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  • Recognition of the Other and His Past
  • Said Zeedani (bio)

It is unfortunate that both Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews are still stuck in the past, trapped in it, unable to be free from its yoke, unable to overcome or transcend or supersede it. Both utilize and mobilize the past, or their respective construal of it, in order to rationalize, justify and support their competing claims, rights, complaints, narratives, policies and actions in response to current events.

The past is never allowed to lay in rest. Since the turn of the 20th century, more obviously since the traumatic events in 1948, this tormenting past has never ceased to hover over the horizons of Palestine/Israel. It is a merciless and ruthless past indeed. The more one broods upon this past, thus used and abused, the less one is inclined to recognize the other, his rights and his past, especially in times of bloodshed and in times of intense suffering.

We Can Do Little to Change the Past

Historical events are more like literary texts or literary works of art than like natural phenomena or physical objects or events. They are intimately associated with feelings, thoughts, motives and intentions. As such, they are amenable to interpretation, not to causal explanation. A narrative is a popularized reading, an interpretation, of the past, of a certain sequence of historical events, with lessons learned and retained in the collective or national memory. Narratives, like textual interpretations or interpretations of literary works of art, can be plausible or implausible, defensible or indefensible; imaginative, far-fetched or wild; compatible or incompatible. Incompatible interpretations can be equally plausible, though not equally true or correct, at least according to some theories of interpretation.

Ordinary people may inherit, easily internalize, and circulate prevailing narratives, without much reflection, criticism or scrutiny. Hence, it is the intellectual and moral obligations of historians, scholars, intellectuals [End Page 148] and educators to be more objective, more impartial, more critical, and more ready to revise when it comes to the construal or interpretation of the past, or of the past’s defining events. But even if they do that, it is unlikely that competing or conflicting interpretations will converge; they are more likely to continue to be incompatible, though more reasonable or defensible on rational grounds.

Competing, though defensible, interpretations of the past can also be very disturbing and troublesome. For example, on any plausible or defensible Palestinian narrative or interpretation of the relevant past, Israeli Jews will continue to figure as the architects and authors of the Nakba of 1948, with all that it entails or signifies in terms of displacement, dispossession, expulsion and tremendous loss of life and dignity and related suffering. Even if Palestinians acknowledge some share of responsibility for their own mistakes and tragedies, and even if they put some blame on Arab leaders and Arab states, Zionist Jews will continue to be perceived as invaders, oppressors, intruders, violators of rights and perpetrators of crimes and atrocities. I likewise assume that even moderate Zionist Jews will find it extremely difficult to embrace any interpretation of this past that Palestinians regard as plausible, especially as far as master or overarching narratives or interpretations of the past are concerned. For Palestinians 1948 will continue to be the Nakba year, while for Israeli Jews it will continue to be the year of independence.

The moral of all of this is the following: Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews adopt and live two competing/conflicting interpretations or construal of the past; they live two non-converging pasts. In my judgment, they will continue to do so for a long period of time. The following story exemplifies what 1948 means for Palestinians.

A Personal Story

The following is a “personal” story, a story with a moral, and with moral implications.

My grandmother from my mother’s side died in 1998 at the age of 88. In 1948, the year of the Nakba, she was 38 years old. Her husband had died two years prior to the “events” of summer/autumn 1948. My mother, the eldest child, was newly married then. Her three brothers and one sister were all below the age...

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