Palestinian Commemoration in Israel: Calendars, Monuments, and Martyrs (Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures) - Softcover

Sorek, Tamir

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804795185 ISBN 13: 9780804795180

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2015

Synopsis

Collective memory transforms historical events into political myths. In this book, Tamir Sorek considers the development of collective memory and national commemoration among the Palestinian citizens of Israel. He charts the popular politicization of four key events―the Nakba, the 1956 Kafr Qasim Massacre, the 1976 Land Day, and the October 2000 killing of twelve Palestinian citizens in Israel―and investigates a range of commemorative sites, including memorial rallies, monuments, poetry, the education system, political summer camps, and individual historical remembrance. These sites have become battlefields between diverse social forces and actors―including Arab political parties, the Israeli government and security services, local authorities, grassroots organizations, journalists, and artists―over representations of the past.

Palestinian commemorations are uniquely tied to Palestinian encounters with the Israeli state apparatus, with Jewish Israeli citizens of Israel, and by their position as Israeli citizens themselves. Reflecting longstanding tensions between Palestinian citizens and the Israeli state, as well as growing pressures across Palestinian societies within and beyond Israel, these moments of commemoration distinguish Palestinian citizens not only from Jewish citizens, but from Palestinians elsewhere. Ultimately, Sorek shows that Palestinian citizens have developed commemorations and a collective memory that offers both moments of protest and points of dialogue, that is both cautious and circuitous.

About this title

About the Author

Tamir Sorek is Associate Professor of Sociology and Israel Studies at the University of Florida. He is the author of Arab Soccer in a Jewish State: The Integrative Enclave (2007).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Palestinian Commemoration in Israel

Calendars, Monuments, And Martyrs

By Tamir Sorek

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8047-9518-0

Contents

List of Figures, 
Acknowledgments, 
Introduction, 
1. Commemoration under British Rule, 
2. The Kafr Qasim Massacre and Land Day, 
3. The Political Calendar in the Twenty-First Century, 
4. Memorials for Martyrs, I (1976–1983), 
5. Memorials for Martyrs, II (1998–2013), 
6. On the Margins of Commemoration, 
7. Disciplining Palestinian Memory, 
8. The Struggle over the Next Generation, 
9. Political Summer Camps, 
10. The Quest for Victory, 
11. Latent Nostalgia for Yitzhak Rabin, 
Conclusion, 
Appendix, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

COMMEMORATION UNDER BRITISH RULE

ON 1 MAY 1921, a series of violent clashes broke out in the Jaffa and Tulkarm regions of Palestine and resulted in the death of hundreds of Jews and Arabs—the largest and most violent confrontation in the Palestinian-Zionist conflict to date. These clashes were the latest incidents amid the growing unrest after the Balfour Declaration of 1917 that promised Britain's support for the Zionist project and the subsequent British occupation of Palestine. In 1923 on the second anniversary of the Jaffa/Tulkarm riots, Palestine's leading newspaper at the time Filastin ran a front-page editorial with the headline "Martyrs' Day" (yawm al-shuhada), which read in part:

It has been two years since the day pure blood flowed out of us, since the day pure souls passed. We were inattentive to what was going on until that day when we were awakened in the morning by the roar of bullets.

Our revival was poor in all that other revivals are rich. Since that day, however, it became rich in martyrs, abundant with memorial days. One hundred brave sons of Palestine became martyrs (istashhadu) and they were not aggressors—and now Palestine considers them as having died for the sake of salvation. Martyrs are an inevitable component of the revival of nations. They breathe life into them. Memories, sweet and bitter, are another inevitable component, for they provoke reviving nations to action and renew their determination.

And if days start to look alike and become forgettable, we have one guiding day that we will not forget, one day that is stained with blood, crowned with blackness. The memory of that day awakens in us all that went dormant; it restores what went lukewarm in our enthusiasm and pushes us forward. That day is 1 May, Martyrs' Day.

In his attempt to establish 1 May 1921 as a historic turning point in the Palestinian collective consciousness, Filastin's editorialist was clearly aware of the political role of martyrdom and collective calendars in the creation of a national identity and was actively nurturing a Palestinian/Arab national identity under British rule.

