Introduction:

Collective Memory and the

Palestinian Experience
Meir Litvak

he essays in this book analyze the evolution of modern Palestinian collective memory and its role in shaping Palestinian national identity.
No group identity exists without memory as its core meaning; the sense of
continuity over time and space is sustained by remembering, and what is
remembered is defined by the assumed identity. Every group develops the
memory of its own past and so highlights its unique identity vis--vis
other groups. These reconstructed images of the past provide the group
with an account of its origin and development and thus allow it to develop
a historical identity. The past the group prizes is domestic: the histories
of foreign lands are alien and incompatible with its own past. National
identity requires both having a heritage and believing it to be unique.1
While true for every nation, these observations are particularly appropriate for the Palestinians as a semidiasporic people still engaged in a
struggle for statehood and a process of nation building. Moreover, while
collective memory is the basis of every national identity, it seems to play a
more substantial role in shaping the self-perception and culture of peoples
that have suffered historical defeats (such as the Serbs, the Jews, and the
Palestinians) than of victorious nations (such as the Americans). In the
words of Ernest Renan, suffering in common unifies more than joy does.
Where national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than
triumphs, for they impose duties, and require a common effort.2
Palestinian nationalismthe belief that the Arab population of
Palestine forms a collectivity distinct from that of the surrounding states

MEIR LITVAK

while being part of the broader Arab nationis the product of modernity,
modernization, and contingent political developments, like all other
nationalisms in the Arab world. Under Muslim rule (6381917), Palestine
as defined by its present borders never constituted a single political,
administrative, socioeconomic, or cultural unit. Geographically, it was
part of Bilad al-Sham, or geographic Syria. Moreover, notwithstanding the
countrys small geographical area, the local Arabic-speaking population
(about 340,000 in 1850) was divided along religious, regional, economic,
ecological, factional, and clannish lines, as was the case throughout the
region. Islam served as the major focus of identity for the majority of
the Muslim population, manifested in its allegiance to and support of the
Ottoman Empire (15171918). The smaller Christian population was
divided along various denominational lines. Clan and village served as
additional pillars of identity, alongside religion.3 Concurrently, both the
religious importance of Jerusalem, which served as the capital of a distinct
district (sanjak), and the countrys sanctity to Christianity contributed to
the creation of a vague regional identity in parts of Palestine, albeit without political ramifications.
When nationalism emerged in Palestine prior to World War I, it was in
the form of Arabism rather than as a distinct Palestinian identity. The few
dozen nationalist activists from Palestine did not set up their own organizations, nor did they call for a separate Palestinian entity. Rather, they
joined the secret Arab associations, al-Fatat and al-Ahd, alongside activists
from (future) Syria and Iraq. These associations advocated Arab autonomy
within the Ottoman Empire.4
Most scholars agree that a specifically Palestinian national identity
emerged only in the wake of World War I as a result of several interlinked
processes and political upheavals: the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire,
the failure of an indigenous successor-state to unite ex-Ottoman Syria, the
escalating Zionist challenge, the establishment of British rule over a territorially distinct Palestine, and the corresponding politicization of Palestinians
due to unsettled conditions between 1914 and 1923. Historians differ,
however, as to the relative weight of these factors.5
Although the establishment of the British Mandate and the struggle
with Zionism intensified the evolution of a distinct Palestinian national
identity, Palestinian society was less successful than the Zionist movement
in building a political and socioeconomic institutional infrastructure. The
first recognized leadership, the Palestinian Executive Committee, disintegrated after the death of its chairman, Musa Kazem al-Husayni, in 1934. Its
successor, the Arab Higher Committee, was banned by the British following the outbreak of the 1936 Rebellion, and its leader, Hajj Amin
al-Husayni, fled the country. The rebellion, which continued till 1939,

INTRODUCTION

ended in internal Palestinian strife, which cost the lives of approximately

3,000 Palestinians, more than the number killed by the British and the
Jews. So divided were the Palestinians that the Arab League had to determine the composition of the newly established Arab Higher Committee in
1945.6 Two other important indications of the weakness of Palestinian
national identity and cohesion were the sale of land to Jews by Palestinian
landlords and the clandestine cooperation of a large number of
Palestinians with the Zionists, mostly for financial benefit.7
The Palestinians failure at institution building and the internal social
pressure brought about by Zionist immigration were important factors
in their defeat in the war that they launched on the morrow of the adoption of the 1947 UN Partition Resolution, which stipulated Palestines
partition into a Jewish and an Arab state.8 While the Palestinians were
unanimous (aside from the very small communist party) in their rejection of partition and the establishment of the State of Israel, they did not
fight as a coherent national movement. They failed to present a united
front, and their armed militias hardly ever cooperated or even extended
help to each other. Despite outnumbering the Jewsby 1.2 million to
600,000they mobilized fewer fighters in most crucial battles. Equally
important is the fact that the Palestinian social services, which depended
heavily on the British administration, broke down when the British left
the country, thereby accelerating the disintegration of Palestinian society
and contributing to Palestinian military defeat.9 The defeat resulted in
the establishment of the State of Israel on about 78 percent of historical
Palestine and the uprooting of about 650,000 peopleeither during
battle or by expulsionleading to the creation of the Palestinian refugee
problem.10
While the formation of a distinct Palestinian national identity was the
outcome of a series of developments, there is no doubt that the 1948
defeat, or Nakba (catastrophe) in Palestinian terminology, is the major
event or issue on which Palestinian identity now stands. According to
Rosemary Sayigh, who conducted a sociological survey on Palestinian
identity in refugee camps in Lebanon in the 1970s, most Palestinians
would have defined themselves prior to 1948 either as Arabs or on the basis
of their local regional origin, both identities superseding their Palestinian
identity.11 Aziz Haidar went even further when he wrote that until 1948
the Palestinians did not constitute a distinct group that had any sort of
ethnic identity, adding that the differences between the Palestinians and
the bordering peoples of the region were less obvious than the differences
within the Palestinian population itself. Nor, he said, did the Palestinians
note any distinguishing traits to differentiate themselves from other
Arabs.12

MEIR LITVAK

In contrast to other Arab states that engaged in concerted nation building after gaining independence, the defeat and displacement dealt a heavy
blow to the Palestinian national movement, which remained leaderless and
without any effective institutions. Palestinians were dispersed throughout
four communities: those who had left Palestine altogether and resided in
refugee camps, mostly in Lebanon and Syria; those who had remained in
geographic Palestinethat is, both the original inhabitants and the
refugeesand were divided among the Jordanian-ruled central area that
became known as the West Bank of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (about
700,000 people); the Palestinian community in the Egyptian-controlled Gaza
Strip (about 200,000 people); and the Palestinian community in Israel proper
(about 130,000 people). Two of these communitiesthose under Jordanian
rule and those in Israelexperienced a systematic and coercive attempt at
de-Palestinization, mainly through harsh political control and educational
attempts to reconstruct their collective identity. The Hashemites imposed a
Jordanian identity, while the Israelis created an Israeli Arab identity.
Indeed, only with the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO) in 1964 and the official emergence of Fatah in 1965 did a national
movement reemerge.
Yet, it was the bitter encounter with, and rejection by, the neighboring
Arab societies that finally fostered a distinct Palestinian identity among the
refugees.13 The Palestinians were resented by other Arabs for a combination of political, social, and economic factors, and were considered intruders and disruptive outsiders, thereby revealing the disparity between the
ideal and the reality of Arab unity.14
The crystallization of ethnic identity within the Palestinian communities throughout the Middle East was therefore, and to a large extent, the
result of their inferior economic, social, and political status in the host
communities, rather than of basic cultural differences between them and
the other populations of the region.15 A Fatah publication in the 1960s
boldly asserted that the persecution of the Palestinians in the Arab lands
contributed to the perpetuation of the Palestinian personality and prevented its assimilation. Reacting to their treatment by other Arab societies, the Palestinians developed a sense of alienation from and hostility
toward other Arab regimes and peoples. Moreover, their experience with
Israeli rule and their status as a minority in a Jewish state sharpened the
Palestinian identity of those who had become Israeli citizens.16
The major formative element of Palestinian identity, however, was
the Nakba. Since language had never been a distinctive component of
Palestinian identity, and the territory was partly lost and divided, the third
constitutive element of national identity, collective memory, became the
major force of preserving and cultivating Palestinian nationalism.

