City and in any part of Palestine.

401

The protection of the Holy Places, religious buildings and sites located in the
City of Jerusalem shall be a special concern of the Governor. With relation to
such places, buildings and sites in Palestine outside the city, the Governor shall
determine, on the ground of powers granted to him by the Constitution of both
States, whether the provisions of the Constitution of the Arab and Jewish States
in Palestine dealing therewith and the religious rights appertaining thereto are
being properly applied and respected.

The Governor shall also be empowered to make decisions on the basis of
existing rights in cases of disputes which may arise between the different
religious communities or the rites of a religious community in respect of the
Holy Places, religious buildings and sites in any part of Palestine.

In this task he may be assisted by a consultative council of representatives of
different denominations acting in an advisory capacity.

D. DURATION OF THE SPECIAL REGIME

The Statute elaborated by the Trusteeship Council the aforementioned principles
shall come into force not later than 1 October 1948. It shall remain in force in
the first instance for a period of ten years, unless the Trusteeship Council finds
it necessary to undertake a re-examination of these provisions at an earlier date.
After the expiration of this period the whole scheme shall be subject to
examination by the Trusteeship Council in the light of experience acquired with
its functioning. The residents the City shall be then free to express by means of
a referendum their wishes as to possible modifications of regime of the City.

Part IV. Capitulations

States whose nationals have in the past enjoyed in Palestine the privileges and
immunities of foreigners, including the benefits of consular jurisdiction and
protection, as formerly enjoyed by capitulation or usage in the Ottoman Empire,
are invited to renounce any right pertaining to them to the re-establishment of
such privileges and immunities in the proposed Arab and Jewish States and the
City of Jerusalem.

Adopted at the 128th plenary meeting:

In favour: 33

Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Byelorussian S.S.R., Canada, Costa Rica,
Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Guatemala,

402
Haiti, Iceland, Liberia, Luxemburg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua,
Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Sweden, Ukrainian
S.S.R., Union of South Africa, U.S.A., U.S.S.R., Uruguay, Venezuela.

Against: 13

Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi
Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen.

Abstained: 10

Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mexico,
United Kingdom, Yugoslavia.

(1) See Official Records of the General Assembly, Second Session Supplement
No. 11,Volumes l-lV. Return to Text
* At its hundred and twenty-eighth plenary meeting on 29 November 1947 the
General Assembly, in accordance with the terms of the above resolution, elected
the following members of the United Nations Commission on Palestine:
Bolivia, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Panama, and Philippines. Return to Text
(2) This resolution was adopted without reference to a Committee. Return to
Text
(3) The following stipulation shall be added to the declaration concerning the
Jewish State: "In the Jewish State adequate facilities shall be given to Arabic-
speaking citizens for the use of their language, either orally or in writing, in the
legislature, before the Courts and in the administration." Return to Text
(4) In the declaration concerning the Arab State, the words "by an Arab in the
Jewish State" should be replaced by the words "by a Jew in the Arab State."
Return to Text
(5) On the question of the internationalization of Jerusalem, see also General
Assembly resolutions 185 (S-2) of 26 April 1948; 187 (S-2) of 6 May 1948, 303
(lV) of 9 December 1949, and resolutions of the Trusteeship Council (Section
IV).

Source – The Avalon Project at Yale Law School
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm

403
APPENDIX C
UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 242
NOVEMBER 22, 1967

The Security Council,

Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle
East,

Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and
the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can
live in security,

Emphasizing further that all Member States in their acceptance of the
Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in
accordance with Article 2 of the Charter,

1. Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the
establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should
include the application of both the following principles:

(i) Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the
recent conflict;

(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and
acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political
independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace
within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;

2. Affirms further the necessity

(a) For guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways
in the area;

(b) For achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem;

(c) For guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political independence
of every State in the area, through measures including the establishment of
demilitarized zones;

404
3. Requests the Secretary General to designate a Special Representative to
proceed to the Middle East to establish and maintain contacts with the States
concerned in order to promote agreement and assist efforts to achieve a peaceful
and accepted settlement in accordance with the provisions and principles in this
resolution;

4. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council on the
progress of the efforts of the Special Representative as soon as possible.

