I’ve been reading a number of books on Palestine
and the
establishment of the state of Israel recently. My grandfather was
stationed there after the Second World War, so it’s always been a
subject that I’ve
read about and returned to. It is
of
course, still, one of the most politically charged areas of
historiography,
because the interpretations at stake are not simply of archival
interest. Many of those interpretations and narratives are the
ideological
supports of present belief and policy. Often the war of interpretation
concerns
questions over ‘fact’ and the marshaling of fact. But prior to the
marshaling
of facts are framing assumptions which seldom make themselves visible,
so that
as long as the frame is uncontested, the marshaling and bandying of
facts will only
reinforce the frame.
Some years ago a book was published by Joan Peters with the
title “From Time Immemorial”. Outside
the U.S., and to a lesser degree within it, the book has been comprehensively
dismantled by serious scholars of Middle East history. It is riddled with
errors and misrepresentation. Peters falsifies or, through simple inexperience,
misunderstands the available data to suggest that Palestinian Arabs are a
comparatively recent arrival, and this with a view to invalidating their claims
to the land. This is a curious argument, not so much because it is clearly
false at a factual level, but because it would certainly also disqualify the
claims of the Jewish settlers who arrived in increasing numbers from the late
nineteenth century.
In fact, this book can only be understood as part of a bigger ideological project. There is a long tradition of Zionist writers and politicians for whom the Palestinian Arabs are not a 'legitimate people' (Avraham Stern), have no true bond to the land of Palestine, or simply don't exist. This tendency, to discriminate between a true people and a false people, one with real and ancient ties and another with recent superficial ties, and to assume that only the people with ancient ancestry have rights and entitlements has its roots in 19th century nationalism. It is an anti-enlightenment and racist doctrine. It's political consequences have been appalling. But this is the frame within which the marshaling of facts takes place.
In fact, like the Jewish population of Palestine, some Arabs (and other non-Jews) had been there for generations and some were more recent additions. It actually does not matter. If you've lived and worked in a land even for one generation, or less, and you are part of the majority population of that land, then you have a right to be consulted about the partition of that land, you certainly have a right not to be expelled or 'transferred' somewhere else, or, of you flee in conditions of war, you have a right to return to your homes. And so finally, the whole debate as to which 'people' has the longest ancestry, which ‘people’ has the more atavistic attachment, is false and pernicious at its very inception. The framing assumptions are false.
In fact, this book can only be understood as part of a bigger ideological project. There is a long tradition of Zionist writers and politicians for whom the Palestinian Arabs are not a 'legitimate people' (Avraham Stern), have no true bond to the land of Palestine, or simply don't exist. This tendency, to discriminate between a true people and a false people, one with real and ancient ties and another with recent superficial ties, and to assume that only the people with ancient ancestry have rights and entitlements has its roots in 19th century nationalism. It is an anti-enlightenment and racist doctrine. It's political consequences have been appalling. But this is the frame within which the marshaling of facts takes place.
In fact, like the Jewish population of Palestine, some Arabs (and other non-Jews) had been there for generations and some were more recent additions. It actually does not matter. If you've lived and worked in a land even for one generation, or less, and you are part of the majority population of that land, then you have a right to be consulted about the partition of that land, you certainly have a right not to be expelled or 'transferred' somewhere else, or, of you flee in conditions of war, you have a right to return to your homes. And so finally, the whole debate as to which 'people' has the longest ancestry, which ‘people’ has the more atavistic attachment, is false and pernicious at its very inception. The framing assumptions are false.
The notion of ‘a people’, is also made to do much more ideological work. It
was Gilles Deleuze, among others, who pointed out that for mainstream Zionism, there
was and is no Palestinian people, but only “Arabs”, who “being only
Arabs in general... must go merge with other Arabs.” The Arab people are only
attached to ‘Arab land’, which spans Syria, Iraq, the Lebanon etc, and so can
they be moved indifferently between those places. In reality, people are
attached to this olive grove, this field, this neighbourhood with its coffee
shop, and not to abstractions such as ‘Arab land’ or the “Arab people”. Similarly,
I am attached to certain parts of London, not, as a European, to Europe in
general so that I might be re-settled anywhere within it. But in the politicised historiography of the
Middle East, it is abstractions that walk the earth, not flesh and blood individuals and communities, just as it as an abstract earth. If you are dealing only with the
abstractions of ‘Arab territory’ and the ‘Arab people’ then this enables you to
justify transfer and dispossession.