University of Vienna. ‘Narratives in Media Change’ conference. 4-6 April 2002

 

 

Negotiating Narratives

 

Civic and plural power games[1] between Jews and Palestinians in Israel

 

 

Anders Hoeg Hansen

 

PhD student

Nottingham Trent University

anders.hansen@ntu.ac.uk

 

 

 

With this paper I aim to thematise a level of conflict mediation and conflict work, one not often reaching the media headlines. My research for a PhD deals with a few micro-level educational intervention programmes in Israel. I am investigating narratives and expressions of belonging and longing, power and identity in conflict coping educational co-operative projects in the state of Israel; projects that engage the Jewish and the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, though inevitably dealing with the situation in the West Bank, Gaza and the region in general.

 

In this paper I will present and discuss a particular project taking place at a range of settings in Israel, though differing in format and often changing – or temporarily stopped - according to the developments in the conflict. I will argue how that project unfold ambivalent desires and anxieties, that it draws heavily from dominant national and media discourse and at the same time departs from these. The projects are very much, on the one hand, re-producing a dichotomous reality, but on the other hand they are as well offering pedagogies that create new paths of imagination and dialogue for all parties involved: - teachers, students and facilitators.

 

 

Machen and Macht

 

My attempt has been to look beneath the corridors and battle fields of macht to look at unusual, civic and dialogic power games or meetings. I have for a few years now been dealing with a, so to speak, ‘subterranean level’ of possible machen[2] where ordinary young high school students and junior high school pupils, and teachers and project facilitators, Jews and Palestinians, deal with conflict, or experiment with tools of conflict coping, while people in cities around them or in the West Bank and Gaza are getting blown up. Some of the people attending projects have relatives who’s been attacked, others have participated in riots themselves, according to one facilitator. This is the context in which these project are offered, and people keep attending. The projects are clearly not making change on the macro level, but, then again, useless mediators and useless old leaders on both sides are creating even less change, so how can citizens get on with their lives and change something, for themselves, on levels they are capable of inhabiting and affecting?  I have been asking whether the already habitualised and repetitive patterns of discourse on history, nation, belonging, identity, experience and hate - and hope, for that matter - are being, ‘opened’. Are the ‘Chinese boxes’ we all carry along, in terms of identity, challenged and transformed in some of these forms of micro-level intervention work? 

 

Before wrestling with the questions, I will present the settings and say a bit about the unstable stage and play of identity in Israel.

 

Presentation of Settings and Context

 

The core of my fieldwork[3] is done at two of the major settings for Jewish-Palestinian projects, the educational centre Givat Haviva and the only Jewish-Arab village of Israel, Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam (‘Oasis of Peace’)[4]. Both settings run youth projects, courses and engage in different forms of activist work and public seminars around the issue of conflict. In my thesis I am primarily looking a two forms of projects: a 2 to 3 day long encounter workshop project between high school students and a 2 year long junior high school project within the school curriculum. In this paper I will deal with the former and my fieldwork extracts are taken from 2 Givat Haviva encounters October last year, a year into the present intifada.

 

As you may know, Israel has got 1 million indigenous Palestinians with Israeli citizenship -  a minority amounting to approximately one-fifth of the state’s population, the territories not included. They live mostly separated from Jews and attend their own schools. The Palestinians of Israel are mainly Muslim, but there is also a minority of Christian and Druze. They are Arab and Palestinian, but they don’t live in the territories and they have Israeli citizenship. They speak almost fluent Hebrew, a sort of stepmother tongue, and English as a third language. Arabic is their mother tongue.

 

The Jewish population is a mix of Askenazim (European) and Mizrachim (Oriental), secular and Religious and in-betweens. A minority of black Jews from Ethiopia entered the country in the early decades of statehood. In the early 90s a large number of Russian Jews began to arrive. Both Jews and Palestinians are, so to speak, groups with borders running through their tongues; multiple cleavages exist and  they are constantly challenged with finding a home in a mosaic of possible and complicated allegiances, in terms of Israeliness, nation, ethnicity, religion, local and regional identity, not to speak of gender, race and class. Issues that are, as well, a field of struggle in Israel.

 

 

Two Narratives

 

I want to quote an extract from a dialogue between two well-known writers in Israel, the Palestinian Israeli Anton Shammas and the Jew A. B. Yehoshua.

 

Shammas:         “You see Israeliness as total Jewishness”. “And I don’t see where you fit me, the Arab into that Israeliness. Under the rug? In some corner of the kitchen? Maybe you won’t even give me a key to get into the house?”

 

Yehoshua:         “But Anton, think of a Pakistani coming to England today with a British Passport, and telling the British, ‘Let’s create British nationality together! I want Pakistani, Muslim symbols! Why should the Archbishop of Canterbury preside over the crowning of the Queen? I want there to be Muslim representation as well! Why should we speak English? There are a lot of languages here’. Think of him coming and making demands! The English tell him ‘No my good man! We have no objection to your speaking Urdu, and you may receive – as a minority – schools and mosques, but the country’s identity is English, and your are a minority within that nation!’

 

Shammas:         “Buli [Yehoshua’s nickname], the minute a man like you does not understand the basic difference between the Pakistani who come to England and the Galilean who has been in Fatusta [a village in Galilee, northern Israel] for untold generations, then what do you want us to talk about?”

 

Yehoshua:         “I don’t understand you”. “If there hadn’t been anti-Semitism in Europe, you wouldn’t even know how to write the word ‘Israel’ (in Grossman, 1993: 254).

 

The assertions in the talk touch upon the crux of the matter, I think, illustrating the conflictual narratives of belonging and the different forms of allegiance with Israel and the problem of the character of the state. Yehoshua seems to be comparing the Arab in Israel to an immigrant, who enters what another man see as homeland, while Anton Shammas asks for a share in Israeliness. The Palestinian is not an immigrant but it is as well true that the Jews have shaped the particular form of (be)longing and nationality Yehoshua calls Israeliness. Can Shammas then equally share this Israeli nationality? Shammas may vision Israeliness in a political sense, as an inclusive citizenship – and he may as well be planting one of his feet on the other bank of the river through his emotional ties with brothers in the territories: isn’t he closer to sharing a Palestinian nationality with the rest of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank? And how can he get accepted by at least one of the parties?

 

 

 

 

 

The Encounter projects at Givat Haviva and Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam

 

The participants in the encounters are not middle aged writers but high school students, where – as one facilitator said – “you can hear voices of their parents speaking through their throats”. The projects are run by a team of Jewish and Arab facilitators, or moderators. An Arab and a Jew is present when activities run in sub-groups. “The work of the facilitator is to encourage to talk”, as the Arab facilitator Ayub says.

Let me show an outline of the types of activities that appears in the project[5].

 

The first half of the first day deals with personal, cultural issues. They "have to know each other a little bit before dealing with the conflict", Limor, a facilitator[6], says. They begin with name games, make switch-place games, and continue with playing and presenting cultural topics; girl-boy relations, parental relations, neighbour relations, and gradual outward relations. The idea is to approach more sensitive issues slowly.

 

They come with stereotypes. Jews think that the Arabs "come with kiffeya [traditional Arab male red/white headgear]", Revital says. "For the Arabs they see for the first time [Jewish] youth who are not soldiers". They don't know much. Limor explains how a Jewish student once asked about the term 'Israeli Arab': "does that mean he has a Jewish mother?", the student asked.

 

"They get a shock, a good one", Limor continues. I ask questions about student expectations. The Jews "want them [the Arabs] to like us" "they will see we are not  so bad". The Arabs come more weak, "want the Jews to know us". The know is important, Arigh, a facilitator, says. She  explains to me that the Jews are thinking they are making the Arabs a favour doing this, while the Arabs come to convince the Jews. Generally there is a good feeling in the beginning. The curve breaks when they start to talk about stereotypes. They try to keep the good feeling; ‘you are okay (the group present), we are talking about the other people’, is a typical attitude, Arigh explains. Several facilitators explain that they are not teaching but trying to help the discussion along. We help the teachers to continue in school. For the students it is a study of themselves.

 

Ayub, another facilitator, explains that they start off the encounter (the introducing speech) in Arabic, then in Hebrew. The reality is reversed. There are two languages, and the Arabs can speak Arabic if they want to. The Arabs are usually “being shy”. “If they chose not to talk, it is okay”, Ayub says. “If they don’t get the chance [to talk], it is my problem”. The work of the facilitator is to encourage to talk”, but not necessarily in Arabic for the Arabs[7].

 

These extracts show, I think, that the facilitators is in a delicate two-fold mediator or helper role. They try to help the debate along, asks questions, ask for clarifications and encourage both parties to unfold their thoughts and emotions. It is nevertheless not a third party or a neutral party, though I can’t help of thinking of a Paulo Freirian dialogic and problem raising education that kicks off group processes based on co-operation and the conquering or gradual pursuit of ‘freedom’ and empowerment (Freire, 1978: 7-17).

