ISIM NEWSLETTER 1 0 / 0 2 Space and Architecture 17

I s r a e l / P a l e s t i n e TAMIR SOREK Memory and Identity

The establishment of monuments for commemorating the victims of violent confrontations constitutes a major element in the construction of modern national 1 The Land Day c o n s c i o u s n e s s . The Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, approximately 19% of all Israeli citizens, have experi- enced in the last five years an accelerated process of 'monumentalization' of their identity as a national mi- nority – many monuments that commemorate their M o n u m e n t victims in the Zionist-Palestinian conflict have been established in Arab villages and towns inside Israel.

One event and one monument were crucial stration planned for 30 March developed linked to a shared Palestinian memory. they were killed for religious purposes but in triggering this process: on 30 March 1976, into a violent confrontation between the Thus, the events of Land Day signify a his- for 'us' – the collective. Israeli police shot to death six Arab citizens demonstrators and the Border Police torical turning point where Palestinian iden- On the back of the monument there is a during violent demonstrations against the troops, who entered the villages and the tity began to spill from the private walls into sentence in three languages (Hebrew, Ara- government's confiscation of Palestinian houses. The Israeli police killed six people the public space – in building monuments bic and English) reading: 'Created by A. land. This day, known as Land Day, and the and injured 70. and in the annual political rallies of protest Abedi and G. Knispel for deepening the un- monument built to commemorate the trag- It was not the first time that the Arab citi- and memory.4 derstanding between the two peoples.' ic event signify the stage in which Palestin- zens of Israel suffered fatal casualties from Whether this reflects a tactic to appease the ian memory began to be carved in the pub- the shooting of Israeli security forces. Twen- The Land Day monument authorities or stems from the consistent ide- lic space of the Arab minority in Israel. ty years earlier, on 29 October 1956, a group Following the Land Day events of 1976, ology of the then-dominant communist R a b i n o w i t z2 describes the discursive ways of peasants from Kufr-Qassem returned to committees were established in the victims' party, this sentence has never appeared in which the state of Israel denied the Pales- their village from the fields, not aware that villages. These committees sought ways to again on any Palestinian monument. tinian national identity of its Arab citizens, their village was under curfew. Forty-seven commemorate their names. The Committee The central monument established in and how it tried to create a new, local Arab of them were murdered by Israeli troops. for Protecting the Arab Land5 decided to Sakhnin reflects a transitional phase, a his- identity, loyal to the state of Israel. The main The event is commemorated annually and build a central monument to commemorate torical juncture with several dimensions. element in denying the Palestinian identity two monuments were built in the village.3 all six victims in a cemetery in Sakhnin, resi- First, it signals the beginning of a long was denying the past, notably everything However, it is difficult to consider those dence of three of the victims. The commit- process of 'stitching the rupture' of Palestin- that happened before 1948. The Palestini- early memorial practices as national com- tee contacted Abed Abedi, a young artist ian memory. It is the first attempt to carve in ans were expected to ignore their common memoration since they were not articulated from Haifa who returned from his art studies public space a symbol of national heroism destiny as victims of the war in 1948 and the by any Palestinian symbols and did not in- in East Germany in 1972, and worked for the and sacrifice, linking it to the major Palestin- memories of their existence as a community voke, explicitly or implicitly, a common communist newspaper A l - I t t i h a d. Abedi was ian theme: the land. Second, it is early before 1948. The exile of the Palestinian Palestinian past. However, the collective concerned that his work might turn the enough to include a statement in Hebrew leadership, as well as many years of worry self-image of the Palestinians in Israel pro- state's authority against him. This was one calling for a co-existence on a Palestinian about possible repressive action and the duced by this commemoration of Kufr- of the reasons that he asked the Jewish national monument – an unimaginable sce- disapproving stance of the Jewish majority, Qassem is one of a passive victim and not of sculptor, Gershon Knispel, to join him in co- nario in later days in Israel. In this sense it is forced demonstrations of Palestinian na- an active political agent fighting heroically creating the monument. still connected to the 'decade of hope' that tional identity into the private sphere. for rights. The Arabs in Israel had indeed gained followed the end of military rule in 1966. Private memories of the 1948 war and In contrast, Land Day was a clear political more freedom by then but were still closely Finally, it expresses an extroverted defiant longings for exiled family members were issue. What was at stake was the core of the surveilled by the authorities who restricted secularism, a moment before it became im- transmitted orally within families. Poets and struggle between Zionism and the Palestin- their freedom of expression. When the foun- possible with the rise of political Islam. authors like Emil Habibi, Tawfiq Zayad and ian people: land. The Palestinian national dations for the monuments were built, the A quarter of a century after the creation of Hana Ibrahim wrote about the Nakba (the narrative could be summarized in one sen- police arrested Sakhnin's head of local au- the Land Day monument, dozens of other destruction of Palestine in 1948) in their tence – 'the Palestinian peasants' land was thority, Jamal Tarbieh, accusing him of 'ille- monuments have been established all over poems and novels, bringing this to the pub- robbed by the Zionists'. 'Land' occupies a gal construction'. There was no legal basis Arab villages and towns in Israel. These mon- lic sphere. However, public rallies and central role in Palestinian experience and for this accusation and he was released after uments commemorate the martyrs of the re- demonstrations where highly restricted and mythology. After the end of military rule in hours. This pattern of intimidation likely re- bellion against the British in 1936–1939, the not a single Palestinian national monument 1966, the Arab citizens had reason to be- flected the authorities' awareness of the far- Nakba in 1948, and recently, the 13 victims was founded. lieve that Israel was going through a pro- reaching significance of Land Day com- who were shot and killed by the Israeli police The year 1976 constitutes a turning point cess of democratization, progressing to- memoration for Palestinian identity in Israel. during the violent demonstrations of Octo- in the ways the Palestinians in Israel remem- ward civil equality. The confiscation of lands Abedi and Knispel created two separate ber 2000. Where possible, there is an effort ber their past. In February of that year, the in 1976 and the victims of the police shat- monuments. The smaller monument is a to a draw a direct line between all the vic- Israeli government declared its intention to tered this illusion. But in contrast to the sculpture of a plough, with no accompany- tims, emphasizing their common destiny. confiscate land from its owners in the vil- massacre in Kufr-Qassem, the absence of ing text. Beside it, the main monument From a contemporary perspective, looking lages of Sakhnin, Arabeh and Deir-Hana in military rule enabled the protest to gain deals explicitly with the relations between back on 54 years of the existence of the state Sakhnin statue central Galilee. The wide protest demon- presence in the public space and to be the people and the land. It is made in the of Israel, the crucial place of the Land Day form of a sarcophagus with four bulkheads events and Land Day monument is evident. decorated with human figures touching the It was the watershed of identity and memo- soil in various ways – a man bending over to ry, the moment when the Palestinian identi- lift a rock, a woman taking a handful of soil. ty of the Arabs in Israel started to gain pres- In all the cases, this is a determined bend- ence in the public space. ing, not a submissive one. The eastern bulk- head presents figures lying still, most likely dead. These figures were developed form a N o t e s drawing of Abedi following the Arab-Israeli 1 . G.L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers – Reshaping the Memory war in 1973 in which he intended to express of the World Wars 1990 (Oxford: Oxford University his identification with the sufferers and vic- Press, 1990). tims of both sides. 2 .D. Rabinowitz, 'Oriental Nostalgia – How Did the The monument is located in the middle of Palestinians Become "The Arabs of Israel"?' a Muslim cemetery, but it is characterized by ( i n Hebrew), Teoria Uvicoret, 4 (1993): 141–151. an explicit secularism. No religious expres- 3 .S. Robinson, 'Local Struggle, National Struggle: sions are used, except perhaps the word Palestinian Responses to the Kafr Qasim Massacre s h u h a d a (martyrs), but this term has long and its Aftermath, 1956–1966', I n t e r n a t i o n a l been employed in secular Arab and Pales- Journal of Middle East Studies ( F o r t h c o m i n g ) . tinian nationalism. The names of the six vic- 4 .O. Yiftachel, 'Minority Protest and the Emergence tims are written on the forefront of the mon- of Ethnic Regionalism: Palestinian-Arabs in the ument, titled by the words: 'They sacrificed Israeli "Ethnocracy"', in S. Ben-Ami, Y. Peled, and themselves [i s t a s h h a d u] for us to live… A . Spectorowski (eds), Ethnic Challenges to the thus, they are alive – The martyrs of the day Modern Nation-State (Macmillan and St. Martin's of defending the land, 30 March 1976'. This Press: London and New York, 2000), 145–180. is a self-aware nationalized secularized paraphrase of a Qur'anic verse – 'And reck- Tamir Sorek is a post-doctoral fellow at the Centre oned not those who are killed for Allah's d'Etudes et de Recherches International (CERI), Paris, way as dead; nay, they are alive…'. The vic- F r a n c e . tims' immortality is ensured not because E-mail: [email protected]