INTRODUCTION

Palestinian Identity in Light of the Literature on Nationalism

As the study of nationalism has developed considerably in recent years, it
raises the question of the extent to which the various theoretical
approaches, ranging from the primordialist-perennialist to the radical
modernist, advance our understanding of the birth and evolution of
Palestinian national identity and of the role collective memory played in
its development.17 As in most cases in the world, Palestinian nationalists
too adopted the primordialist argument, asserting the existence of a distinct Palestinian-Arab people dating back to the ancient Canaanite period.
The vast majority of scholars of nationalism do not subscribe to this
type of primordialist argument, which does not take into account the
dynamics of historical development and change. It can be shown that the
Arabic-speaking inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire retained the notion
of a distinct identity based on language, on shared memories of an early
Arab-Islamic past, and on territorial concentration. However, these feelings pertained to a much broader identity than the Palestinian one, pointing to latent Arab ethnicity, and encompassed greater territories and
groups than the future political and national units of the Middle East.18
Considering the great historical upheavals that have taken place in
Palestine, involving population migrations as well as linguistic, religious,
and cultural changes, it is practically impossible to establish direct continuity from the Canaanite period to the present.19 Furthermore, aside from
the periods of Jewish presence in the land, which the Palestinians exclude
from this narrative, there is no historical indication that the inhabitants of
Palestine developed a sense of distinct identity or acted politically upon it
prior to the twentieth century.
The Weaknesses of the Mechanistic Approach
Ernest Gellner and Eric Hobsbawm, who stand at the other extreme of the
primordial approach, see national identity as a purely modern phenomenon, a product of social engineering, and a contingent, artificial, ideological invention. Gellner views industrialization and its related development
of urbanization as the main force in the creation of nationalism. The modern states need for an industrial workforce and a modern military could
only be met by the nation state whose centralized system of education
would facilitate the creation of a uniform mass culture that is literate and
specialized or, in other words, a high culture. These developments erode
the traditional ties among people and bring about a new set of social
relationships whose linchpin is nationalism. In Gellners words,
[Nationalism] invents nations where they do not exist.20

MEIR LITVAK

Hobsbawm goes further in describing nationalism as a fabrication of

elite groups. According to Hobsbawm these elites seek to manipulate the
masses by inventing traditions. They link the masses to the past, in order
to legitimize their hold on power and to divert the social grievances of the
masses against foreign states, thus foiling both revolutionary processes and
democratization. However, whereas Gellner accepts the sociological reality
of nations and nationalism once they have been formed, Hobsbawm
dismisses this reality as purely artificial.21
Undoubtedly, modernizationand the spread of modern education
following Ottoman reforms and foreign missionary activitiesplayed a
crucial role in the evolution of nationalism in the Middle East. Yet
Gellners approach, as various historians have pointed out, is too mechanistic and leaves no room for human agency in history. Moreover, as far as
Middle Eastern nationalisms are concerned, his emphasis on the creation
of nationalism by states for the purpose of industrialization has little
relevance to the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Middle Eastern
agrarian societies. Ottoman centralization efforts during the nineteenth
century were aimed at creating an Ottoman imperial identity, not a modern nationalist one. If they contributed to nationalism, it was only indirectly and unintentionally, by eroding the religious basis and raison dtre
of the Ottoman Empire. But more importantly, reaction and opposition to
Ottoman centralization and Turkification policies actually engendered an
Arab, not a separate Palestinian, nationalism.22
Gellners approach may be more applicable to the postindependent era
when various Arab states, most notably Iraq, sought to forge a uniform
national identity out of disparate religious and sometimes ethnic groupings. However, it is of little use in the Palestinian case, since there is no
Palestinian state as yet. Moreover, there is no need to forge an industrial
workforce and an army of soldiers who are able to read training manuals
for machines and weapons in one written language, instead of in a variety
of vernaculars. Indeed, Palestinian industrialization is minimal and is in
any case not supported by a state; nor are there any minorities that use different vernaculars. The common written language, literary Arabic, is not
unique to the Palestinians but is shared by other Arab states, and emphasizing its role does in fact enhance a broader Arab identity over a distinct
Palestinian nationalism.
Hobsbawms emphasis on the artificiality of nationalism and on what he
sees as a purely cultural artifact does not account for its success in inspiring
the loyalty and self-sacrifice of a great many peoplethe Palestinians
included. Nor does it account for the failure of authoritarian states like the
former Soviet Union or Yugoslavia to create a Soviet or Yugoslav nationalism that would bridge the cleavages between ethnically diverse populations.

INTRODUCTION

Ironically, the Marxist Hobsbawm portrays the masses as a purely passive

collective, which lacks any clear perception of its culture, identity, or memories of its past, and is easily manipulated by the elites.
Nor, maintains Anthony Smith, do Gellner and Hobsbawm explain why
elites or people in general feel the need to refer back to their ancestral
traditions or invent traditions that are linked with them. According to
Smith, it is very likely because these traditions are still powerful, so that
many people continue to follow them, however irrelevant they may seem
to some scholars and to theorists of modernity.23 There is no doubt, as the
various chapters of this book will show, that the past, real or imagined,
plays a crucial role in Palestinian identity and nationalism.
Whatever its roots, Palestinian national identity is genuine, and many
Palestinians are willing to sacrifice their lives for it. Dismissing these feelings as mere products of manipulation not only reflects a patronizing attitude but also ignores the complexity of the historical processes that took
place in the territory of the former British Mandate of Palestine.
The Palestinians as Imagined Community and as Ethnie
The emergence of Palestinian nationalism is best explained by combining
elements from the two seemingly opposing approaches to the study of
nationalism advocated by Benedict Anderson and Anthony Smith.
Anderson, one of the leading advocates of the modernist school,
focuses on the dynamic modes of identity construction and emphasizes
the creative and contingent character of national identity as well as its
adaptability to a myriad political and social contexts in the modern
world. The process is intimately tied to modernity, secularism, and capitalism, all of which triggered the diffusion of the written word through
what Anderson terms print capitalism, thus facilitating the development
of collective political mobilization. The two major tools of print capitalism, namely, the newspaper and the novel, created new concepts of space
and time, generating a new sense of community. The diffusion of print
and the transformation of oral vernaculars into written languages coincided with a process of secularization, the declining sanctity of imperial
dynasties, and the fragmentation of Europe. Both the people and their
language gained in importance, and the printed word became the hallmark of the new communities.24 While Anderson emphasizes the centrality of the ceaseless process of identity building, the imagining of the
community, he does not imply that nations are fictitious or imaginary.
On the contrary, they are a genuine phenomenon rooted in historical
processes. However, unlike the much smaller traditional communities,
members of the modern nations will never know all their fellow members

MEIR LITVAK

personally, and can therefore only relate to their nation through their
imagination.
Although there are some major differences between the Middle Eastern
historical scene and Andersons description of the European one, his
model contains some points that may be very useful for explaining the
emergence of Palestinian nationalism. True, Arab nationalism did not
evolve out of the breakdown of an older, sacred language (Latin, in the
European case) and the transformation of oral vernaculars into written
languages, but it came about through the vehicle of literary, not spoken,
Arabicthat is, classical Arabic, which has always retained a significant
cultural and symbolic role. Furthermore, unlike the vernaculars in Europe,
the various Arab vernaculars never evolved into written languages. The
central and sacred role of literary Arabic as the language of the Quran
stands in the way of such a process, thereby slowing down the evolution of
distinct identities within a broader Arab nationalism.25
Yet, the development of print capitalism produced a modern middle
Arabic, which became the dominant vehicle of written cultural production in the Arab Middle East. Equally important, the Arab cultural revival
provided the cultural and historical repertoire on which the twentiethcentury Arab nationalists could fall back when they were looking for new
frameworks of identity to replace the Ottoman one. It is this cultural storage that explains why Arabism was chosen by these elites over other potentially competing ideologies and identities.26
While the development of the modern Arab press definitely facilitated
the growth of Arab nationalism, the diffusion of the modern press in
Ottoman Palestine fulfilled a particularly important role in laying the
foundation of a distinct Palestinian identity. Newspapers create a sense of
community and territory by focusing on issues especially relevant to a perceived community and by drawing a distinction between local, territorial,
national, and foreign news. The most prominent example was the biweekly
Filastin, which was founded by the Christian al-Isa cousins, Isa and Daud,
in Jaffa in 1911 and became the Arab newspaper with the largest circulation in the country. Although the boundaries of the geographical region
envisioned by the name Filastin (Palestine) were not clear, the papers
categorizations or distinction between local and foreign news, and particularly its vocal opposition to Zionism, played a key role in instilling
the notion of Palestine as a geographical and sociopolitical entity, whose
various social groupings were threatened by Zionism.27
Another major contribution of Anderson, based on the case of Latin
America, concerns the role of colonial boundaries in shaping modern
national consciousness. In postcolonial societies, territory carved by colonial
powers often defines the nation.28 Under the Pax Ottomanica, the historian

INTRODUCTION

Haim Gerber maintains, the empire was subdivided into provinces whose
names and borders kept changing over time. The borders did not hinder
movements, and therefore no psychological barriers between areas were created.29 The situation changed drastically with the postWorld War I colonial
division, mandated by the Great Powers, which created new territorial entities with fixed borders under different foreign administrations and political
centers, and governed by different political systemsmonarchies in Iraq
and Transjordan under the British Mandate, republican systems in Frenchruled Syria and Lebanon, and Palestine with its own distinct administration.
These new entities, artificial as they might initially have been, shaped different political, social, and cultural communities, which gradually acquired
lives of their own.
The importance of colonial boundaries in shaping national identities is
particularly pertinent to Palestinian nationalism. In the immediate
postWorld War I period, Arab nationalists and the Muslim population of
Palestine opposed the separation of Palestine from the newly emerging
Arab kingdom in Syria and adopted the identity and political program of
southern Syria (Suriyya al-Janubiyya) as the best means to foil the looming Zionist threat. During Faysals short-lived rule in Damascus, thousands
of Palestinian notables, teachers, professionals, and intellectuals signed
petitions to the British government, asserting their conviction that the territory was a part of Syria. The First Palestinian Arab Congress, held in
Jerusalem at the beginning of 1919, stated in its resolution: We consider
Palestine nothing but part of Arab Syria and it has never been separated
from it at any stage. We are tied to it by national (qawmi), religious, linguistic, moral, economic, and geographic bonds.30 Although the southern
Syrian collective identity almost completely disappeared from the local
political scene following the fall of Faysals kingdom, Palestinian writers
continued, well into the late 1940s, to denounce the carving of the artificial border between Palestine and Syria as a negative byproduct of British
imperialism and Zionism.
Yet, in the course of time, the new border marked the distinctly
different historical courses that the two societies experienced in Britishmandated Palestine and French-mandated Syria with all their concomitant
administrative, economic, and political ramifications. Likewise, the carving of the Emirate of Transjordan from the territory of Mandatory
Palestine, and the 1922 British White Paper, which excluded Transjordan
from the area in which the Jewish national home was to be established,
were the decisive factors in the creation of two increasingly different identities, Palestinian and Jordanian. Equally important is the fact that
Palestine west of the Jordan River henceforth became the contested
territory between the Palestinian and the Jewish national movements.31

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MEIR LITVAK

Another manifestation of the impact of borders on the evolution of

consciousness is found in Mahmud Ghanayims chapter on the crisis of
identity of Palestinians inside Israel as reflected in literature. The post1948 borders and subsequent political, administrative, and socioeconomic
developments shaped the consciousness of Palestinian Israelis as a distinct
subgroup of the Palestinian people. Using literary analysis as his main tool,
Ghanayim shows the successive tribulations of that identity formation
over the past 60 yearsbelonging to the Arab nation and the Palestinian
people, while living as Israeli citizens and as a distinct minority within the
State of Israel, itself in a state of nearly constant hostility with the Arab
world and the Palestinian people.
A corollary to the boundaries was the drawing of maps that transformed the new imagined community into a visualized and concrete
reality. The importance of maps of Palestine with its mandatory borders is
evident since they serve as the sole basis for the definition of the territory
of Palestine for both the nationalist PLO and the Islamic Hamas, as shown
by Meir Litvak and Sariel Birnbaum in this volume.32 Moreover, Birnbaum
also illustrates that in the Palestinian case the map is designed to preserve
the spatial reality that was lost in 1948. Hence, while the Palestinian discourse frequently refers to maps of Mandatory Palestine, even marking
Arab villages that no longer exist, these maps patently ignore existing
Jewish localities inside Israel. The continuous use of these maps signifies
the gap between a political reality that requires territorial compromise and
the Palestinians unfulfilled national aspirations.
The Palestinian case provides a good example of Andersons observation
that nationalist mythmakers sometimes engage in a process of modular
transfer by ascribing to their own national movement the characteristics of
other, previously successful movements.33 Not only did Palestinians adopt
myths of ancient descent, borrowing from Western scholarship and models, but on occasions they even emulated Zionism. Most conspicuous on the
symbolic level is the Palestinian 1988 Declaration of Independence, which
exhibits substantial, and very likely intentional, resemblance to the 1948
Israeli Declaration of Independence.34 Another case in point, discussed in
Esther Webmans essay, is the application of the Holocaust discourse and
vocabulary to the Palestinian national disaster, the Nakba. Illustrating the
same process is the Palestinian institution-building effort, whichwhether
consciously or notfollowed various Zionist models, apparently in the
belief that these models played a key role in the success of Zionism and in
the Palestinians own defeat in 1948.35
Anthony Smith accepts the modernity of nationalism as an ideological
movement. However, he departs from the modernist camp by maintaining
that there is an essential ethnic core to almost all modern nations.