 

The Arab facilitator is often struggling a bit more being a translator of the Arab speech that may come from Arabs. They can speak Hebrew, but often they choose Arabic as a form of self-empowerment and ‘ground-gaining’, which make the Jews, who only know very little Arabic, frustrated. This was clearly demonstrated during the two encounters I watched.

 

I spoke with one of the more deviant Jewish students about these issues. He explains that yesterday some of the girls asked the Arabs to speak Hebrew. “Some didn’t ask so nicely and some did”. The girl asking not so nicely said “Jewish is the national language”. “In fact there is two. Hebrew and Arabic”, he says. And Russian is getting there, I say. He laughs. He says that he came here to learn about the other but also “your self” and he continues to explain that he “didn’t agree with the group”. There was a problem with the other boys. One said that “we treat the Arabs nicely”, and he didn’t agree. He explains that he lives in an area where there are many Arab villages. He did some work for a movement in Misgav where they tried to bridge the groups and they went out together. “We didn’t speak politics”, he said “but you can’t leave politics out”. I ask him about what he has learned here, and he doesn’t succeed in coming up with an answer. He looks thoughtful, contemplating. “I’ll have to think about that”.

 

After the final session of this group I speak, as in all breaks, with facilitators. Limor explains that the tall girl in the group were talking to these Arabs as it they were part of one national group of Muslims. A long time they were circling around a “suggestion”: If you don’t feel Israeli, why don’t you leave. The Arabs were just responding: I am Palestinian, I was born here. The Arab silence the first day was partly a strategy, a reply to the attack, and partly they were caught in a situation where they had a hard time expressing themselves fully about the issues, Limor said. And they found out that they could use silence as a “tool of resistance”, “make the Jews frustrated”. It became clear though that in fact the Arabs were cornered most of the time despite the strategy of silence in these two workshops. I will present extracts from my field report that may illustrate this:

 

After a coffee break in the second workshop, the 2nd day, something very interesting happens. The Jews come in first and instead of forming a half circle of Jews vs. Arabs, they spread around the whole circle. They are not equal in number today, there are more Jews, despite some of them being send off for dope smoking the night before. Some seats are free, and when the Arabs come in they look puzzled, where is  my seat, where is my(!) group? The Jews are sitting there with quizzical grins. I have my thoughts about a cunning Jewish plan, but am also thinking that they may have been told to change places. They are not, I am told afterwards. Limor told later, that the Jews tried to weaken the Arabic ‘bloc’ by separating them. Limor is recognising the cunningness but there is also a trace of disgust in her voice when she says “they mirrored Israeli policies”, i.e. by fragmenting into sub-units, like e.g. the Israelis call them Muslims, Christian and Druze.

 

In the new class “structure” the discussion continues, there is a lot of bevakasha (please), beseder (okay, good, yes depending on context). They are continuing a drawing game which you may remember from the programme presentation. Some more drawings come out after the game was abandoned over an hour ago. The game was cancelled spontaneously because of the discussion. Now it is brought back: The Jews portray Arab stone throwers, masked men, police, women veiled in black completely, a mosque with the crescent moon, there are red-white road stones in the streets. This is an Israeli cityscape icon though. It is everywhere. In the Arab group apart from the orthodox and kids and David star there are some women wearing daring bathing suits. Each group look sceptical and a bit reserved after the presentation. They enter a discussion about Judaism and Islam. The Arabs look bewildered and not confident, less of them in the room. The Jews argue internally as well. All the way through they prove to be the loudest[8]. A tall girl is attacking Islam, they are now approaching stuff in the light of the September the 11th as well. Limor tries unsuccessfully to enter the discussion. Mizrachim, ideology, conflict. They are debating all the hard issues now. The Jews seem to be Ashkenazim only. The Arab group has stopped speaking. One blonde Jewish guy, the guy I mentioned earlier on, is differing from his group, trying to correct the girls without being too deviant, i.e. without dismissing himself from the group. At some point the Jewish girl ‘brigade’ stops speaking as well. I spoke to Limor about the tall girl during the next break. She has got “a lot of fears”, “she is not focused”. Later Limor explains that she had experienced an attack while riding in a car with her mother. A stone thrower. No one got hurt. It has affected her.

