MESA Banner
Beyond Solidarity: Palestinian Citizens of Israel’s Assertions of Presence and Memory through Protest
Abstract
Palestinian citizens of Israel are on the periphery of the dominant Palestinian nationalist movement. They are also severely marginalized by Israeli policies that privilege the Jewishness of the state of Israel. They struggle for their civil, political, economic, and cultural rights as minority citizens in Israel. However, much of their public activism would also seem to be about other Palestinians whom they can hardly meet face-to-face due to Israeli policies of closure and fragmentation. During the spring and summer of 2014, Palestinian citizens of Israel participated in a series of rallies, processions, and protests, including for Nakba Day, in solidarity with political prisoners on hunger strike, and in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza during Israel’s attacks on Gaza. In this paper, I draw upon participant-observation during several protests and processions during this period to analyze the assumptions and assertions of voice and presence in these events. I examine the locations and routes of the protests, the signs, chants and visual symbols, and how protesters positioned themselves in relationship to other Israelis, including security forces. I argue that these protests work in three ways to assert Palestinian presence and thereby contest dominant Israeli arrangements of space and power. First, they make visible their own marginalized community by occupying public space in mixed cities and on main roads. Second, they bring the suffering of absent Palestinian communities into Israeli public space by talking about prisoners, refugees, and Palestinians in Gaza under attack. In effect they protest on behalf of people who cannot speak in the Israeli public sphere or act Israeli public space. Yet, these are not simple acts of solidarity. Third, these protests are also assertions that they are part of a collectivity with these other Palestinians. During these protests, Palestinians use chants and visual symbols that link them to older histories of Palestinian protest, articulating a collective memory of struggle. They rename spaces as Palestinian using placenames that predate the establishment of Israel. Through these protests they expose the ways in which Israeli strategies of colonization fragment Palestinians and re-assert a shared past and present of struggle.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Palestine
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries