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The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil,    but because of the people who don't do anything about it

Occupation magazine - Related Issues Home page  back Print  Send To friend Palestinian Women: Narrative Histories and Gendered Memory Yehudit Keshet Fatmeh Kassem, Zed Books, London, 2010, 264 pp. Bibliography, index. The Nakba is the catastrophe that effectively destroyed Arab Palestine, resulting in the expulsion and flight of the majority of Palestinians, the destruction of the villages they left behind and the appropriation of their lands and goods by the nascent Israeli state in 1948. It is perhaps an inevitable irony that a recent spate of anti-Nakba polemic in Israel has placed the topic firmly on the public agenda, stimulating not only press and media coverage but also renewed interest in the more serious histories of the period. Dr Fatmeh Kassem’s book is therefore most timely. This book does not deal with the macro-history of ‘who hit who back first, and harder’. Rather it focuses on the micro, on the lives of elderly Palestinian women who survived the emptying of the Palestinian towns of Lyd(Lod) and Ramleh (Ramla) in 1948 by the Israeli forces, towns now incorporated into the Israeli state. These oral histories come from women who are multi-marginalized: as Palestinian second-class citizens living in Jewish-Arab so-called mixed towns; as working-class, often illiterate, subjects and, not least, as women silenced by the male dominated discourse of their own, and the wider society. In her readable and moving book, Kassem has not only salvaged important memories of painful personal and collective histories, she has empowered her interviewees to speak , perhaps for the first time, in their own voices and given them a place on the public stage. At the same time, this is a work of theoretical substance and a significant contribution to the growing body of literature on the Nakba as well as to feminist discourse analysis. The pioneer of Palestinian oral histories, Rosemary Sayigh (2007) points out that not all Palestinians experienced the Nakba in the same way and that there is a wealth of difference between those who were forced out, and those who stayed, between rich and poor – and inevitably, between men and women. As she says despite the many “adequate” analyses of the political and military cause of Nakba, what is missing are the voices of those who experienced the events of ’48 at first hand, paralleling at the level of the text “the discounting of Palestine’s indigenous population by imperialists and colonizers alike.” (Sayigh. 2007, p. 135). Kassem’s interlocutors are all women in their seventies and eighties, with direct experience of the events of 1948. In no few cases, the women refused (or were not permitted) to speak without the presence of male relatives or other family members who did not hesitate to interject objections, additions and embellishments. (See also Sayigh 2007 who describes similar patterns among her interviewees). Focussing on the experiential aspect of her interviewees, Kassem presents the testimonies under three overlapping rubrics: Language; The Body; Home. This framework simultaneously challenges familiar male discourses of battles military and political, and valorises the intimate experiences of women in the places where they are both most vulnerable but also most powerful: in their person, and at their domestic hearth. The women in this book, by virtue of the words they choose in these three aforementioned categories, challenge not only the silencing of the events of ’48 but also the oppression of Israel’s Palestinian citizens and the silencing of women qua women. Kassem, an Israeli Palestinian from the Galilee, opens the book with her own personal history: she recalls sitting with her family in the diwan, the living room of their home and hearing her father recount his experiences of the Nakba while her mother sat silently by. That silence was broken only in the private spaces of kitchen and bedroom where the more intimate experiences of life are recounted. These were experiences that had a different dimension, that of the human and personal. As Kassem later says of her interviewees: ‘The terminology and colloquial language...edifies their role as active agents who make history.” (p.82-3). Kassem genders this Nakba history by showing that the physical erasure and denial of the Palestinian collective, and collective memory, mirrors the silencing and elision of women’s voices and socio/political participation. She also demonstrates that the personal, and private is political, as experienced in her own academic life. For example, when she submitted the proposal for her doctorate, on which this book is based, to Ben Gurion University of the Negev in 2002, the then Dean of Graduate Studies personally demanded that she remove terms and statements that he regarded as counter to the Zionist narrative, going so far as to dictate ‘appropriate’ alternatives. For example, he objected to the use of the term Nakba and, ridiculously, to the use of ‘first generation’ in relation to those giving testimony, claiming that this was a term reserved exclusively for Holocaust survivors. Following the Dean’s insistence and his veiled threats of legal action, Kassem was coerced into agreeing to propound a Zionist view of history: a view which denied both her collective and her personal legitimacy. Fortunately, the Dean’s term ended shortly thereafter and her proposal was finally accepted on its own terms. As to the testimonies of the women themselves, these are powerfully and carefully quoted to illustrate the importance of their memories as part of lived history. Language Language and the spaces in between have been adapted by Kassem’s interviewees as a narrative tool to express not merely the ‘facts’ but also the feelings of the events and changes that they have experienced over the last 60 years. Interestingly, for the most part, the women don’t use the word Nakba, but speak rather of migration (hijra) following the invasion of Israeli troops into their homes and villages. Grammar is also an expressive indicator of emotion. Thus, as Kassem points out, for many women their narrations of 1948 are in the passive case, ‘the Jews entered and took us’, ‘the Jews loaded [us] onto trucks’ ‘they dropped us off’ (p112) Interviewees also use silence to convey the sense of the wreckage of their lives. Kassem claims that this apparent passivity is no less than an act of agency designed to make the harrowing experiences of 1948 less painful. The ‘entering’ Israeli forces, and what amounts to the rape of Palestine and the reduction to dust of those left in its wake, like experiences of the Holocaust for survivors, cannot be articulated. Do these silences, as Kassem suggests, constitute an act of agency by refusing to engage, even in retrospect, with those acts? When speaking about the pre-1948 period, the ‘days of the English’ [British Mandate 1922-1948) or ‘the days of the Turks’ (up to 1917) there is ambivalence with regard to the experience of power. As one interviewee, Ayeshe, says: “The Palestinians were always oppressed and discriminated.” (P.119) yet describing life in ‘the time of the English’, the discourse changes, and the women present themselves as active and productive; they use lively verbs related to their labour before migration: ‘we picked, we sowed, we worked the land’. (P112 op.cit). Passivity disappears again after 1948. The women were often forced to take on the role of breadwinners in the absence of their menfolk in exile, prison or because the men simply could not find employment. Thus Um Omar from Lyd after describing her work as a seamstress and weaver says “I would put together day and night...I scrubbed...washed...baked bread...I worked inside and outside..” (p.115) Kassem heard similar stories from most of her interviewees and points out that although the women’s contribution to the family economy was considerable and that work outside the home did challenge the boundaries of traditional role models, it did not bring about a significant change in the status of women within the community. This is a phenomenon common to traditional societies, for instance, Israel’s ultra-orthodox community where it is often the women who engage the wider community as main earners, but where their status remains subordinate to those of the men. A sense of achievement was also expressed by interviewees in the marriage of children, re-establishing a private house and raising a family was the antidote to the previous loss of community and family. The silences are also significant. The women avoid using terms such as ‘refugee’ or ‘displaced’, since ‘this could be interpreted as an intra-social threat to Zionist sovereignty’ (p. 112), in other words they might be considered as demanding the right of return for Palestinian refugees, the fear of which haunts the Israeli psyche as an existential threat. These silences are essential to survival, to preventing yet another disruption of the fabric of their lives. The Nakba – the ‘migration’ of 1948 is enshrined in collective memories as a personal, not just a national, loss of agency, a limbo between a happier ‘before’ and a harsher ‘after’, a before and after divided by a chasm of silence and loss. Body The basic facts of the Nakba- the military campaigns, the expulsions/migrations, and its results are well known and documented. (Nazzal, 1974, Sayigh, 2007, Morris, 1987, 2008 inter alia) What is contested is the narrative, the notion that the (male dominated) sphere of ‘facts’ is challenged by its interpretation, whether the interpretation is that of the vanquished, the Palestinians, or that of the victors, the Israelis. One pundit recently proclaimed that there are no narratives, only truths enshrined in facts. (S. Avineri, Ha’aretz on-line, June 17, 2011http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1231601.html), In reality, there are no facts without their accompanying narrative. And of course even facts are open to interpretation and thus contribute equally to narrative. Women, as largely non-combatant and ‘innocent by-standers’ (and all too frequently) victims of conflict have their own unique narrative that sheds light on the human, social and cultural experience of war and, in this case, its unending aftermath. Kassem’s section on body brings this experiential aspect to the fore. Alice from Ramleh records her memories of