 

After the break the Arab group stays away. The Jews sit waiting. Limor is expecting a boycott. I go to the hallway outside, I look out the window, and down there on the lawn in the sunshine stands Ayub with a grin. Now the Arab group comes in. Has he been pushing them to go back? Back in class the Arabs now speak Arabic now and then. The facilitators are silent.  There is quiet. Finally, Fadi the Arab facilitator speaks, then Limor. The Facilitators start to ask the numb Arab girls questions. To get them to speak again. The Arab girls chose silence as an empowering tool, to create frustration in the Jewish group, and that was successful. This subgroup in the workshop seems to have reached a ‘should-we-stop-or-continue’ point, a strange impasse. The facilitators seem to want some premises or conditions to be met or agreed upon by all of them. Then Fadi leaves with the Arabs. An unplanned uninational session now takes place.

 

The talk in the Jewish group is heated and there are internal differences which can more easily find voice now that the group is on its own. I went out to the Arab group as well, but they start approaching me, smiling, giggling. I seem to destroy the group dynamics, so I leave.

In the Jewish uninational session, it seems to be boys vs. girls. When they return to class, Jews and Arabs together, there is now shouting, the tall girl points fingers towards her temporal bones several times, the Arab girls are speaking again. The Jewish girl is addressing Fadi. The most aggressive Jews are leaving. “Ma as-salami” (bye/peace be with you), an Arabic girl says with irony and a grin. The two groups are of equal size now, it is suddenly getting calm and more respectful, some of the Arabs are now for the first time allowed undisturbed speaking time. There is something similar to what we could call dialogue going on. Maybe they now listen due to exhaustion?. Facilitators slowly take over. They are explaining something. Teaching?

 

“What do you think of this fucking Israel”, one of the Arab guy says, when I approached him for a chat. I try to play the ball back to him, and start a conversation about this and that. “I can speak Hebrew if they have a problem”, he says. “It is the same”, “don’t expect anything”. I ask about his expectations for tomorrow, “none”, he replies. Why did you come here “to get a break”[from school], he explains. We talk about the final bit after some Jews left and the atmosphere changed. “I could relax”, he says. It was “leisure”. Limor says that the final bit, after the Jews left, they were experiencing a “catharsis”. She is confident about her choice of word!

 

Before finishing with the fieldwork I want to present extracts from an evening discussion with a bunch of Arab girls and a male teacher present:  It was after the dances and the end of the official program. At first there are three Arab teachers present and only one of them feel comfortable and interested enough to have a proper conversation in English. After some chat among all of us, I move outside with one of the teachers, soon a group of students follows. The teacher said, while we sitting on the bench for this informal talk, that they are happy with the meeting, they “didn’t come to solve”, “they came to speak”, they “don’t expect change”, “only to speak”. It is the teachers job to take the issues further and to meet more, create things together. The teacher group are all environmental or/and natural sciences and they have been playing with the idea of a co-operative environmental thing with the Jewish class. There is a hidden agenda in the encounter. They can use this to get acquainted and try to build something educational together. Later on I function as a kind of mediator or helper between two groups of teachers who want to do a questionnaire to their students.

 

A girl approaching our space, curiously tells that she came here to “speak Hebrew”. Suddenly more people comes and my talk with the teacher now evolves into a big group discussion. Soon we strike other notes: teachers and students now start get more critical or they seem to speak more freely. The students were using my presence, for a start, not to voice their inner angers or dissatisfaction, but as an opportunity for ‘fun’ and some English. And I am the one who’s dragging them into issues with questions that may be too leading like…. ‘come on, tell me, what message do you have for the Jews tomorrow [second and final day], there must be something you want to tell them?’. “We are Palestinians, it is our land”, the same girl says. We are a minority but we have a right to live as other citizens. “We have our own culture”, “we are proud”, “we are citizens as well”. “Next generation will change”. “Now it will be the same”. “We can speak with Jews closely here”. “Not all of the Jews feel the same. Some of them believe we can live together”. Some Jews “feel superior”, the students said. I am a bit afraid of the presence of the teacher. And the fact that they may say things he want to hear. Later I realise that there seems to be a special and honest student–teacher relation in this group, and that the students may be for real. The teacher now responds to the message question for the Jews: ”Israel must leave the West Bank”, the teacher said. The enemies of Israel are our brothers. It is a democracy for the Jews. More Arab students approach, and interaction become more informal. I get the girls to sing some Umm Kalthum and Fayrus. Some of the few Arab singers I listen to occasionally. They perform easily. A boy, performs in front of me to impress the girls, “looove is lifeeee, life is looove”, “I have several girlfriends”, “so you write Arabic (I tried to perform as well!!) so why don’t you speak, what’s the problem?”. He teases, and my oral skills are not impressive.

 

 

Old Pedagogies, New Positions?

 

The high school  projects have elements, though often performed in highly chaotic ways,  that allows room for dealing with a changed nature of the relationship to the state, where the students gain new knowledge and a fresh unusual experience, encountering themselves and their own concepts of identity – and this in a formative period of their lives. They are forced to reflect upon their visions of the state and their relationship to others. The teachers and the facilitators, Jews and Palestinians, are as well drawn into these processes. Particularly the teachers who participate with a class for the first time are going through a learning process. Particularly the drawing a combinatorial map-game, the identity card-game and the simulation of political negotiators-game provide, in three different ways, a potential of machen and change of vision, of self and other.

 

Outside the games at Givat Haviva, we see the peace movement on the streets, as e.g. the organisation Shalom Achaw (Peace Now) try to push on the macro level. Refusing soldiers have again awakened the struggling peace movement in Israel. So while the Peace Movement worked on what we could call a wider public performance and publicity-making level, the educational co-operative field emphasized micro-level, civil-space dialogue. For co-operative settings it was more crucial that intervention on the ground took place, than that the society was listening. David Hall-Cathala notices from accounts of similar projects in the 80s that the movement organisations worked for a restructuring of society while the “micro level” intervention programmes in general sought tolerance and coexistence (1990: 136). It is clear that micro level intervention is less about coexistence than it was, as my extracts should have shown.

 

The meetings between human beings, whose nations are in conflict, can of course be a transformative event seen from the perspective of the four eyes that meet, but we must bear in mind that they return to separate realities and headlines on bombs and war the next morning. We are thereby better off by phrasing the project as a conflict coping work or conflict exercises by peaceful means rather than conflict resolution, as a former Givat Haviva employee noticed.

 

For both groups and all the practices of slamming doors, refusals to listen to Arabic and so forth, the hatred seems to keep the self alive, when other forms of intimacy are too painful. It is experienced as strengthening the self, and often working within contradictory emotions working in an ambivalent mode (inspired by Yanay, forthcoming). Fear and hate protect the Jew from recognising the Palestinians as equals in a common cultural and political territory. The Palestinians haven’t shown that they fit and affiliate with Israel. Ifat Maoz and Rabah Halabi’s research says that the Jews are confronting the Palestinians with ‘loyalty oath’ questions, e.g. “Wenn es Krieg gibt, auf welcher Seite wären sie dann?? (Halabi, 2001: 118 and Maoz, forthcoming), and they don’t like the answer. The teenagers asking don’t see that they have to create a state, that can include Palestinians as well. And thereby they will get more hybrid answers, and both groups will have created a share, an affinity, a third space. This is the argument I am trying to make.

 

For now, the project provide situations, interventions, where the execution of power could be said to find less unequal, more plural forms, creating space, hypothetically, for slightly changed positions and identities to form. The ruling practices of strength of course penetrate the educational settings where a small number, not just out of idealism, engage with what could be termed machen, opposed to macht, i.e. they try to create room for dialogue or play out the power game on another level, introduce or perform plays and activities being participants and mediators, in a test of themselves as citizens in civic and private forms of action[9], using a term inspired by Hannah Arendt. It is important to emphasise the character of the whole thing as a test, for some a frustrating one, and as well a tight roping talk between the inevitable interpersonal aspect or what Rabah Halabi calls a coexistence encounter[10] and – on the other hand – the design or structure of the encounter as an intergroup meeting (Halabi, 2001a, 2001b)[11].

 

They may be able to create new assemblages – for example by strengthening the identity of the Jews, but in terms of strengthening their Israeli identity, and strengthening the identity of the Palestinians as well, as a people, and as well give them another sense of their fellow Jewish Israeli citizens and peers in terms of Israeli culture. This is definitely a potential in the simulation game. On the other hand, the overcoding, or the dominant media narratives in both camps – two confrontational engineerings of consent – make things very complicated. There is a limited space for alternative educational discourse and narratives in a time of conflict and a hegemonic reconsolidation of the two camps. In Israel it is as always hard times for the liberating, empowering pedagogies inspired by Paulo Freire.