INTRODUCTION

11

He borrows the French term ethnie and employs it to define specific populations with shared ancestry myths, historical memories, and common cultural traits, associated with a homeland and having a sense of solidarity, at
least among the elites. He argues that modern political nationalisms cannot
be understood without reference to these earlier ethnic ties and memories,
and, in some cases, to premodern ethnic identities and communities.36
Smiths approach is particularly helpful for analyzing the rise of Arab
nationalism and explaining the Arab component in the various territorial
nationalisms in the Middle East. Unlike in the European case, the old elite
culture in the Arab provinces did not disappear with modernization, but
was adapted, expanded, and spread to form the modern national Arab
high culture. Likewise, the Arab past, particularly the association of the
glorious early days of Islam with Arabism, played an important role in
Arab political and national revival. However, these elements are less helpful in explaining Palestinian nationalism because they do not differentiate
between the Palestinians and other Arabs.
What sets the Palestinians apart are the more recent developments to
which Smith points. The first is the evolution of a particular identity as a
result of a conflict between two groups over territory; in Smiths words,
the frequency, intensity and duration of wars between rival polities
is itself a significant factor in crystallizing ethnic sentiments among
an affected population. Confrontation with an other always leads to
enhancement of the self in this case a distinct Palestinian identity.37
Modern communication, in Glen Bowmans perspective, could suffice to
create a sense of community, but it is the matter communicated that transforms this abstraction into something one can identify with and fight for.38
The imagined community is, to use Andersons term, supraterritorial
that is, Arab. However, the immediacy and proximity of the Zionist challenge distinguished the Palestinians from other Arabs. Equally important,
the Zionist challenge has politicized broader strata of society and driven
them into a prolonged and incomplete process of developing and articulating a common sense of identity, manifested in aspirations for
Palestinian-Arab statehood. The major goal of the newly formed
Palestinian nationalism was to resist or expel the source of the threat.
In a similar vein, the political geographer Oren Yiftachel shows how,
due to the inconclusive struggle with Zionism over the land, Palestinian
nationalism evolved as ethnonational in character in which territory became
the mainthough by no means soleshaper of the nation. Taking the
1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence as a prime example, he
argues that it places great importance in grounding Palestinian national
identity and claims in a specific territory, which would embody its history,
memories, culture, religion, and future.39

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MEIR LITVAK

In this context, an additional valuable point in Smiths writings is his

stress on the quest of every national movement to establish a common historical past, based on a sense of common identity and shared history.
Smith cautions that this does not mean that this history is necessarily academically valid or cogentindeed, he asserts, many nationalisms are
based on historically flawed interpretations of past events and tend to
overly mythologize small, inaccurate parts of their history. Nevertheless,
while modernists like Gellner and Hobsbawm dismiss this search for the
past as irrelevant or as an outright fabrication, Smith contends that the
past does matter, as many people appear not only to believe they have
navels; they believe in the reality of the situation which gave them navels,
and which their navels symbolize.40
Primordialist claims, according to Levinger and Franklin-Lytle, function both to construct identity and to build a highly effective rhetorical
strategy for popular mobilization. They serve as a critical element of a
common triadic structure of rhetoric, which juxtaposes idealized images
of the nations past and future conditions with a degraded present. This
narrative pattern not only motivates political action but also diagnoses
the causes of national predicament and prescribes the actions required
for the communitys redemption.41 In view of the gloomy picture of the
Palestinian present, this formula plays a central role in Palestinian national
discourse. For Palestinian society, three periods of the past are relevant in
the search for a golden age and for drawing inspiration and political motivation for present-day action: the ancient Canaanite past, highlighted by
the PLO and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA); the golden age of
Islam, to which the Islamist movement Hamas resorts; and pre-1948
Palestine, to which both parties cling. Significantly, as Litvak, Birnbaum,
and Webman show, only the latter two periods serve mobilizational purposes; in other words, while Palestinian nationalism claims primordialist
roots going back to Canaanite times, this past does not resonate with the
masses, either because it is too mythical or because it goes against powerful religious sentiments. By contrast, the early Islamic past is much more
deeply embedded in Palestinian Arab culture and religious life, while the
pre-1948 past is still a living past, both because it is still part of some peoples personal biographies and because its effects, both the dispersion and
the remnants of the lost villages, are still visible.
Collective Memory and Palestinian Nation Formation
Broadly defined, collective memory is how members of society remember
and interpret events, how the meaning of the past is constructed, and how it
is modified over time. It refers to the dissemination of beliefs, feelings, moral

INTRODUCTION

13

judgments, and knowledge about the past, both for self-understanding

and for winning power in an ever-changing reality.42 According to Maurice
Halbwachs, the first social scientist to provide a systematic analysis of this
concept, collective memory is a social construction that develops and unfolds
in specific social contexts, and as such is located within what he terms the
social framework (cadres sociaux) of memory.While only individuals possess
the capacity to contemplate the past, they do not know the past singly but as
part of a collective, social group. It is a collective phenomenon, but it only
manifests itself in the actions and statements of individuals. It is imbedded in
the social structure and changes when social bonds weaken or dissolve, or
when new bonds replace them. Consequently, the social group to which the
individuals belong influences and conditions their memories of the past. The
work of group memory, Halbwachs adds, is to respond to the needs of present action, and these needs function as a filter, which chooses between forgetting and transmitting traditions, so that traditions are modified as groups
change.43 Each group or community develops a collective memory of its own
past, which faces or confronts the collective memories of other groups. The
social function of collective memory is to reconstruct the past as well as to
legitimize the present and a much-coveted future.44 As such, it is as much a
result of conscious manipulation as unconscious absorption, and it is always
mediated.45
Although collective memories have no organic basis and do not exist in
any literal sense, and though they involve individual agencies, the term is
not simply a metaphorical expression. The decisions by individuals to act
in public, by creating associations or by writing memoirs, are profoundly
personal; nevertheless, they are not purely private matters, since they exist
in a social framework of collective action. Collective memory originates
from shared communications about the meaning of the past, anchored in
the lives of individuals who partake in the communal life of a specific collective.46 This observation is particularly apt in the Palestinian case, where,
in the absence of a state, first individuals and later on group agencies have
played a key role in cultivating collective memory.
In his influential study, Pierre Nora explains the preoccupation with
memory in modern times as a product of rapid social changes that erode
and all but obliterate genuine, spontaneous, and unpremeditated forms of
memory that prevailed in the past. Nora maintains that modernity compels human societies to produce manufactured forms of memory, or sites
of memory (lieux de mmoire ), that serve as the reference points of collective memory to compensate for the elimination of more natural forms
of remembering. Their purpose is to stop time, to block the work of forgetting. They all share a will to remember.47 Sites of memory are artificial and deliberately fabricated. They exist to help us recall the past, which

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MEIR LITVAK

is perhaps necessary in order to make living in the modern world meaningful. These sites include almost all social products and cultural artifacts
such as archives, museums, cathedrals, palaces, cemeteries, and memorials;
concepts and practices such as commemorations, mottos, and rituals; and
objects such as inherited property, commemorative monuments, manuals,
emblems, basic texts, and symbols.48
Israel Gershoni criticizes Nora for drawing too sharp a dichotomy
between the environments of memory found in the past and the sites of
memory that characterize the modern era. He further maintains that Nora
is not sufficiently sensitive to the persistence of the past, in the sense that
older memories do intrude into modern reality, and to the possibility that
the manufacturing of modern memory takes place alongside the perpetuation of traditional memories.49
As this book demonstrates, the Palestinians are in a transitory phase as
far as Noras categorization stands. On the one hand they have experienced
major historical changes and dislocations in the past century, culminating
in the 1948 Nakba, which has largely eliminated an old way of life. On the
other hand, the living memories of 1948 are still aliveeven though those
who have actually experienced these events are gradually passing away. It is
because of the current political status and living conditions of many individuals in the refugee camps and the proximity to the lost villages in what
is now Israel that these memories are kept alive. Yet, in view of the increasing distance from the Nakba, the national struggle with Israel, and the continuing, albeit disjointed, process of nation building, the cultivation of
collective memory has become a major Palestinian national enterprise.
Nationalism is one of the most forceful agents for the construction and
reconstruction of collective memories. The producers of nationalism
shape collective identity by the recovery, reconstruction, or invention of a
collective national past. Nationalism identifies the available repositories of
the past and selects fragments or elements of past periods, events, symbols,
or heroes from which it creates a new unified collective past. The national
past is, in fact, memory rather than historical past. It is planned and constructed by the engineers of national identity, who pick from history those
great moments in whose recovery or renewed identity the promise of
national revival is found. The strong and interdependent links between
nationalism, identity, and memory materialize in the sites and rituals
of commemoration, where the national movement fuses and molds the
collective memory into collective identity.50
Collective memory provides an overall sense of the groups development by offering a system of periodization that imposes a certain order on
the past. Like other aspects of this process, periodization involves a dialogue between the past and the present, as the group reconstructs its own

INTRODUCTION

15

history from current beliefs and needs. Its power does not lie in its accurate, systematic, or sophisticated mapping of the past, but in establishing
basic images that articulate and reinforce a particular ideological stance.51
Collective memory highlights certain periods as representing important developments of the group while defining others as historical setbacks. Yet, as Wulf Kansteiner observed, collective memories often have a
strong bias toward the present, inasmuch as they dedicate disproportionate amounts of time, space, and resources to communications about events
that happened within the lifetimes of its producers and consumers.52
In the Palestinian case this periodization may be divided into three
major periods: the pre-Islamic past, which the Palestinian elites have
sought to promote and instill, ever since the 1970s, in the minds and consciousness of ordinary Palestinians as an integral and important component of Palestinian collective memory and of the dispute with Zionism; the
Arab-Islamic period from the seventh century until the advent of Zionism;
and finally, the modern period, overshadowed by the struggle with
Zionism, particularly the 1948 Nakba.
Societies preserve memory of the past mainly by means of chronicling
and recording. However, although there is no trace left of the greater part
of history, and only a fraction of what happened can be reconstructed, the
fragments from the past that do exist are incredibly numerous, albeit only
a small part of these reminders can be put to use. Hence, societies are
engaged in a constant process of remembrance and forgetting, which is
closely interlinked with the construction of collective memory.53 The
events selected for chronicling, as Barry Schwartz asserts and as is shown
in the following chapters, are not all evaluated in the same way. To some of
these events we remain indifferent; others are commemorated, that is,
invested with extraordinary significance and assigned a qualitatively distinct place in our conception of the past. Thus, commemoration serves as
the active agent behind both memory and identity as it lifts from an ordinary historical sequence those extraordinary events that embody our
deepest and most fundamental values. Public commemoration is also a
medium for transmitting messages to a broader public.
Participation in rituals of public commemoration reinforces a sense of
shared national identity based on a common collective memory. New
nations, which are fragile and feel that their national identity is threatened,
tend to intensify the commemorative effort. Indeed, both new nations and
old states require an ancient past.54
In revolutionary France and in the United States, the need to commemorate arose out of a desire to break with the past.55 For the Palestinians, the
opposite is true: collective memory and commemoration have assumed
particular importance in order to overcome the break with the past caused

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by the 1948 Nakba. In Europe, the dead were the subject of considerable
efforts of commemoration. For the Palestinians, it was mainly the shattered
old way of life that stood at the center of commemoration; rather than
cemeteries or monuments for fallen soldiers, the ruined or abandoned villages were the main sites of memory, not only physically, but also in poetry,
literature, and the fine arts. In recent years, however, partly in response to
Jewish or Christian sanctification of cemeteries or due to the adoption of
various Western modes of commemoration, the Islamic movement inside
Israel has directed much effort toward rebuilding old cemeteries, an action
quite foreign to Sunni Muslim tradition. Likewise, the glorification of
the martyrs (shahid, pl. shuhada) during the 198793 intifada and
the 20002006 confrontation has assumed a major role in Palestinian
commemorations, particularly with the advent of Hamas.56
Each act of commemoration reproduces, in Yael Zerubavels words, a
commemorative narrativea story about a particular past that accounts
for this ritualized remembrance and provides a moral message for the
group members. Each commemoration reconstructs a specific segment of
the past and is, therefore, fragmentary in nature. Yet, taken together, these
commemorations contribute to the formation of a master commemorative narrative that focuses on the groups distinct social identity and highlights its historical development. It serves as a basic story line that is
culturally constructed and provides the group members with a general
notion of their past. Since collective memory highlights the groups distinct identity, the master commemorative narrative focuses on the event
that marks the groups emergence as an independent social entity.
Through the construction of the past, the commemorative narrative
creates its own version of historical time as it elaborates, condenses, omits,
or conflates historical events. By using these and other discursive techniques, the narrative transforms historical time into commemorative
time.57 The Palestinian master commemorative narrative is, according to
Birnbaum, formulated as a cyclical process in which the Palestinian people
inhabited its land, confronted foreign invasions and occupations, waged a
struggle against the foreigners, gained its liberation, and subsequently
faced other invasions, thus repeating the cycle. As Litvak shows, it seeks to
mark the emergence of the Palestinians as a people during the Canaanite
period, while reaching its apogee with the 1948 Nakba as the event that
most conspicuously shaped modern Palestinian identity and memory.
The mapping of the past through the construction of a master commemorative narrative also designates its commemorative density, that is,
the importance that society attributes to different periods in the past:
while some periods enjoy multiple commemorations, others attract little
attention, or fall into oblivion. The commemorative density thus ranges

