Abstract
The evolution of the Nakba memory refutes the popular conception that national myths are instilled and passed on only by ruling elites. In this regard, the Palestinians—both “inside,” in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, and “outside,” in the diaspora—are an exception, since they have never lived under sovereign Palestinian rule. (Palestinian refugees in Jordan in 1968–70 and in Lebanon throughout the 1970s lived under semisovereign PLO rule.) Under those circumstances, the way the Nakba memory is preserved by the common people and the dynamics between the society and the national leadership are of great importance.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Danny Rubinstein, The People of Nowhere: The Palestinian Vision of Home (New York: Times Books 1991), pp. 10–11.
See an example in Ilan Magat, Bir‘am: A Mobilized Community of Memory, Surveys of Arabs in Israel, no. 26 (Giv‘at Haviva: Institute for Peace Research, 2000), p. 27.
Nimer Sirhan, “The Nakbah in Palestinian Folk literature,” Palestine-Israel Journal 5, nos. 3–4 (1998): 156–57.
Sharif S. Elmusa, “When the Wellsprings of Identity Dry Up: Reflection on Fawaz Turki’s Exile’s Return,” Journal of Palestine Studies 25, no. 1 (Autumn 1995): 102. See similar expressions of disappointment on Ibrahim Abu Lughod’s return to Jaffa: Akhbar Yaffa, no. 11, 31 May 2001, p. 5; and Ibrahim Abu Lughod’s “al-Yawm al-akhir qabla sukut Yaffa,” al-Karmil, nos. 55–56 (Spring-Summer 1998): 129;
Hisham Sharabi, “The Palestinians: Fifty Years Later,” Distinguished Lecture Series, no. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, May 1998), p. 5; Edward Said, Haaretz, Sabbath Supplement, 18 August 2000; and Edward Said, “Fifty Years of Dispossession,” al-Ahram Weekly, 7–13 May 1998.
Adam Shatz, “A Love Story between an Arab Poet and His Land: An Interview with Mahmud Darwish,” Journal of Palestine Studies 31, no. 3 (Spring 2002): 72.
‘Arif al-‘Arif, al-Nakba-Nakbat Bayt al-Maqdis wal-firdus al-mafqud (Beirut, between 1956 and 1964).
Mustafa Murad al-Dabbagh, Biladuna Filastin, 11 vols (Beirut, 1965 and 1972–86). For further elaboration on these works and others, see “‘Alam al-Nakba,” al-Mawsu‘a al-Filastiniyya (Damascus) 4 (1983): 505;
Walid al-Khalidi, All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992), foreword, pp. xv–xvi.
Rashid Al-Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 205.
See the comprehensive study by Susan Slyomovics, The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), which examined the publication of community books in Palestinian society from a sociological and anthropological angle.
See the essay by Esther Webman in this book for an elaborate analysis of this issue. On the Palestinians and the Holocaust, see Meir Litvak and Esther Webman, “Perceptions of the Holocaust in Palestinian Public Discourse,” Israel Studies 8, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 123–40.
Ali Tibawi, “Visions of the Return: The Palestine Arab Refugees in Arabic Poetry and Art,” Middle East Journal 17, no. 5 (Autumn 1963): 513.
On Darwish, see Raja’ Naqqash, Mahmud Darwish: sha‘ir al-ard al-muhtalla (Beirut: Dar al-Hillal, 1972).
On his poems, see Avraham Yinon, “Several Focal Topics in Israeli Arab literature,” HaMizrah HeHadash 15, nos. 1–2 (1965, in Hebrew): 75.
Shimon Ballas, Arab Literature under the Shadow of War (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1978, in Hebrew), pp. 7–8.
“Encyclopedia of The Palestinians: Biography of Gassan Kanafani,” http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Acre/Story168.html. For analysis of his work, see Muhammad Siddiq, “Man is a Cause”: Political Consciousness and the Fiction of Ghassan Kanafani (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984).
Nasser al-Din al-Nashashibi, Return Ticket (Beirut, 1962), p. 205.
Kamal Bulata, Al-Fann al-tashkili al-filastini khilal nisf qarn (1935–1985) in al-Mawsu‘a al-Filastiniyya (Beirut), part 2, vol. 4 (1990), pp. 931ff.
On al-‘Ali, see Fa’id ‘Abd al-Majid al-‘Abudi, Fi al-dhakira al-thaniya li-istishhad Naji al-‘Ali — wa-rasah fi karikatir Naji al-‘Ali (Majd al-Krum, Israel: Rawdat al-shahid Naji al-‘Ali: 1989), pp. 14–15, 61, 79, 118–19. al-‘Ali was killed in 1988 during internecine struggles between Palestinian organizations.
Emile Habibi, The Secret Life of Saeed, the Pessoptimist, trans. Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Trevor LeGassick (London: Zed Books, 1985).
See an explanation of this statement in Hanan Hever, “Emile Habibi and the Canon of Hebrew Literature,” HaMizrah HeHadash 35 (1992–93, in Hebrew): 105.
Mustafa Kabha and Ronit Barzilai, Refugees in Their Country: Internal Refugees in the State of Israel, 1948–1996. Surveys of the Israeli Arabs, no. 20 (Givat Haviva: Institute for the Study of Peace, 1996, in Hebrew), p. 7.
Ibid., p. 9. As to the numbers of refugees within the state of Israel, see Riad Beidas, “The Internally Displaced: Seeking Return within One’s Own Land: An Interview with Waqim Waqim,” Journal of Palestine Studies 31 (October 2001): p. 33.
In several places, refugees participated in municipal elections on separate lists, although their platform was directed at the entire, mixed community in the locality. In some localities, representatives of refugees were elected as heads of local councils, for example, Hashim Mahamid in Um al-Faham or Tawfiq al-Khatib in Jaljulya, Kabha and Barzilai, Refugees in Their Country, pp. 21–22. The residents of Ikrit, however, refused to participate in local elections where they were living, lest they be seen as having come to terms with the loss of their village. David Grossman, Nokhehim nifkadim: Exiles in the Promised Land: Conversations with Palestinians in Israel (Tel Aviv: ha-kibbutz ha-meuchad, 1992, in Hebrew), p. 169.
Elie Rekhess, “The Arabs of Israel after Oslo: Localization of the National Struggle,” Israel Studies 7, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 24ff; Idem, “The Reopening of the 1948 File Cases,” a lecture at the symposium “From Intifada to War: Landmarks in the Palestinian National Experience,” the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, 22 May 2002, p. 124.
The al-Aqsa Society for Preserving the Islamic Waqf, Survey of the al-Aqsa Society Regarding the Waqf and Islamic Endowment in the State of Israel (Umm al-Fahm, Israel, April 1994), pp. 5, 9–11, 23. See also a detailed list made by Tkrama Sabri, Chief Mufti of the PNA, “al-I‘tida’at ‘ala al-awqaf wal-muqaddasat 1948–1987,” in al-Mujtama‘ al-Filastini-Arba‘in ‘aman ‘ala al-Nakba wa-wahad wa-’ishurin ‘aman ‘ala ihtilal al-Diffa wa-Quta‘ (Jerusalem: al-‘Amal, n.d.), pp. 44–46.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2009 Meir Litvak
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Milshtein, M. (2009). Memory “from Below”: Palestinian Society and the Nakba Memory. In: Litvak, M. (eds) Palestinian Collective Memory and National Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230621633_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230621633_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-37755-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-62163-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)