 

The settings and projects work as an temporary autonomous, yet not context-ridden sphere where citizens can pursue or develop their conceptions of a better life and get their tempers going dialogically, against the troubled lives they have (Benhabib, 1992:99). Neutrality, becomes in this case about inserting a space, Givat Haviva, where the minority can become visible and recognised within, making the country look more democratic or reducing the democratic deficit in the macro-structures. But the overall structures remain.

 

Before the outbreak of the intifada, the Palestinians were just as eager to participate (confirmed in facilitator interviews). Is this because it is the Palestinians’ only opportunity for empowerment and durcharbeiten (Ricoeur, 1999: 6), and what about many of the guilt ridden Jews sense of debt? For some students more profane, adolescent reasons prevail: to get out of the school for a few days. Furthermore the encounter rests on a belief that dialogue is most efficiently effectuated and practiced among two groups, relatively unified, meeting as an us and them, and going back during the encounter and afterwards, to address the issues in their own national groups. To take another approach not based on dichotomies may be unrealistic in a situation of conflict, especially in the un-equal reality as the Jewish-Palestinian situation in Israel. The Palestinians are in need of unification which is a pre-condition of their empowerment and sense of ‘gaining ground’ in the mental sense. If their group-feeling weren’t constructed, or if the encounter just tried to promote common ‘Israeliness’ downplaying the Jewishness and the Palestinian Arab, they would maybe end up feeling that their problems as a group in Israel were covered up, neglected.

The attempt to provide room for practices and experiences of group-empowerment and tests of agency is strongly encouraged in many of the pedagogical activities, such as the photo language and simulation game in the encounters and the general discussion on citizenship, equal rights, etc. which moves the discussion from the cultural domain to a political domain. In general the negotiation oscillates between aspects of the kulturnation vs. staatsnation[12]. 

 

In conclusion I want to argue that the projects need to spend more time asking how and why we have (be)come to this, and how can continue to become (something else). At present it is too focused on what we are. The different entstehungs[13] are not traced, unfolded and problematiced.

 

Another question is how to empower the strong group with the intention of building co-operative practices and willingness to change. This task seems to be unfulfilled, since the method of giving the Jews a shock can just as likely produce defence mechanisms, as it can produce awareness and attitude change. In October 2000 encounters were cancelled. Both organisations felt it was time for uninational working through in the midst of the sudden killings that brought all parties to the state of despair. They thought that meetings would produce more frustration. 

 

The intention is not to create a space outside larger structures of power, but to mould and work with the inequalities in ‘other ways’; create ‘shared civility’ at least a sort of Arendtian, associational space (Benhabib, 1992)[14].  This vision of associationality is though complicated by the mutual and further cleavage creating “identity panics” happening on both sides. Palestinians and Jews alike find their lives disrupted, unsafe, threatened, and they seek shelter in each camps national discourse. Narrative and dialogue though have the potential to become vehicles for imagination and judgment and for understanding as well as confrontation in education. They call us to reconsider what and how we know (inspired by Witherell, 1991: 238-241). It is this possibility of narrative as creation I see initiated in drawing, identity cards and simulation games, but not taken far enough. To use some of Gilles Deleuze’s concepts it is a game that aim to create new principles of right ( as e.g. the simulation game) (Patton, 2000: pp1-10),  deterritorialisation of the present (putting drawings together) (pp11-28), a conceptual clarification and rupture (identity and simulation ) (pp11-28). The students are driven by necessity as learning to swim in a foreign element, i.e. water (confronted with the other) (Patton pp11-28). To take some points from Homi Bhabha, it is unfortunately a form of unification reproducing  difference, rather than differentiation of the process of containing newness and new constellations of difference, opposed to the intergroup empowerment of initially constructed groups (Bhabha, 1992). Returning to Deleuze, each person nevertheless undergo stages for acting and being acted upon (Patton, 2000: pp47-67). My fieldwork extracts strikes down where the problems are hardest. Where each party seems to be acted upon, or re-acting, rather than action together. The games and ‘fights’ work as a torchlight, though maybe a weak one, on the invisible, inherent structure, the abstract machine or panopticon (in Patton, pp49-67, referring to terms by firstly Deleuze and secondly Foucault).

 

It is creating an emotional confusion, as Farhad, a facilitator said to me during  a previous visit. Leaving me confused as well. I need to finish and I would like to believe, as Niza Yanay, that the possibility for change is there when contradictory values or ideas are held together at the same time. (Yanay, forthcoming).

 

 

Overheads

  1. Map of Israel from: Stendel, 1996 (see bibliography)
  2. Shammas and Yehoshua in dialogue from Grossman, 1993 (see bibliograpy)
  3. Encounter project programme (write up of translations of Hebrew programme drafs (not published) and Halabi, 2001a, see bibliography)

 

 

Bibliography

 

 

Abdel-Azim, Wafaa (2001) ‘Under Influence’ in: Al-Ahram Weekly 8-14 Nov 2001

Arendt, Hannah (1958) The Human Condition Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Benhabib, Seyla (1992) Situating the Self Oxford: Polity Press

Foucault, Michel (1971) ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’

Grossman, David (1993) Sleeping on A Wire. Conversations with Palestinians in Israel

Freire, Paulo (1978) Pedagogy of the Oppressed London: Penguin

Halabi, Rabah & Ulla Philipps-Heck (eds) (2001a) Identitäten im Dialog Schwalback: Wochenschau

Halabi, Rabah (2001b) ‘Arab Jewish relations since the Intifada’ in: School for Peace Annual Report, 2001

Hall-Cathala, David (1990) The Peace Movement in Israel Oxford: St Antony’s/Macmillan

Maoz, Ifat (2002) ‘Participation, Control and Dominance’ in: Social Justice 14(2) [forthcoming]

Nelson, Kristin & Leonard Horowitz (2001) ‘Narrative Structure in Recounted Sad Memories’ in: Discourse Processes 31(3)

Nir, Ori (2002) ‘When Khaled Met Niva’ in: Haaretz 18 Feb

O’Connor, Patricia E. (1995) ‘Discourse of Violence’ in: Discourse & Society 6(3)

Patton, Paul (2000) Deleuze and the Political London: Routledge

Ricoeur, Paul (1999) ‘Memory and Forgetting’ in: Kearney and Dooley (eds) Questioning Ethics London: Routledge

Stendel, Ori (1996) The Arabs in Israel Brighton: Sussex Academic Press

Witherell, Carol (1991) ‘Narrative and the Moral Realm: tales of caring and justice’ in: Journal of Moral Education 20(3)

Wodak, Ruth, R. De Cillia and M. Reisigl (1999) ‘The Discursive Construction of National Identities’ in: Discourse & Society 10(2)

Yanay, Niza (2002) ‘Hatred As Ambivalence’ in: Theory, Culture & Society 19(3) [forthcoming]



[1] Power is here understood in a productive and creative sense, as the potential space for acting and speaking in interaction, and not – as force or strength a static entity of a ruler or ruling system seen in isolation. Inspired by Hannah Arendt (1958) The Human Condition p200.

[2] Macht here understood as the force or strength and dictates of a ruler or ruling system, not to confuse with the inventive making/re-making, i.e. machen, understood as modus operandi of action and machen where the human powers correspond to a plurality that makes power dividable. Strength on the other hand is indivisible. Terms borrowed from Hannah Arendt (1958) pp199-207, 230-236.

[3] The empirical material for analysis in my thesis is provided via a ‘triangular’ method combining interviews,  primary texts and observation. Firstly, I did semi-structured interviews with the projects organisers and participants: directors, facilitators/co-coordinators, teachers and students. Secondly, I have done discourse analysis on written essays, project descriptions, course outlines and compared with related research. Thirdly, I have tested the ‘saying’ of the oral and written texts (primary texts and interviews) with an observance of the ‘doing’. The observation is conditioned by a simultaneous limitation and advantage(!): student group dynamics are less likely to be disturbed in a context where the participants are aware that the researcher knows little of the language spoken. This furthermore motivated intense focus on non-verbal language. Work with actual dialogues and activities during the 4 days of observation relied on facilitator-summaries, and talks with participants, in breaks, many times during each day. The thesis aims to balance and compare these different forms or methods of intervention.

[4] Givat Haviva was named after Haviva Reik a Jew parachuting into occupied Slavika to save other Jews during the war. Givat is the Hebrew word for a small hill. The organisation grew out of a large kibbutz youth organisation and was established in 1949, while Jewish-Arab exchange projects began in the 60s. The village Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam was slowly growing from the early 70s and onwards when a Egyptian born Jew leased some ground from an adjoining Monastery on a hilltop in central Israel on the border to the West Bank. Today some 40 families, Jews and Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, live there and institutions like a school and an educational centre have run for a few decades. Most of the pupils attending the school come from outside.

[5] The programme is my write-up of a range of texts, facilitators translations and my observation of activities. The projects I went along with ran for two days instead of three or four, though with most of the activities above incorporated. It differs, depending on the financial situation of the schools, time, schedules on all sides etc. There are no strict time-frame. Jewish schools pay app. 30 pounds per day pr student. Two facilitators tell me that Arab classes pay a little less because of their weaker budgets.

[6] I spoke mostly to four facilitators, two Jews and two Palestinian Israelis: The two Jews, Revital and Limor are both in their early 30s with academic degrees, Revital has been engaged with psychotherapy as well, while Limor has done plenty of NGO work. The two Palestinians are at present at Tel Aviv University. Arigh is a woman in her mid 20s working with Ariela Friedman who’s done extensive work on Neve Shalom. Ayub, who has worked at Neve Shalom is doing an MA on conflict work set up by the University and Neve Shalom. He is around 30.

[7] The students are sometimes using their teacher as counsellor, for help, support. This facilitator has a disagreement with the director Fahad around the issue of teacher observation. Another one, who is away today, has allowed them to be present. He would ideally rather want them out of the room. I mention that in Neve Shalom they have a second smaller room separated from the activity room by a mirror. Yes, he says, he has worked there, but it is not a solution, they can still get ‘in contact’, and it is better to leave them out. It is not clear how it has ended up, apparently they are allowed to participate some of the time. During the four days I was following two encounters the teachers were rarely present, but coming in and out once in a while.

 

[8] The different conversational styles of speech, e.g. Jewish Sabra Israeli dugri (‘straight talk’)vs. traditional Arab musayra (non-interruptive style) has to be taken into consideration if expanding the argument. It is left out here, but dealt  in the thesis (using e.g. Katriel, 1986 and Zupnik, 2000)

[9] Action is, as I understand the heavily discussed term, strongly related to what I call machen (a term only vaguely described in Arendt): a public practice of power, springing up between men/women in a combined, dynamic performance or actuality where the making and end are incorporated in the activity itself, as with the dancer who performs (dances, acts) something which can be seen as a product itself; a dance. Action in Arendt, though, always establishes relationship, chain reactions and tends to cross over boundaries. Hannah Arendt, 1958: 190-207.

[10] related to the contact hypothesis, a sort of mechanical solidarity principle advocating that a face to face encounter will reduce stereotypes and provide room for seeing the other as human and similar. Developed in the US in the 40s and 50s by Allport, later taken up in Israel in the late 60s by e.g. Amir (see e.g. Pettigrew, 1986: 171)

[11] Many accounts on projects doesn’t fail to include sentimentalised accounts of overfriendly, hormone driven, flirty relationships between Jews and Arabs (e.g. Nir, Haaretz, Feb 2002). This aspect was not dominating during the meetings I attended. Rabah Halabi, who is co-directing School for Peace at the village distinguishes between one model aiming to develop warmer relations between Jewish and Arab individuals (coexistence model) and a meeting between two national groups (intergroup) where the encounter is intended to be a microcosm of the reality outside. Halabi and the School for Peace advocates the intergroup approach, though points that a model that contributes to the understanding of the conflict can’t change reality as the coexistence model which, Halabi argues, sweep problems under the rug.

[12]  The culturally and ethnically connotated understanding building on the notion of Jewish-Israeliness – equivalent to e.g. homo Austriacus and Bekenntnis zu Oesterreich – draws from the concept of the kulturnation, while the staatsnation emphasises issues of citizenship, legal and democratic institutions, rights and duties and on political membership (Wodak et al, 1999: 169). Nadim Rouhana points that a solely political angle to national membership misses out the emotional aspect of and nationality then tends to become empty (Rouhana, 1997).

[13] The notion of enstehung meaning emergence or becoming - different from ursprung (origin) – are terms used by Foucault from Nietzche. They are central in Foucault’s notion of genealogy, paying attention to the non-purity of beginnings, focusing on the becoming of voices and ideas through confrontation (Michel Foucault, 1971).

[14] This not to confuse with a Habermasian idea of communicative action since the forms of dialogue are transgressing lebenswelt issues and certainly strategical in form and content. By using Bakhtin and Ricoeur, not dealt with in this paper, I have been able to capture the polyphony of speeches within time spans and processing that challenges or works with larger national/grand narratives