Adopted Unanimously at
the 1382
nd
Meeting

French Version

Le Conseil de sécurité,

Exprimant l’inquiétude que continue de lui causer la grave situation au Moyen-
Oreint,

Soulignant l’inadmissibilité de l’acquisition de territoire par la guerre et la
nécessité d’œuvrer pour une paix juste et durable permettant à chaque Etat de la
région de vivre en sécurité,

Soulignant en outre que tous les Etats Membres, en acceptant la Charte des
Nations Unies, ont contracté l’engàgement d’agir conformément à l’Article 2 de
la Charte,

1. Affirme que l’accomplissement des principes de la Charte exige
l’instauration d’une paix juste et durable au Moyen-Orient qui devrait
comprendre l’application des deux principes suivants:

i) Retrait des forces armées israéliennes des territories occupés lors du
récent conflit;

ii) Cessation de toutes assertions de belligérance ou de tous états de
belligérance et respect et reconnaissance de la souveraineté, de
l’intégrité territoriale et de l’indépendance politique de chaque Etat
de la région et de leur droit de vivre en paix à l’intérieur de frontiére
sûres et reconnues à l’abri de menaces ou d’actes de force;

2. Affirme en outre la nécessité

405
a) De garantir la liberté de navigation sur les voies d’eau internationales de
la région;

b) De réaliser un just règlement du problème des réfugiés;

c) De garantir l’inviolabilité territoriale et l’indépendance politique de
chaque Etat de la région, par des mesures comprenant la création de
zones démilitarisées;

3. Prie le Secrétaire général de désigner un représentant spécial pour se
rendre au Moyen-Orient afin d’y établir et d’y maintenir des rapports
avec les Etats intéressés en vue de favoriser un accord et de seconder les
efforts tendant à aboutir à un règlement pacifique et accepté,
conformément aux dispositions et aux principes de la présente
résolution;

4. Prie le Secrétaire général de présenter aussitôt que possible au Conseil
de sécurité un rapport d’activité sur les efforts du représentant spécial.

Adoptée à l’unanimité à la
1382
e
séance.

406
APPENDIX D
UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY RESOLUTION 194
PROGRESS REPORT OF THE UNITED NATIONS MEDIATOR
DECEMBER 11, 1948

The General Assembly,

Having considered further the situation in Palestine,

1. Expresses its deep appreciation of the progress achieved through the good
offices of the late United Nations Mediator in promoting a peaceful adjustment
of the future situation of Palestine, for which cause he sacrificed his life; and

Extends its thanks to the Acting Mediator and his staff for their continued
efforts and devotion to duty in Palestine;

2. Establishes a Conciliation Commission consisting of three States members of
the United Nations which shall have the following functions:

(a) To assume, in so far as it considers necessary in existing circumstances, the
functions given to the United Nations Mediator on Palestine by resolution 186
(S-2) of the General Assembly of 14 May 1948;

(b) To carry out the specific functions and directives given to it by the present
resolution and such additional functions and directives as may be given to it by
the General Assembly or by the Security Council;

(c) To undertake, upon the request of the Security Council, any of the functions
now assigned to the United Nations Mediator on Palestine or to the United
Nations Truce Commission by resolutions of the Security Council; upon such
request to the Conciliation Commission by the Security Council with respect to
all the remaining functions of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine under
Security Council resolutions, the office of the Mediator shall be terminated;

3. Decides that a Committee of the Assembly, consisting of China, France, the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and the United States
of America, shall present, before the end of the first part of the present session
of the General Assembly, for the approval of the Assembly, a proposal
concerning the names of the three States which will constitute the Conciliation
Commission;

407
4. Requests the Commission to begin its functions at once, with a view to the
establishment of contact between the parties themselves and the Commission at
the earliest possible date;

5. Calls upon the Governments and authorities concerned to extend the scope of
the negotiations provided for in the Security Council's resolution of 16
November 1948 1/ and to seek agreement by negotiations conducted either with
the Conciliation Commission or directly, with a view to the final settlement of
all questions outstanding between them;

6. Instructs the Conciliation Commission to take steps to assist the Governments
and authorities concerned to achieve a final settlement of all questions
outstanding between them;

7. Resolves that the Holy Places - including Nazareth - religious buildings and
sites in Palestine should be protected and free access to them assured, in
accordance with existing rights and historical practice; that arrangements to this
end should be under effective United Nations supervision; that the United
Nations Conciliation Commission, in presenting to the fourth regular session of
the General Assembly its detailed proposals for a permanent international
regime for the territory of Jerusalem, should include recommendations
concerning the Holy Places in that territory; that with regard to the Holy Places
in the rest of Palestine the Commission should call upon the political authorities
of the areas concerned to give appropriate formal guarantees as to the protection
of the Holy Places and access to them; and that these undertakings should be
presented to the General Assembly for approval;

