On Belonging

I realized looking back over my blog posts that every one has ended in a quote. This is probably because much of what I learn and think about here comes directly from conversations with people who live here or visit here. If I could simply record all of my conversations, and play them back for you, I would. I’ve been trying to write this posts for a few days now and I finally gave up on trying to organize my own thoughts, and decided to just recall the conversations themselves.

First thing Thursday morning, a guest in my apartment asked me the question, what do people in Nazareth prefer to be called, Palestinians or Arabs?

This is a question I hadn’t quite settled for myself, and as a favor to myself and the other Americans who like to be PC and polite, I decided to try to find the right answer... So, later on in the day, I repeated the question to friends of mine at work, hoping they would be able to clear it up for me. As best as I can remember, here are the main points of the discussion that followed…

Me: So I was wondering today, what do you guys prefer to be called. Palestinians? Arabs?

R: Yes.

K: Arabs.

R: No, Palestinians.

K: Palestine is not even the traditional name, but the British name for the
Land.

R: But you wouldn’t call yourself Israeli.

K: I have an Israeli ID card. Arab Israeli, why not?

R: But we’re not really a part of this country. I want a country whose flag I can wave, a team I feel like is my team to cheer for.
Would you feel comfortable waving an Israeli flag?

K: No, I wouldn't. It's not really my flag… We do feel like unwelcome
guests here. You know, we have stars on our ID cards to indicate that
we’re non-Jews? And they check that, and they treat you differently.

R: For example we don’t feel at home at our university—they treat us like they’re
doing us a favor by allowing us to be there.

K: Ok, Arab Christian, that is I would want to be called, Arab Christian living
in Israel.

Me: But then, that still doesn’t say what place you belong to, or what ethnicity you most closely represent.

[Arab: a: a member of the Semitic people of the Arabian Peninsula b: a member of an Arabic-speaking people. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arab]

A lot of people want to use Palestinian because it indicates that you belong to a place. People are not just “Arab” they're Egyptian Arab, or Iraqi Arab… What are you guys?

R: See, “Palestinian” describes that for us. That’s where we’re from.

K: But what is Palestine? Palestine doesn’t exist. And the West Bank is not a country. We are citizens of this country, Israel… But, it’s true, we don’t feel like we belong here. …It’s not that I don’t identify with the people of Gaza and the West Bank, I do, I really do identify with them! But Hamas also identifies itself as Palestinian and I don’t want to be associated with Hamas.


...The conversation went on, a calm discussion between friends of a simple reality in their lives, but nevertheless a reality whose existence is for me fairly shocking.


When I arrived in Nazareth, the Nazareth Village volunteer coordinator proudly reported me that Nazareth is isolated from the political conflicts in Israel, that the people here don’t really feel involved in them or even identify with the people in the West Bank or Jerusalem.

To some extent this is true. But you don’t have to scratch the surface very hard to find out that the people here face their own set of challenges relating to Israel. Obviously this simple question of semantics is not even solved.

The people in Nazareth, as Israeli ID-card holders, may at least have all of their human rights taken care of, yes, but the creation of Israel in its current form has denied the residents of this place the right to an identity, denied them the right to a sense of belonging, in their own land where their families have lived for generations. This, I believe, is also unjust.


Later that day I met a young American woman who is planning to relocate to Israel. Her parents are of Jewish origin, but she is Christian in her religious beliefs (a fact that she will have to carefully hide when she applies for citizenship here in Israel). When I asked her what it is that made her want to come here, she explained to me the connection that she feels to the land of Israel. “Someone who is not Jewish can never understand this draw. I can only describe it as God calling me here.” She looks forward to serving the military term that is obligatory for all Israeli Jews at age 18, and “defending my country from the enemy.” (As an interesting side note, she would not, she said, have ever considered serving in the U.S. military...).

This woman just exuded enthusiasm for Israel and her place in this society. So confident is she of her belonging here, that she would relocate across the world, leaving family and home behind. In spite of the fact that neither she nor any of her family has ever lived here, and the fact that Israel wouldn’t want her if it knew of her religious beliefs, she will soon hold a card indicating that she is a full-fledged fully-welcome Israeli national.

Nazareth’s Arab/Palestinian residents, on the other hand, have yet to find their way through the identity crisis that the formation of Israel around them forced on their families 60 years ago. For the foreseeable future, they will have to deal with the fallout of being unwanted in the only land they have ever known.

P.S. Some info about Israeli ID cards...
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Israel-211/Israeli-Identification-Card-teudat.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teudat_Zehut