INTRODUCTION

17

from periods or events that are central to the groups memory and are
commemorated in great detail, to others that are left unmarked in the
master commemorative narrative.58
Again, these differences are highly evident and significant in the
Palestinian case. The period with the highest commemorative density is
the modern one, culminating in the 1948 Nakba, for the obvious reason
that this is the most traumatic event in Palestinian history, whose ramifications touch upon the life of every Palestinian. Concurrently, the lack of
density in the earlier periods indicates the late emergence of a distinct
Palestinian nationalism, as these earlier periods were either regarded as
part of the broader Arab-Islamic history or, in the case of the pre-Islamic
period, had little or no resonance for most Palestinians.
The different density of various periods in the Palestinian master narrative points to an important issue in the study of collective memory, namely,
its relationship with history. In his seminal study Halbwachs draws a sharp
line between collective memory and historical memory, that is, the construction of the past by historians whose craft leads them to deviate from
or question accepted values. Both collective and personal memory, he
writes, are primarily a design of the present and its structure, composed of
contents and symbols from the here and now. As such it is by virtue of its
definition a monumental history, based on symbolic structures. In contrast to historical memory, collective memory is completely insensitive to
the differences between periods and qualities of time; it is shallow in terms
of chronology; it is completely topocentric. In the collective memory of the
past, people, events and historic institutions serve as prototypes and are not
recognized for their uniqueness. They are links in an ongoing past.59
Pierre Nora goes even further, describing memory as being in a state of
permanent evolution, open to the dialectics of remembering and forgetting, unconscious of its successive deformations, vulnerable to manipulation and appropriation, susceptible to being long dormant, and
periodically revived. History, he says, is the reconstruction, always problematic and incomplete, of what no longer is. Memory is a perpetually
actual phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present. Memory, insofar as it is affective, only accommodates those facts that suit it; it nourishes
recollections that may be out of focus or telescopic, global or detached,
particular or symbolic, responsive to each avenue of conveyance or, to use
Noras terminology, tangible scene, to every instance of censorship or
projection. History, because it is an intellectual and secular production,
calls for analysis and criticism.60
In making such a sharp distinction between collective memory and the
work of the historian, or historical memory, Halbwachs and Nora, espousing a rather crude positivist approach, disregard the influence of the

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period and society in which the historian is active, and even the impact of
the his communitys collective memory upon his work. They also disregard the possibility that historians of various ideological persuasions may
seek to shape or influence collective memory through their work. These
factors often play a crucial role in the rise of national movements. Taking
a more refined view, David Lowenthal maintains that when national
identity is at stake, heritage supersedes history. The specific national quest
and crisis supplant comparative insight. History, co-opted by heritage,
overstates or denies accepted facts in order to assert a primacy, an ancestry, or continuity. It underwrites a founding myth to exclude others.61 For
Yael Zerubavel, history and memory do not operate in totally detached,
opposite directions; rather, their relationships are underlined by conflict as
well as interdependence. The past cannot be literally construed; it can
only be selectively exploited, as collective memory continuously negotiates between available historical records and current social and political
agendas.62
Palestinian historiography and collective memory serve as a good test
case for this discussion. As the Palestinians are still engaged in a struggle
for statehood, Palestinian historiography, particularly that written in the
Middle East, can be depicted as a mobilized historiography, devoted to
promoting the national cause. In other words, it is still in the uncritical and
unreflecting phase in which only those elements that serve the national
cause are selected. Established maxims and truths remain unchallenged,
and evidence that runs counter to the cause is often ignored, or dismissed,
as false or hostile. This is not to claim that Palestinian historiography is
groundless or based on fabrications, but that the dichotomy between history and collective memory, as elucidated by Halbwachs, hardly exists, as
Palestinian historians are actively engaged in promoting collective memory and national identity.
On the other hand, the evolution and cultivation of Palestinian collective memory, particularly as far as the modern period is concerned, are
tightly linked to historical reality. Its major themes are clearly drawn from
historical developments that shaped the history of the Palestinians as a collective and as individuals. This explains both the powerful influence of the
recent past and the far less successful efforts to inculcate memories of
images related to the more distant pasta past for which the empirical
evidence is far less substantiated or, as in the case of the Canaanite period,
is sometimes closer to myth than to actual history.
At the same time, collective memory and politics are inextricably intertwined. According to Halbwachs, the way in which the past is recalled
depends on the power of the group that frames its memory. Traditions
reinforce present politics, and time is colonized through the traditions of

INTRODUCTION

19

national or local groups by way of locating significant dates within a commemorative chronology, just as space is colonized by way of commemorative architecture with which it shapes topography. Simply stated, the issue
is who wants whom to remember what and why.63
In essence, there is no single collective memory, but rather a multiplicity
of overlapping and interwoven communities of memories in any society.
The coexistence of a multiplicity of memories is especially true in the case
of large collectivities, such as the nation, which can be described as a conglomeration of opposing and at times contradictory memories. National
identity is constructed through the interaction of these variants of collective memory. Different collective memories may be in conflict, but may also
influence one another, maintaining a relationship of dialogue, negotiation,
or exchange among different communities of memory. Commemoration of
the past can become a contested territory in which groups engaged in political conflict promote competing views of the past in order to seize control
of the political center.64
Within the multiplicity of conflicting memories, it is possible to speak
of a hegemonic collective memory, cultivated and promoted by dominant
elites and challenged by countermemories, that is, by the discursive practices through which memories are perpetually revised.65 Yet, even in dictatorships, it is not clear how long the states monopoly over the
construction of memory can last.
Like any other society, Palestinian society is also not immune to social
and political divisions, which produce multiple opposing memories.
Moreover, since 1948 and at least till 1967, Palestinian collective memory
has evolved in the absence of a state, among a population dispersed
between geographically separate communities. Still, from the early 1970s
onwards, the PLO has played the role of surrogate state and fashioned a
dominant, or even hegemonic, narrative.
One can speak of several types of different Palestinian communities of
memory or of rival and competing memories. The refugees and those who
have become Israeli citizens formed two distinct communities of memory,
as shown in Milshtein and Ghanayims chapters. As long as participants in
the pre-1948 and 1948 events are alive, one can speak of distinct memories,
or actually remembrances, of the past in different communities, such as villagers or urban dwellers, who experienced these events differently or in different rival political groupings. Moreover, as part of the effort to prove
the antiquity and longevity of Palestinian identity and its chronological
precedence over Zionism, various towns (both inside Israel and in the PA
territory) also cultivate their local histories and heritage.
As the Palestinians are still engaged in a national conflict, and their collective memory is formulated and constructed against the Zionist one,

20

MEIR LITVAK

there is a concerted effort to shape a unified collective memory among all

Palestinian communities. Thus, while many or most Palestinians did not
experience displacement in 1948, this feeling has become the hallmark of
modern Palestinian identity. In addition, as time passes and the distance
between past events and the present increases, distinct memories of
various groups tend to coalesce into one unifying collective memory.
Thus, as Birnbaums and Litvaks chapters show, there is a high consensus
if not identity of opinion between the PLO and Hamas on the historical
narrative of the past. Points of disagreement appear only when related to
the more recent past, as they have a direct bearing on the current political
struggle between the two movements.
An important, though often neglected, area of dispute between the hegemonic and alternative narratives of Palestinian collective memory is the topic
of Hanita Brands chapter, which deals with the evolution of a distinct female
collective memory in Palestinian society, concomitant with the efforts of
Palestinian women to incorporate their voice and role in the Palestinian collective memory. Brand follows the distinctive part of the Palestinian womens
collective memory, sometimes referred to as the social rather than the
political story, tracing the various phases through which the womens
recounting of their history has gone: from a tacit acceptance of the general
narrative with small variations of tone, style, and nuance to a more vigorous
collective tale beginning after the start of the first intifada.
Traditionally in Western countries, national commemorations were
largely the preserve of male elites. It was only after World War I that they
underwent democratization by encompassing acts or events related to all
social groups, including a conscious effort to disseminate revised collective
memories among them.66 As the traditional Palestinian elites were entirely
discredited after the 1948 defeat, the cultivation of a distinct Palestinian collective memory aimed at nonelite groups from the start. Moreover, since
Palestinian collective memory focused on the lost, pre-1948 way of life, and
since most of those who were displaced after the war had been villagers, both
villager and village became the focus of Palestinian memory. The only exception to the more democratic nature of Palestinian memory was women, who
are to a large extent still excluded from the memorialization process.
A crucial element in the interplay between the hegemonic collective
memory and other conflicting memories is the question of their reception
by the projected constituencies. To make a difference in society, it is not
enough for a certain past to be selected; it must be capable of arousing
emotions, motivating people to act, and being received favorably by the
majority.67 The essays presented in this book seek to analyze memory and
identity on both the promotional and the receiving ends. The chapters by
Milshtein, Webman, Birenbaum, and Ghanayim demonstrate the broad

INTRODUCTION

21

endorsement of hegemonic memory, especially the two key components of

Palestinian collective memory: the Nakba and the premodern Islamic past.
Palestinian women, as Brands chapter shows, do not reject the
hegemonic memory, but only seek to partially modify it by adding their
particular voices to it. Litvaks chapter argues for a more accurate
perception of the rational-instrumentalist adoption of the pre-Islamic
Canaanite past by most Palestinians, and its lack of success in steering a
deep identification of emotions. Yet, no countermemory or myth has
arisen to challenge this past. While Palestinian political divisions, mainly
between Fatah and Hamas, have escalated since the outbreak of the violent
confrontation with Israel in 2000, the continued national struggle served
to preserve the unity of Palestinian collective memory and to discourage
any challenges to it. As the Palestinian state-building effort suffered a
severe setback during this period, collective memory has remained a crucial component in maintaining a unified national identity. Concurrently,
these factors may also have inhibited critical self-reflection, particularly
among intellectuals, on the shaping of a national historical narrative
largely subordinated to present-day political considerations. Palestinian
politics and memory continuously influence each other. The persistence of
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict continues to play a dominant role in shaping Palestinian collective memory and national identity. As long as the
Palestinians remain stateless and the refugee problem remains unresolved,
Palestinian collective memory will in all likelihood continue to be dominated by the memories of the 1948 trauma and by the narrative of struggle. At the same time, however, the memories of the past seem to impose
certain limitations to the freedom of action accorded to Palestinian leaders. How the evolving relations between Palestinians and Israelis will lead
to changes in the representation of the past remains an open question.
Notes
1. John R. Gillis, ed., Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 3; David Lowenthal,
Identity, Heritage, and History, in Gillis, Commemorations, p. 47; Yael
Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli
National Tradition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995), p. 4.
2. Ernest Renan cited in, Lowenthal, Identity, p. 50.
3. Haim Gerber shows that the term Bilad al-Sham, which Arab writers used to
denote greater or geographic Syria, encompassed Palestine. Biographical dictionaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries mentioned areas with the
qualifier land, such as bilad Nablus (Muradi 1883, 1: 11, 2: 10) or bilad Safad
(ibid., 2: 254), indicating their distinct identity and difference from Filastin,
which referred to the southern part of the country. Haim Gerber, The Limits

22

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.
9.

10.

11.
12.

MEIR LITVAK

of Constructedness: Memory and Nationalism in the Arab Middle East,

Nations and Nationalism 10, no. 3 (2004): 25658. The great early-nineteenthcentury Egyptian historian Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti referred to the inhabitants of al-Arish in the Sinai Peninsula as Syrians; see Asim Muhammad Ali
Hasani, Judhur al-dawla fi al-tarikh al-filastini, Ruya, no. 29 (February 2006),
http://www.sis.gov.ps/arabic/roya/29/page10.html
See C. Ernest Dawn, From Ottomanism to Arabism: Essays on the Origins of
Arab Nationalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973); Eliezer Tauber,
The Emergence of the Arab Movements (London: Frank Cass, 1993); Daniel
Pipes, The Year the Arabs Discovered Palestine, Middle East Review 21, no. 4
(Summer 1989): 38.
On the emergence of Palestinian nationalism, see Yehoshua Porath, The
Emergence of the Palestinian Arab National Movement, 19181929 (London:
Frank Cass, 1974); Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of
Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997);
Muhammad Y. Muslih, The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1988); Musa Budeiri, The Palestinians: Tensions
between Nationalist and Religious Identities, in Rethinking Arab Nationalism,
ed. Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1997), pp. 191206; Baruch Kimmerling. The Formation of Palestinian
Collective Identities: The Ottoman and Mandatory Periods, Middle Eastern
Studies 36, no. 2 (April 2000): 4881.
On the politics and institutional weaknesses of the Palestinian national
movement under the British Mandate, see Yehoshua Porath, The Palestinian
National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion, 19291939 (London: Frank
Cass, 1977); Issa Khalaf, Politics in Palestine: Arab Factionalism and Social
Disintegration, 19391948 (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1991).
For land sale to Jews, see Kenneth Stein, The Land Question in Palestine,
19171939 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984); for the
depth of collaboration with the Jews, see Hillel Cohen, The Shadow Army:
Palestinian Collaborators in the Service of Zionism, 19171948 (Jerusalem: Ivrit,
2004, Hebrew).
For an analysis of these processes, see Khalaf, Politics in Palestine.
For the Palestinian failure to mobilize and organize as a national movement,
see Yoav Gelber, Palestine, 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian
Refugee Problem (Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2001).
The origins and causes of the Palestinian refugee problem have produced a
voluminous literature and polemics. Among these are Benny Morriss The
Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004); Nur Masalha, A Land without a People: Israel, Transfer
and the Palestinians, 194996 (London: Faber and Faber, 1997).
Rosemary Sayigh, The Palestinian Identity among Camp Residents, Journal
of Palestine Studies 6, no. 3 (Spring 1977): 21.
Aziz Haidar, The Different Levels of Palestinian Ethnicity, in Ethnicity,
Pluralism, and the State in the Middle East, ed. Milton J. Esman and Itamar
Rabinovich (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 96.

INTRODUCTION

23

13. Palestinian frustration with and resentment against the rejection by other
Arabs is amply reflected in fiction and memoirs. See Shimon Ballas, Arab
Literature under the Shadow of War (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1978, in Hebrew),
pp. 4447. See also Fawaz Turki, The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian in
Exile (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), which describes how he never
regarded himself as a Palestinian or knew he was one, even though he grew up
in his own village, and how he only realized this after his family had left their
village and settled in Lebanon.
14. Hassan Hasan al-Yacoubi, The Evolution of Palestinian Consciousness (PhD
thesis, Colorado University, 1973), p. 156.
15. Haidar, Palestinian Ethnicity, p. 118.
16. Haidar, Palestinian Ethnicity, p. 103; Fatah, The Link of the Palestinian
Revolution with Arab and World Revolutions, cited in Yehoshafat Harkabi, The
Palestinians and Their Awakening (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1979, in Hebrew),
p. 19; Ballas, Arab Literature, p. 52; Sayigh, Palestinian Identity, p. 21.
17. For useful analyses of these approaches, considering the ever-growing volume
of theoretical literature on the topic, see Anthony Smith and John Hutchinson,
eds., Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Anthony Smith, The
Nation in History: Historiographical Debates about Ethnicity and Nationalism
(Cambridge: Polity, 2000); as well as the various sections of the Nationalism
Project, http://www.nationalismproject.org/what.htm
18. Gerber, Limits of Constructedness.
19. The Canaanite language, which belongs to the northern Semitic languages, is
closer to Hebrew than to Arabic, which is one of the southern Semitic languages.
20. Ernest Gellner, Thought and Change (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
1964), p. 168; Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1983), pp. 5556.
21. Erik Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990); E. J. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, eds., The Invention of
Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 114. Ironically,
Hobsbawms theory could have been applied to Palestinian nationalism in claiming that the Palestinian landowners diverted socioeconomic tensions from themselves against the Zionists, or by inventing a national history. Yet, Hobsbawm
supports Palestinian nationalism, primarily because he is more critical of Zionism.
22. For more salient works on the emergence of Arabism as a response to Ottoman
policies, see Dawn, From Ottomanism to Arabism; Rashid Khalidi and Reeva
Simon, eds., The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1991); Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and
Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 19081918 (Berkeley: California University
Press, 1997).
23. Anthony Smith, Memory and Modernity: Reflections on Ernest Gellners
theory of Nationalism, Nations and Nationalism 2, no. 3 (1996): 37188.
24. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), chapters 2 and 3.
25. Gerber, Limits of Constructedness, p. 261ff. For the role of the Salafi movement, see David Commins, Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late
Ottoman Syria (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

