Abstract
Every nationalist seeks to provide what any nation is in need of: a suitable and dignified past. No aspirant ethnic group can be without its particular myth of descent if it is to secure recognition.1 Anthony Smith’s insights are particularly apposite to the Palestinians, who are still engaged in a struggle for the realization of their national aspirations against a rival national movement, Zionism, and against the State of Israel. Palestinian nationalism serves as a valuable case study of how, in order to forge a “nation” in the present, it is vital to create and crystallize ethnic components of the past; failure to do so is likely to constitute a serious impediment to nation building.2 The present study therefore explores the evolution and changes in the myths of common ancestry in Palestinian nationalism. More specifically, the conception or reconstruction of a national history among Palestinians and the changes this process underwent over three distinct periods of time will be examined: from the 1920s to 1967, which favored a pan-Arab narrative; from 1967 to 1994, which marked the revival and crystallization of a distinct Palestinian identity within a broader context of Arab nationalism, that is, up to the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA); and from 1994 onward, under PNA auspices.
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Notes
Anthony D. Smith, “Gastronomy or Geology? The Role of Nationalism in the Reconstruction of Nations,” in Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 176; Anthony D. Smith, “National Identity and Myths of Ethnic Descent,” in Myths and Memories, p. 60.
Anthony Smith, “Are Nations Modern,” in idem, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), p. 17.
Anwar Chejne, “The Use of History by Modern Arab Writers,” Middle East Journal 14, no. 4 (Autumn 1960): 382;
Israel Gershoni, The Emergence of Pan-Arabism in Egypt (Tel Aviv: Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 1981).
These self-perceptions were evident in numerous official statements produced by the Palestinian national movement during the British Mandate. The phrases “the Arab people,” “the Arabs of Palestine,” “the Arab nation in Palestine,” “the Arab problem in Palestine,” “the Arabs who are the true owners of Palestine,” and “the Arab youth in Palestine” were commonly used. The terms “Palestinians” or “Palestinian people” were extremely rare. Likewise, the Palestinian case was presented as an Arab rather than a particularistic Palestinian one. The use of these phrases continued well into the 1950s, the apex of the pan-Arab movement. See ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Kiyyali, Watha’iq al-muqawama al-filastiniyya al-‘arabiyya dida al-ihtilal al-baritani wa-al-sayhuniyya, 1918–1939 (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya, 1968), pp. 6, 352, 454, 463ff., 541ff., 564, 601, 603, 605, 647.
Tarif Khalidi, “Palestinian Historiography: 1900–1948,” Journal of Palestine Studies 10, no. 3 (Spring 1981): 64.
Among the most important works in this group are As‘ad Mansur, Ta‘rikh al-Nasira min aqdam azmaniha ilá ayyamina al-hadira (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Hilal, 1924);
‘Arif al-‘Arif, Ta’rikh Ghazza (Jerusalem: Matba‘at dar al-aytam al-islamiyya, 1943); idem, Ta’rikh Bir al-Saba‘ wa-qaba‘iluhu (Jerusalem: Matba‘at al-Quds, 1934); idem, Ta’rikh al-Haram al-Qudsi (Jerusalem: Matba‘at dar al-aytam al-islamiyya, 1947);
Ihsan al-Nimr, Ta’rikh Jabl Nablus wal-Balqa’ (Damascus: Matba‘at Ibn Zaydun, 1938); A. S. Marmaji, “Nubdha min ta’rikh al-Yaffa,” al-Mashriq 26, nos. 10 and 11 (1928); idem, Buldaniyyat Filastin al-‘arabiyya (Beirut: Manshurat al-majma’ al-thaqafi, 1948). For a comprehensive list of such local histories, see Ibrahim Muhammad, “Buldaniyyat Filastin: Dirasa wa-bibliughraphiyya,” Filastin al-Muslima (May–June 1992), parts 1 and 2. For similar phenomena in other Arab countries, see Chejne, “Use of History,” p. 384.
For a partial list, see Beshara Doumani, “Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine: Writing Palestinians into History,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, no. 2 (Winter 1992): notes 44–50.
Among the most important writers and their works in this group were ‘Izzat Darwaza, Nash’at al-haraka al-‘arabiyya al-haditha, 3 vols (Sidon, Lebanon: Manshurat al-maktaba al-‘asriyya, 1949–51); idem, al-‘Arab wa-al-‘uruba fī al-qarn al-thalith hattá al-qarn al-rabi‘ ‘ashar al-hijr ī (Damascus; Dar al-yaqza al-‘arabiyya, 1959–60);
‘Umar Salih al-Barghuthi and Khalil Tutah, Ta’rikh Filastin (Jerusalem: Matba’at bayt al-maqdis, 1922);
Ishaq Musa al-Husayni, ‘Urubat Bayt al-Maqdis (Beirut: Munazzamat al-tahrir al-filastiniyya, 1968);
Mustafa Murad al-Dabbagh, Biladuna Filastin (Beirut: Dar al-Tali‘a wal-Nashr, 1965).
Yehoshafat Harkabi, The Palestinians and Their Awakening (Jerusalem, 1979, in Hebrew), p. 69.
Barghuthi and Tutah, Ta’rikh Filastin, pp. 2–3; see also Adnan Abu Ghazaleh, Arab Cultural Nationalism (Brattleboro, VT: Amana Books, 1991), pp. 60–65, 72;
Subhi Yasin, al-Thawra al-‘arabiyya al-kubra (fi Filastin), 1936–4939 (Cairo: Dar al-Hina’ lil-taba‘a, 1959), p. 10;
‘Abd al-Rahman Yaghi, Fi al-adab al-Filastini al-hadith qabla al-Nakba wa-ba‘daha (Cairo: n.p., 1960), p. 21.
Bernard Lewis, History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 36–37; Dawn, “Formation of Pan-Arab Ideology,” pp. 70ff; Hurvitz, “Semitic Wave Theory and Pan-Arabism,” particularly pp. 127–28.
al-‘Arif, Ta’rikh al-Haram al-Qudsi. See also Barghuthi and Tutah, Ta’rikh Filastin; Khalil Baydas, Ta’rikh al-Quds (Jerusalem: n.p., 1922); al-Husayni, ‘Urubat Bayt al-Maqdis.
Yehoshua Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian Arab National Movement, 1918–1929 (London: Frank Cass, 1974), pp. 30–31.
Yasin, al-Thawra al-‘arabiyya, p. 10. For a discussion on the portrayal by present-day Arab historians of Muslim resistance to the Crusades as a national Arab effort, see Emmanuel Sivan, Arab Political Myths (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1988, in Hebrew), pp. 36–42.
Bayan al-Majlis al-Shar‘i fi Filastin li-sanat 1340–1 hijriyya (1922–23), p. 18, cited in Uri M. Kupferschmidt, The Supreme Muslim Council: Islam under the British Mandate for Palestine (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 1987), p. 234.
Eric Davis, “Theorizing Statecraft and Social Change in Arab Oil-Producing Countries,” in Statecraft in the Middle East: Oil, Historical Memory, and Popular Culture, eds. Eric Davis and Nicolas Gavrielides (Miami: Florida International University Press, 1991), pp. 26–27; Amatzia Baram, “Territorial Nationalism in the Arab World,” Middle Eastern Studies 26, no. 4 (October 1990); Sivan, Arab Political Myths, chapter 4.
Samih al-Qasim, Matali‘ min antulujiyya al-shi‘r al-filastini fi alf ‘am min 908m (295h) hatta 1936 (1355hijri) (Haifa: Dar Arabisk, 1990), pp. 7–9.
al-Mawsu‘a al-filastiniyya, vol. I, list of abbreviations; Doumani, “Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine,” p. 9; Sharif Kana‘na, “Mukhattat tams wajh Filastin al-‘arabi,” in al-Turath al-sha‘bi al-filastini judhur wa-tahaddiyyat, ed. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Abu Hadba (Taybe: Israel: Markaz ihya’ al-Turath al-‘Arabi, 1992), p. 75.
Mikha’il Niqula al-Sabbagh al-‘Akkawi, Ta’rikh al-shaykh Zahir al-‘Umar al-Zaydani (Harisa, Lebanon: n.p, 1926).
Tawfiq Mu‘ammar, Zahir al-‘Umar (Nazareth: Matba‘at al-Hakim, 1970), p. “j.” See also Darwaza, al-‘Arab wal-‘uruba, vol. 2, p. 292.
Ibrahim Abu Lughod, “Territorially-based Nationalism and the Politics of Negation,” in Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestine Question, ed. E. W. Said and C. Hitchens (London: Verso, 1988), p. 203.
Ibrahim Abu Lughod, “Retrieving Palestinian National Rights,” in Palestinian Rights: Affirmation and Denial, Ibrahim Abu Lughod, ed.,(Wilmette, IL: Medina, 1982), p. 5; see also al-Fajr (English edition), 25 September 1989, Hisham H. Ahmed, “A Textbook for Undergraduates in the U.S.,” review of
Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (New York: St. Martin Press, 1988), which states: “Smith errs … when he undermines the depth of the Palestinian national consciousness, which existed long before the Zionists postulated publicly their idea of colonizing Palestine”;
see also Muhammad Muslih, The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 69, 86–87.
Egypt is the best example of the deep row over the country’s pre-Islamic past; see Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 80–83.
Markaz al-ma‘lumat al-watani al-filastini, “Filastin ma qabla al-ta’rikh,” http://www.pnic.gov.ps/arabic/history/historya.html; “Filastin al-hadara,” http://www.mohe.gov.ps/publications/Nakba.doc; Taysir Jbara, Sa‘id al-Bishawi, Raghda ‘Abid, Jamal Salim, Salah al-‘Awwur, Muhammad al-Khirmawi, Ta’rikh Filastin al-hadith wal-muasir lil-saff al-hadi ‘ashar al-juz’ al-awwal (Ramallah: Al-Sulta al-Wataniyya al-Filastiniyya: Wizarat al-tarbiyya wal-ta’lim, 2004).
Al-Tayyib Ghana’im, “Hebron will be Either Ours or Theirs,” Eretz Acheret, no. 32 (February/March 2006, in Hebrew): 60; “The history of Palestine pre-Islam,”(25 January 2003), http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/am/publish/printer_13.shtml; for an analysis of Hamas nationalist ideology, see Meir Litvak, “Palestinian Nationalism and Islam: The Case of Hamas,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 2, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 500–522.
Curriculum Center, National Education, grade 7, cited in Nathan Brown, Palestinian Politics after the Oslo Accords: Resuming Arab Palestine (Berkeley CA, 2003), p. 222.
Hamid Salm, “Dawr ‘ilm alathar fi al-mujtama‘ al-filastini,” Shu’un Tanmawiyya 2, no. 2 (April 1994): 88–89.
See for example, Hamdan Tah, “Mudakhalat al-ta’rikh al-hadari li-Filastin mundhu bidayat al-‘asr al-hijari wa-hatta al-fath al-islami,” Shu’un Tanmawiyya 2, no. 2 (April 1993), pp. 43–54;
Salim ‘Arafat al-Mubid, “al-hadarat al-muta‘aqiba ‘ala Filastin min khilal al-ma‘alim al-athriyya wa-hatta al-fath al-islami,” Shu’un Tanmawiyya 2, no. 2 (April 1993), pp. 55–64;
Muhammad Mu‘in Sha‘ban Sadiq, “al-Hifriyat al-athriyya fi quta‘ ghazza wa-nata’ijuha,” Shu’un Tanmawiyya, vol. 2, no. 22 (April 1993), pp. 71–80; al-Ayam, 20 April 2000; PNA TV, 17 April 2001.
For the views of the minimalist school, see Thomas Thompson, Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999);
Keith Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History (London: Routledge, 1996). For refutations of the minimalist approach,
see William G. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know & When Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2001);
B. Halpern, “Erasing History: The Minimalist Assault on Ancient Israel,” Bible Review 11, no. 6 (1995): 26–35, 47;
J. A. Hackett, P. K. McCarter, A. Yardeni, A. Lemaire, E. Eshel, and A. Hurvitz, “Defusing Pseudo-Scholarship,” The Biblical Archeological Review 23, no. 2 (1997), pp. 41–50, 68; Gary A. Rendsburg, “Down with History, Up with Reading: The Current State of Biblical Studies,” http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/programs/Jewish/30yrs/rendsburg/index.html
See Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan, eds., War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1999);
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).
Hizb al-Tahrir, “al-manahij al-madrasiyya al-filastiniyya: ta‘amul ‘ala hadam al-asam fi nufus abna’ al-muslimin wa-tahwilihim ila al-‘ilmaniyya al-kafira” (n.p., 2004), p. 52. For Hizb al-Tahrir’s opposition to nationalism,
see David Commins, “Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani and the Islamic Liberation Party,” Muslim World 81, nos. 3–4 (1991): 195–96.
On the scrolls and the scholarly debate on their origins and significance, see D. Dimant and U. Rappaport, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research, (Jerusalem, forthcoming); Z. J. Kapera, ed., “The First International Colloquium on the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Folia Orientalia, 25 (1988): 1–155; F. Garcia-Martinez, “The Texts of Qumran and the History of Community,” Revue de Qumran 14, (1989–90): 2–4.
Al-Hayat, 20 March 2000; Nicholas Jubber, “The Cross in the Crescent,” World Catholic Report, January 2002: http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/Igpress/2002–01/dossier.html. Al-Hayat al-Jadida, 24 January 2000, 14 December 2004; 9 March 2006 — PMW, 6 July 2006; PNA TV, 23 July 2000. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, prudently described Christ as a son of the Holy Land in his 2001 Christmas message, http://www.lpj.org/Nonviolence/Patriarch/Miladh01.htm; Gershon Nerel, Anti-Zionism in the ‘Electronic Church’ of Palestinian Christianity (Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, 2006).
Islamic tradition views several of the biblical prophets as Muslims since they advocated the belief in one God; see Roberto Tottoli, Biblical Prophets in the Qur’an and Muslim Literature (Richmond, VA: Curzon, 2001).
Islamic Education, Grade 5, part 1 (2004) pp. 61, 77–79; Our Beautiful Language, Grade 5, part 1 (2004), p. 5, cited in Arnon Groiss (ed.) Jews, Israel and Peace in the Palestinian Authority Textbooks (Jerusalem: Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, 2005), pp. 25, 55–58; Jbara et al., Ta’rikh Filastin al-hadith wal-mu‘asir, p. 13.
Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les lieux de mémoire,” Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 19–20.
Emmanuel Sivan, “The Arab Nation-State in Search of a Usable Past,” Middle Eastern Review 19, no. 3 (Spring 1987): 21–30.
Baruch Kimmerling and Joel Migdal, Palestinians: The Making of a People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 6–10.
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Litvak, M. (2009). Constructing a National Past: The Palestinian Case. In: Litvak, M. (eds) Palestinian Collective Memory and National Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230621633_5
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