migration in terms of her own and her mother’s simultaneous pregnancies, as well as the physical fragility of her aged father: “We went the whole way by foot... I was at the beginning of a pregnancy. My mother was pregnant too and my father was old and walking with a stick. My father left my mother and my mother left my father...otherwise...we would have stayed together.” (p.154). We have here a whole picture not only of the pains of exile, for young and old, men and women, the pregnant and the lame but also a social picture, a young pregnant bride and her mother, still in her child bearing years yet with an elderly husband, who presumably is left by the wayside in the chaos. Descriptions such as these rather than contradicting the ‘facts’ give them resonance and confirmation. For the Israeli side, this however is an uncomfortable interpretation for it belies the other narrative which presents the banishment and flight of Palestinians as a product of necessity, or of Palestinian choice. In any case allegedly a banishment supposedly conducted in a humane and moral manner, largely against armed militants. As well as recounting their own physical experiences, Kassem records that her interviewees often described the male body as absent, that is imprisoned or dead, or as a victim: “wounded, broken and weak” (p. 152) This in the context of the current situation where many Palestinian men in Lyd-Ramleh are unemployed, substance-addicted or imprisoned whether for criminal or nationalist activity. Deprived of status, marginalised and all too often forced to collaborate as informers with the Israeli security forces, they are no longer protectors and providers. The women, on the other hand, describe themselves in active terms, working, procreating, nurturing and providing. As Kassem says: “..this representation of the female body offers an alternative form of non-violent struggle as well as an alternative form of heroism.” (p.150). All the interviewees valorise their own physical strength, describing the multitude of tasks they perform from sunrise well into the night.. But the female body is nonetheless vulnerable, in particular vulnerable to violation. All too often in areas of conflict, control of territory is conflated with control of the female body through rape – Bosnia, Congo, Sudan, the examples abound. In both narratives, the Palestinian and the Israeli, the issue of rape is silenced, or almost so. Yet with the opening of archives and the increasingly systematic recording of Palestinian history, it has become clear that rapine was part of the Israeli armoury against the Palestinians. And no doubt there was also rape, and attempted rape, by the other side. In the case of the Palestinians, both men and women, the topic is taboo, a private shame that cannot be spoken of. Israel has used this silence to deny that acts of rape occurred, and thus once again to assert moral superiority. Kassem points out that “reading between the lines [of the interviews] it becomes clear that rape was part of their experience”. (p.158) Even when the women agree to speak of rape it is often in elusive terms, using expressions such as “they do what can’t be done”. (p.158). Women stress how their parents guarded them against dis-honour, hiding them when the soldiers came or as one interviewee reports, how she and her sisters smeared themselves with cattle dung to make themselves repulsive.(p.162). “...one woman was there when the Jews entered...someone had a beautiful...daughter and [they] came to rape her. Her father started shouting...upon hearing his voice, the voice of an Arab [the soldiers] ran away and didn’t do anything...Another unfortunate one they did do something to...” (p159). The interviewee, Rashideh then describes in oblique terms her own experience of near rape, thereafter becoming virtually a prisoner in her parents home as they sought to protect her honour. Another interviewee, Halimeh, becomes very defensive on the subject, declaring that (p.159) “No one ever touched us”, ‘touching’ being a euphemism for sexual violence. All these women whose lives are bounded by hardship: forced migration, physical labour childbearing, sickness, loss, poverty and, in no few cases, probably physical abuse, yet see themselves not as victims but as survivors, agents of their own destiny as defined by their bodily experiences. In some way they are symbolic of the land of Palestine, ultimately unvanquished. Home “As Palestinian citizens in the State of Israel these women describe how their private homes became the homes of Jewish families and their collective home –Palestine – became the national Jewish homeland.” (p. 190). The home for Kassem’s interviewees is perhaps the most emotionally loaded issue of all. At the time of the expulsions in 1948, many Palestinians locked up their homes and took the key, preparing for the day of their return. But in so many cases that day never came. The key has become an icon of the Palestinian determination to return, but it is also an important aide-memoire to a time nostalgically recalled as a time of plenty and abundance. The women must live not only with their loss of home-homeland, but with the violator of those homes, the Israeli state, and with their own continued