8. Resolves that, in view of its association with three world religions, the
Jerusalem area, including the present municipality of Jerusalem plus the
surrounding villages and towns, the most eastern of which shall be Abu Dis; the
most southern, Bethlehem; the most western, Ein Karim (including also the
built-up area of Motsa); and the most northern, Shu'fat, should be accorded
special and separate treatment from the rest of Palestine and should be placed
under effective United Nations control;

Requests the Security Council to take further steps to ensure the demilitarization
of Jerusalem at the earliest possible date;

Instructs the Conciliation Commission to present to the fourth regular session of
the General Assembly detailed proposals for a permanent international regime
for the Jerusalem area which will provide for the maximum local autonomy for
distinctive groups consistent with the special international status of the
Jerusalem area;

408

The Conciliation Commission is authorized to appoint a United Nations
representative, who shall co-operate with the local authorities with respect to the
interim administration of the Jerusalem area;

9. Resolves that, pending agreement on more detailed arrangements among the
Governments and authorities concerned, the freest possible access to Jerusalem
by road, rail or air should be accorded to all inhabitants of Palestine;

Instructs the Conciliation Commission to report immediately to the Security
Council, for appropriate action by that organ, any attempt by any party to
impede such access;

10. Instructs the Conciliation Commission to seek arrangements among the
Governments and authorities concerned which will facilitate the economic
development of the area, including arrangements for access to ports and
airfields and the use of transportation and communication facilities;

11. 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;

Instructs the Conciliation Commission to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement
and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of
compensation, and to maintain close relations with the Director of the United
Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees and, through him, with the appropriate
organs and agencies of the United Nations;

12. Authorizes the Conciliation Commission to appoint such subsidiary bodies
and to employ such technical experts, acting under its authority, as it may find
necessary for the effective discharge of its functions and responsibilities under
the present resolution;

The Conciliation Commission will have its official headquarters at Jerusalem.
The authorities responsible for maintaining order in Jerusalem will be
responsible for taking all measures necessary to ensure the security of the
Commission. The Secretary-General will provide a limited number of guards to
the protection of the staff and premises of the Commission;

13. Instructs the Conciliation Commission to render progress reports

409
periodically to the Secretary-General for transmission to the Security Council
and to the Members of the United Nations;

14. Calls upon all Governments and authorities concerned to co-operate with
the Conciliation Commission and to take all possible steps to assist in the
implementation of the present resolution;

15. Requests the Secretary-General to provide the necessary staff and facilities
and to make appropriate arrangements to provide the necessary funds required
in carrying out the terms of the present resolution.
* * *

At the 186th plenary meeting on 11 December 1948, a committee of the
Assembly consisting of the five States designated in paragraph 3 of the above
resolution proposed that the following three States should constitute the
Conciliation Commission:
France, Turkey, United States of America.

The proposal of the Committee having been adopted by the General Assembly at
the same meeting, the Conciliation Commission is therefore composed of the
above-mentioned three States.

____________________

1) See Official Records of the Security Council, Third Year, No. 126.

Abstract (if available)

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Nation in uniform: Chicano/Latino war narratives and the construction of nation in the Korean War and Vietnam War

PDF

Emergency-war machine: national crisis, democratic governance, and the historical construction of the American state

Asset Metadata

Creator Rousso-Schindler, Steven Neil (author)

Core Title Israeli and Palestinian national narratives: national and individual constructions, social suffering narratives, and everyday performances

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Social Anthropology

Degree Conferral Date 2007-05

Publication Date 06/29/2007

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag everyday performance,Israel,national narrative,OAI-PMH Harvest,Palestine

Place Name Israel (countries), Palestine (countries)

Language English

Advisor Moore, Alexander (committee chair), Brand, Laurie A. (committee member), Seaman, Gary (committee member)

Creator Email schindl@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m550

Unique identifier UC1485125

Identifier etd-RoussoSchindler-20070629 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-513766 (legacy record id),usctheses-m550 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-RoussoSchindler-20070629.pdf

Dmrecord 513766

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Rousso-Schindler, Steven Neil

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu