Shahadat 'ala al-qarn al-Filastini al-awwal [Testimonies on the first Palestinian century] by Elias Nasrallah (review)
- Shahadat 'ala al-qarn al-Filastini al-awwal [Testimonies on the first Palestinian century] by Elias Nasrallah
A number of excellent books, owing to the fact that they have not been translated into other languages, continue to escape the attention of international readers. Shahadat 'ala al-qarn al-Filastini al-awwal ("Testimonies on the first Palestinian century") is one recent example. It is an important contribution that deserves, and even demands, a wider circulation.
The author, Elias Nasrallah, is a well-known journalist and figure within Palestinian public life. He is suited to provide insight into different dimensions of the Palestinian national experience, having been both refugee (his family fled to Lebanon in the aftermath of the Nakba ("catastrophe," referring to the 1947–49 Arab-Israeli war and the resultant Palestinian refugee crisis) and an Israeli citizen. After his family fled their hometown of Shifa 'Amru in current-day Israel, they were smuggled back into [End Page 515] the country and his parents became holders of a red identification card—as "present absentees" they were not permitted to leave the country, their property was liable to be seized, and they were perpetually exposed to the risk of poverty.
As a member of Israel's frequently overlooked Christian minority, Nasrallah is well placed to observe the close relationship between religion and colonial power, which has been a recurring theme within the history of colonialism. Nasrallah's account clearly brings out the Greek Orthodox Church's relation to power by demonstrating how, during both the Ottoman and British Mandate periods, it consistently failed to engage Palestinian concerns and remained beholden to the authority of Greek clergy.
It was no surprise or accident that, in the aftermath of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which committed the British government to promoting "a Jewish national home" in Palestine, the interests of British colonialism and Zionism should have become so closely intertwined. It would be a profound error to consider colonialism as a purely historical phenomenon. In the contemporary period, Israel's success in applying the colonial tactic of "divide and rule" is clearly indicated by the fact that it is increasingly appropriate to speak of Palestinians in the plural (Palestinians resident in Israel, Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and in exile) as opposed to the singular (a Palestinian national community united by a common identity, culture, and political orientation).
Although it is ostensibly an autobiography, Shahadat 'ala al-qarn al-Filastini al-awwal is rooted within the wider Palestinian national and political experience of the past century. Nasrallah's account of occupation and dispossession effortlessly glides between the personal and the political to offer a perspective that is rooted within the experience of the victims. To take one example, after explaining how his uncles (one was a fighter, and the other was a teacher) had previously been betrayed by a collaborator during the Nakba, he proceeds to demonstrate Zionism's negative impact upon Palestinian cultural and professional aspirations.
In this book, he criticized Palestine Liberation Organization leader (and later Palestinian Authority president) Yasir 'Arafat for siding with reactionary Arab regimes and openly challenged poet Mahmud Dar-wish and journalist/politician Emile Habibi, both of whom had been symbolic figures within the Palestinian struggle. While he was critical of Jerusalem grand mufti Hajj Amin al-Husayni, he publicly defended the late Palestinian leader against the baseless allegations made by Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's incumbent prime minister.1
Nasrallah does not, however, fully acknowledge the role of women within the wider national struggle. In addition, at certain points he is insufficiently "objective" (I almost hesitate to use the word, as it is so frequently misapplied to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict). This is evidenced in the bias or lack of detachment that sometimes creeps into his account—in describing the assassination of Naji al-'Ali, the Palestinian cartoonist who was a close family friend, Nasrallah exposes himself to the charge of failing to evince due detachment.
In directly refusing colonialism's project of fragmentation and disintegration, Nasrallah's account provides...