The political boundaries imposed on the Palestinians following the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I eventually were adopted as boundaries of political identity. These postwar boundaries came with a demographic threat, phrased in the Balfour Declaration, and resulted in the politicization of a Palestinian particularism. This emerging emphasis on Palestinian identity coexisted with other collective identities, such as religious and local identities, Ottomanism, as well as Arab nationalism. Depending on circumstances and context, these identities can either complement each other or compete for importance and priority. Overlapping identifications were very common, and the boundaries between Arab and Palestinian nationalism were especially fluid. That said—various forces in Palestinian society gave differential weight to each element. Palestinian particularism refers here to the tendency to prioritize Palestinian solidarity over other identities, not an aspiration to substitute one for the other.

The invention of modern nations frequently relies on pre-existing markers of identity such as religion, language, shared myths about the origins and history of the group, daily customs, or cuisine. The Arab inhabitants of Palestine did not share the same religion (most of them were Muslim, but there was a sizable and influential Christian population), and their language and daily culture did not differ much from the Greater Syria region in general. Pre-modern elements of Palestinian collective memory, such as the shadow of the crusades and the glory of Saladin's victory, constituted only useful raw material for the production of a national identity. To transform Palestine from a regional category into a political category, requiring commitment and mutual solidarity, there was need for a more elaborated imaginative process. This is why calendars and martyrs had special appeal to Palestinian nationalists. These elements aimed to unify Muslims and Christians, villagers and urban dwellers, and diverse geographical regions, while at the same time nurturing a distinct Palestinian collective identity. Although martyrs and political calendars also serve to cultivate Arab nationalism or Islamic pride in Palestine, martyrs and the invention of new calendars were less crucial for nurturing these identities.

AN EMERGING CALENDAR

Following the British takeover of Palestine in 1918, about fifteen political clubs were founded by upper-class Muslims and Christians in the major Palestinian towns. These clubs were named the Muslim Christian Association (MCA), and they formed a national body, the Palestine Arab Congress, which opposed the Balfour Declaration and Zionist immigration. Although other organizations, such as the Literary Forum and the Arab Club took part in this opposition, the latter two were Palestinian branches that were part of a broader regional network whereas the MCAs were a local Palestinian phenomenon. In addition, the institutions established by the MCAs played a leading role in the political mobilization of Arab Palestinians. Therefore, some scholars consider these associations as the first manifestations of a national movement among the Arabs in Palestine.

All three organizations, though, provided the stage for the first documented attempts by Palestinian elites to establish a national political calendar. Following the Arab revolt against Ottoman rule toward the end of World War I, Faysal al-Hashimi established a short-lived Arab government in Syria with British approval; and for a short time, leading Palestinian intellectuals saw the future of Palestine as part of this new political entity. In spring 1919, the author Khalil Sakakini suggested to the members of the Jerusalem chapter of the MCA that the date the anti-Ottoman Arab revolt was launched (9 Sha'aban in the hijri calendar) be celebrated annually as an independence day of the Arabs. Sakakini, a Christian Palestinian, reported that he had to convince his fellow Christian members of the MCA that this was an event with national significance, which should concern not only Muslims. That year the MCA, the Literary Forum, and the Arab Club in Jerusalem celebrated Independence Day (which happened to be 9 May that same year). Sakakini, who attended the ceremony at the Arab Club in Jerusalem, reported that it included speeches, musical performances, and the singing of the Arab national anthem, which Sakakini himself had written (Ayuha al-mawla al-'athim). The British military governor of Jerusalem, Ronald Storrs, attended the event.

Although the celebration of Independence Day did not become a long tradition, it is one example of many elite attempts to establish a political calendar during the British Mandate period. The dates on this calendar had diverse origins and fall into two main categories. One category includes those that grew out of the politicization and nationalization of traditional holy days. In this category only one attempt succeeded beyond regional and factional divisions: the Nabi Musa festival. The other category includes those dates commemorating recent politically significant events. The most salient commemoration in this category is the annual protest against the Balfour Declaration on 2 November. Another relatively successful initiative was the Memorial Day for three Palestinians executed by the British authorities in 1930, a commemoration that was observed annually for four consecutive years.

Nabi Musa Festival

The Nabi Musa festival included a procession from Jerusalem to a shrine traditionally believed to be the tomb of the prophet Moses. Pilgrimages to the shrine have been recorded since the late thirteenth century, but the Nabi Musa festival was fixed to the date of Easter in the Eastern Orthodox calendar and became an official, civic, public event only in the nineteenth century. With the emergence of an organized political opposition to Britain's Jewish national home policy, it became an important site of protest. In 1920 the procession devolved into violent riots, in which five Jews and four Arabs were killed. Following these events, Sakakini wrote in his diary: "Until now the Muslim and Christian holidays were religious, but last year and this year they appear to be national holidays."

Some scholars see the 1920 riots in Jerusalem as the first anti-colonial eruption in the history of the Zionist–Palestinian conflict; however, at this point the struggle was defined in terms of opposition to British policy and Zionist aspirations and as displaying Arab national identification but not necessarily in terms of defending the nationalist idea of Palestine. It was in subsequent years, especially between 1929 and 1936, that the annual festival gradually became an idiom of Palestinian national identity. The "nationalization" of the Nabi Musa festival was reflected in the extension of the social groups that participated in the procession, both geographically and demographically. From an event that initially attracted participants from the greater Jerusalem area, it was extended to include a wider area of central and southern Palestine with participants from Jaffa, Ramleh, Lydda, Gaza, Nablus, and even from the Beersheba region. In other words, the new participants came from different regions of Mandatory Palestine but not from neighboring Arab countries.

In addition, Christian participation expanded, a significant development given the popular association between the Nabi Musa holiday and the struggle against the crusaders. A popular tale circulated that Saladin had initiated the holiday in response to the large number of Christian pilgrims who visited Jerusalem for Easter ceremonies during the years of the Crusader control of the city (1099–1187). The increase in Christian participation, therefore, implies that the meaning of the holiday was reshaped to support Muslim-Christian solidarity. The presence of Christians and the absence of Jews marked the emerging socio-political division of the country—Arab-Palestinians against Jews. As historian Eddie Halabi writes: "For the Arabs who witnessed this procession, the image of Christians and Muslims marching in unison, singing patriotic anthems, served as a 'model for reality,' a discursive construct that portrayed the elite as leading a modern nationalist movement free of communal discord." By the early 1930s the Nabi Musa banner itself had been transformed into a nationalist symbol, from a green cloth bordered in gold to a version of the green, red, black, and white Arab national flag, with an embroidered Dome of the Rock—a symbol that can represent both Palestinian particularism and Islam—at its center.

In addition to Nabi Musa, several other traditional holidays, pilgrimages, and events from Islamic history offered opportunities to politicize and nationalize the Palestinian calendar, most notably the Nabi Salih festival north of Ramallah and the birthday of the prophet Mohammad (Mawlid al-Nabi). The latter was celebrated especially in the Haifa region, and the Haifa-based (Christian-owned) newspaper al-Karmil even "deconfessionalized" the holiday by having it commemorate "the birth of the honorable Arab prophet." In 1936 Filastin explicitly called for the instrumental use of religious holidays to promote national socialization (arguing that this is what the Jews do) and suggested including Easter in the list of commemorations in addition to the Nabi Musa festival. The Battle of Hittin (4 July 1187) in which Saladin defeated the crusaders was celebrated from 1932 to 1937 by the pan-Arab Istiqlal party (established in 1932). The party presented the battle as a victory of the East over the West to include the Christian population in the national community. However, none of these commemorations ultimately had the resonance of the Nabi Musa festival, failing to gain relevance beyond specific regional or partisan boundaries or draw widespread participation from all over Palestine.

The increasing importance of Nabi Musa during the British Mandate period is not only a derivative of the religious and political centrality of Jerusalem. It is related as well to the relative power of Haj Amin al-Husayni, who was the most influential Palestinian leader during this period. His rise to power is directly linked to the Nabi Musa riots in 1920, where he delivered an anti-Zionist speech. In the aftermath of the riots, he fled to Damascus and was tried in abstention by the British authorities but later, in an attempt to co-opt him, they gave him amnesty and nominated him as the Grand Mufti, the foremost position of Islamic authority in Palestine. In 1922 he was elected as president of the Supreme Muslim Council (SMC), an institution created by the British High Commissioner. The SMC enjoyed the control of considerable resources based on waqf assets, which enabled al-Husayni to orchestrate the Nabi Musa celebration and to expand it from a local to a national event. In this way the annual pilgrimage became an instrument for establishing the leadership status in Palestinian society for al-Husayni and the SMC. These resources were unavailable for other political forces that competed over leadership.

The SMC also benefited from the policy of the British authorities that tolerated many of its activities as part of its co-optation efforts. For fifteen years the SMC kept a delicate balance between mobilizing opposition to the pro-Zionist British policy and satisfying Britain by regulating this opposition. The balance ended during the Arab Revolt (1936–1939), during which British rule in Palestine faced a nationalist uprising demanding independence and an end to Jewish immigration. The revolt opened with a six-month-long general strike and devolved into armed rebellion. In 1937 British authorities terminated Amin al-Husayni's control of the SMC, and he fled the country before being arrested. In a parallel path, they imposed severe restrictions on the Nabi Musa pilgrimage and practically neutralized its nationalist character. The exile of al-Husayni, the dismantling of Palestinian political institutions, and later the food shortage during World War II had a detrimental effect on the festival, and it was never celebrated again with the same magnitude.

Balfour Day

Writing in his diary during the Nabi Musa festival on 17 April 1919, Sakakini reflected on the difference between Jewish and Arab holidays. He noted that the former were "created as memorial days for tragedies" and resulted in "dulled" senses and "pain and sadness," whereas Muslim holidays are "exciting" and left the Muslim "full of enthusiasm and energy." He then added: "A nation whose holidays include only crying has no future."

Sakakini could not foresee that Palestinians would soon accumulate many memorial days commemorating tragedies and death—the days of remembrance that constitute the pillars of their national calendar even today. In this regard, Ernest Renan's observation that "defeat and mourning have greater importance for the national memory than victories," diametrically opposed to Sakakini's, would seem more apt, given their effectiveness in mobilizing for struggle. Thus the incorporation of tragedies (which in the Palestinian case concerned recent events) into the collective Palestinian narrative was part of the discursive nationalization of Palestinian identity.

In arguing his case to the MCA for commemorating Independence Day, Sakakini noted that "the Jews are already celebrating their independence since the Balfour Declaration." Indeed, from 1918 through World War II, the Zionists in Palestine had made 2 November, the date the declaration was issued, a national holiday. For the Arabs of Palestine, the Balfour Declaration could only be a tragedy, and soon it became commemorated as such—the first of the tragic commemorations that have since marked their calendar. Although the protest against the declaration began shortly after its publication, the formalization of cyclical annual protest under the title Balfour Day did not begin until 1921.

The main choreographer of Balfour Day was the Arab Executive, a committee first elected by the third Arab Congress in 1920, which played a role in leading the Palestinian national struggle until 1934. Remarkably, although in 1919 "Independence Day" was celebrated according to the hijri Islamic calendar, Balfour Day—as other new memorial days suggested by Palestinian leadership in the mandatory period—was scheduled according to the Gregorian calendar.

Unlike the Nabi Musa festival, Balfour Day had no religious significance and was equally shared by Muslims and Christians. Therefore, it was more compatible with the cross-sectarian ideological orientation of the MCA and the Arab Executive. On Balfour Day 1923, for example, Jaffa's MCA organized an event where Christians were invited with Muslims to Jaffa's Great Mosque to celebrate the "participation of the Muslim and Christian brothers in the Jihad for saving the country."

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804795185
• ISBN 13: 9780804795180
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 328