vulnerability in their family homes. Conditions in what was once the old city of Lyd, where the majority of Palestinians live today, are very poor, the infrastructure is crumbling and permits for building extensions and additions are almost impossible to come by, at least for Palestinians. Between 2000-2011 there have been a series of mass demolitions of so-called illegal building in Lyd-Ramleh, focusing largely, though not entirely, on the Palestinian neighbourhoods. As one interviewee records: “They destroyed the home of my nephew. It was ready to be lived in...In the last two months they have destroyed so many...we are also on a condition order... they told me to stop, so I stopped. They let him finish and all and then they came and destroyed it.” (p. 228). Legal complexities abound here. In 1948, many Palestinian families were forced to share their homes, or re-settle in the homes of others and to share them with newly arrived Jewish immigrant families. In 1948 these houses were then taken over by the state housing companies. The companies can do with these properties as they will, leaving their residents with no redress against evacuation/eviction. (The Jewish neighbours have long since been re-housed). Another complexity is the lack of documentation relating to land and housing sales in Palestine. Palestinians are handicapped in proving their rights to land and property since before 1948 most sales were made by “gentlemen’s agreement”, for which a handshake sufficed. Even where documents were signed, many were lost during the war of ’48 whether by looting, damage caused by bombardment or lost in the flight. Several women describe the personal sacrifices they have made to ensure the safety of the home, whether by selling jewellery or by taking on an extra workload to provide financing. Thus Um Nasri describes her husband telling her regretfully after she sells her dowry bracelets: “We’ve stripped you of your gold” and replying “We want to have a life.” (p216). Dowry jewellery is a significant element in Palestinian women’s sense of agency and identity, regarded as personal property and not shared with her husband. Um Nasri actually sells off dowry jewellery twice to pay for housing costs, a measure of her commitment to the home. For all these reasons, the section on home is particularly moving, where the interviewees describe both the loss of the original home and their struggles to create new places of safety in the chaos and confusion of exile. As Kassem points out, the women’s concepts of home are highly sophisticated, reverberating with many meanings, as both a physical and a metaphysical locus, as both a place of security and of vulnerability. She writes, “[the home] is the one place where history and memory are transmitted...preserving the continuity of cultural and national identity” (p190). The home becomes a site of resistance to Israeli occupation. It is here in the domestic private home and the collective national home now designated as the homeland of others, that the Nakba is visible as a continuing presence, both haunting and very tangible. It is a never-ending story. The real significance of these interviews is less what they tell us about the past than what they “potentially offer to the present and the future” (p240) Kassem goes on to ask whether in the light of the “knowledge residing in these stories and the life experiences of these women...the prevailing dominant discourses fully address the root causes of ongoing violence and oppression? How can the various proposed solutions that both entirely overlook events in 1948 and largely exclude women, their experiences and perspectives, ever hope to achieve a lasting and just peace?” How indeed! As the current climate in Israel increasingly attempts to silence thought and discussion on political issues not consistent with government policies, and more, to silence the voice of the Palestinian minority, this book is a reminder of the significance of multiple voices and ideas, of the importance of memories from the margins in creating a truer picture of events than that illustrated by ‘mere’ historical facts. Israel’s ongoing refusal to recognise this truer picture and to redress the wrongs of the past, is indeed a major obstacle to a future peace. I cannot recommend this book highly enough to anyone interested in the “real”, the human history of our troubled Israel-Palestine. References: Kaniuk, Y 2010, 1948, Yediot Achronot Books, Tel Aviv, in Hebrew Morris, B 1987, The Birth of the Palestine Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ------- 2008, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, Yale University Press, New Haven Nazzal, N 1974, The Palestinian Exodus from Galilee, Institute for Palestine Studies, Beirut. Sayigh, R 2007)The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries, Zed Books, London The fate of the Palestinians driven from their homes in that war has always been a contested topic in Israel and is not taught in schools, not even in the separate Israeli-Palestinian school system. rh Links to the latest articles in this section Adam Keller in Berlin, Sept 5-8 Activists protest Tel Aviv arms exhibition: `Arms trade is death trade` In Memeoriam Beate Keller Zilversmidt, 1942-2021