24

MEIR LITVAK

26. For the role of this literary revival in facilitating Arab nationalism, see Albert
Hourani,The Arab Awakening Forty Years after, in The Emergence of the Modern
Middle East (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981), pp. 193215.
27. Rashid Khalidi, The Role of the Press in the Early Arab Reaction to Zionism,
Peuples Mditerranens , no. 20 (JulySeptember 1982): 10524; for the role of
the Palestinian press, see Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, p. 119.
28. Anderson, Imagined Communities, chapter 4.
29. Gerber, Limits of Constructedness, (see note 3), pp. 26465.
30. Muslih, Origins of Palestinian Nationalism, p. 181; Khalidi, Palestinian Identity,
pp. 16267.
31. For the creation of Transjordan and the evolution of Jordanian identity, see
Muhammad Ahamd Sulayman Muhafaza, Imarat Sharq al-Urdun: nashatuha
wa-tatawwuruha fi rub qarn, 19211946 (Amman: Dar al-Furqan, 1990);
Joseph A. Massad, Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); Linda L. Layne, Home and
Homeland: The Dialogics of Tribal and National Identities in Jordan (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
32. After its foundation in 1964, the PLO claimed Jordan as part of the Palestinian
homeland. The radical PFLP and DFLP made similar claims after 1967, and
well into the mid-1970s.
33. Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 15657.
34. For the Israeli declaration, see http://www.knesset.gov.il/docs/eng/ megilat_eng.
htm. For the Palestinian declaration, see http://www.palestine-net.com/politics/
indep.html
35. The Palestinian National Fund (al-sunduq al-qawmi), both in its first failed
phase in 1946 and its successful attempt in 1964, emulated the Jewish National
Fund. Likewise, the national tree holiday was probably drawn from the Israeli
holiday.
36. Anthony D. Smith, The Problem of National Identity: Ancient Medieval and
Modern? in Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999), particularly pp. 102, 105. See also his Gastronomy or Geology?
The Role of Nationalism in the Reconstruction of Nations, in ibid, particularly
p. 164; and Ernest Gellner and Anthony D. Smith, The Nation: Real or
Imagined? The Warwick Debates on Nationalism, Nations and Nationalism 2,
no. 3 (1996): 35965.
37. Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell,
1986), p. 38, and Smith, Nation and Ethnoscape, in Myths and Memories,
p. 149.
38. Glen Bowman, Constitutive Violence and Rhetorics of Identity: A Comparative
Study of Nationalist Movements in the Israeli-Occupied Territories and Former
Yugoslavia, Social Anthropology 11, no. 3 (December 2003): 38.
39. Oren Yiftachel, Territory as the Kernel of the Nation: Space, Time and
Nationalism in Israel/Palestine, Geogpolitics 7, no. 2 (Autumn 2002): 216.
40. Smith, Ethnic Origins, p. 183; Smith, Nation and Ethnoscape, p. 151ff.;
Memory and Modernity: Reflections on Ernest Gellners Theory of
Nationalism, http://www.members.tripod.com/GellnerPage/SmithLec.html.

INTRODUCTION

25

41. Matthew Levinger and Paula Franklin Lytle, Myth and Mobilization: The
Common Triadic Structure of Nationalist Rhetoric, Nation and Nationalism
7, no. 2 (2001): 177.
42. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, pp. 3, 5; Pierre Nora, Mmoire collective, in La
Nouvelle histoire, ed. Jacques Le Goff, Roger Chartier, and Jacques Revel, (Paris:
Retz, 1982), p. 398; David W. Blight, Historians and Memory, www.
common-place.org, 2, no. 3 (April 2002).
43. Maurice Halbwachs, Les Cadres sociaux de la mmoire (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1925),
p. 358.
44. Maurice Halbwachs, La Mmoire collective (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1968), pp. 135.
45. Wulf Kansteiner, Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of
Collective Memory Studies, History and Theory 41 (May 2002): 180.
46. Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan, Setting the Framework, in War and
Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999), p. 9; Kansteiner, Finding Meaning, p. 188.
47. Pierre Nora, Between Memory and History: Les lieux de mmoire,
Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 19.
48. Odo Marquard, ber die Unvermeidlichkeit der Geisteswissenschaften, in
his Apologie des Zuflligen , pp. 98116. (Stuttgart: Ph. Reclam jun, 1986), cited
in Sites of Memory, https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/citd/holtorf/2.6.html
49. Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, Commemorating the Nation: Collective
Memory, Public Commemoration, and National Identity in Twentieth-Century
Egypt (Chicago: Middle East Documentation Center, 2004), p. 4.
50. Israel Gershoni, Pyramid for the Nation: Commemoration, Memory and
Nationalism in Twentieth Century Egypt (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2006, in Hebrew).
51. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, pp. 56.
52. Kansteiner, Finding Meaning, p. 183.
53. Ehud Toledano, Forgetting Egypts Ottoman Past, in Cultural Horizons: A
Festschrift in Honor of Talat S. Halman, ed. Jane L. Warner (Syracuse, NY:
Syracuse University Press, 2001), p. 151.
54. Barry Schwartz, The Social Text of Commemoration: A Study in Collective Memory, Social Forces 61, no. 2 (December 1982): 377; Gillis,
Commemorations, p. 9.
55. Gillis, Commemorations, p. 8.
56. For the Palestinian cult of martyrs and martyrdom, see Meir Hatina,
Theology and Power in the Middle East: Palestinian Martyrdom in a
Comparative Perspective, Journal of Political Ideologies 10, no. 3 (October
2005): 24167; and Meir Litvak, Religious and National Fanaticism: The Case
of Hamas, in Fanaticism and Conflict in the Modern Age, ed. Matthew Hughes
and Gaynor Johnson (London: Frank Cass, 2005), pp. 15674.
57. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, pp. 67, 9.
58. Ibid., p. 8.
59. Halbwachs, La Mmoire collective , pp. 3579.
60. Nora, Between Memory and History, pp. 89.
61. Lowenthal, Identity, p. 53.

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62. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, p. 5.

63. Patrick Hutton, History as an Art of Memory (Hanover: University Press of
New England, 1993), p. 128; Alon Confino, Collective Memory and Cultural
History: Problems of Method, American Historical Review 102, no. 5
(December 1997): 1393.
64. Gershoni, Commemorating, pp. 1112; Confino, Collective Memory, p. 1391.
65. Hutton, History, p. 113.
66. Gillis, Commemorations, p. 10.
67. Confino, Collective Memory, p. 1390.