© Middle East Institute. This article is for personal research only and may not be copied or distributed in any form without the permission of The Middle East Journal. Blurring the Geo-Body: Mental Maps of /Palestine

Efrat Ben-Ze’ev

This article explores how geographical forms of Israel/Palestine are represented in maps sketched by high school students. The results show that they are sig- nificantly different from the geopolitical map, demonstrating the unique ways through which these students think about the national territory. The paper probes two sources that feed into the country’s geographical image: its ongoing politics of treating boundaries as potential frontiers, and the school curriculum, which conveys a double message regarding borders. This image of a blurred geo-body invites for creative resolutions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This article asks how Israel and Palestine are imagined by their inhabitants. Do and Palestinians perceive of their country as having a geographical body? And if indeed they assume the country has a clear perimeter, what is its shape? These questions are exceptionally interesting when the controversy is over territory. Geog- rapher Robert Sack argued that human territoriality — the attempt to affect actions and interactions by asserting control over a specific geographic area — is not ac- cidental but rather a complex strategy.1 De-territorialization, its flip-side, is part of this strategy. Here I ask how do territorialization and de-territorialization manifest themselves in Israeli and Palestinian imaginations of national boundaries and which forces feed them. To do so, we look into the mental maps of Israeli high school students. Men- tal maps, also known as cognitive maps, can be defined as representations of peo- ple’s perception of an area, or in Fredric Jameson’s more Marxist interpretation, as a “representation of the subject’s Imaginary relationship to his or her Real conditions of existence.”2 The mental maps of the high school students revealed what might be

Efrat Ben-Ze’ev (DPhil, Oxon., Social Anthropology) teaches at the Ruppin Academic Center, Emek Hefer, and is a fellow of the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the advancement of Peace at the He- brew University, . Her publications include Remembering Palestine in 1948: Beyond National Narratives (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and an edited volume with Ruth Ginio and Jay Winter, Shadows of War: A Social History of Silence in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2010). For their helpful comments on this paper, the author would like to thank Oren Kosansky and the participants of a 2013 summer colloquium at Lewis and Clark College, Gal Oron, Lawrence S. Lerner, Melanie Peterson, and the anonymous peer reviewers of The Middle East Journal. Thanks are also due to the Truman Institute and the Ruppin Academic Center for supporting this research. 1. Robert David Sack, Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 19, 216. 2. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso, 1991), p. 51. Jameson’s definition quotes Louis Althusser’s understanding of ideology, see “Ide- ology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” trans. Ben Brewster, available at www.marxists.org/ reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm For early work on mental mapping, see Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, MA, Mass: MIT Press, 1960); Ken Knabb, trans. and ed., Situationist International Anthology (Berkeley, CA: The Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981); Peter Gould and Rodney White, Mental Maps, second edition MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL M VOLUME 69, NO. 2, SPRING 2015 [Continued on next page] HTTP://DX.DOI.ORG/10.3751/69.2.14 238 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL termed as a consistent confusion regarding their country’s perimeter. This confusion echoes earlier work on the simultaneous construction of Isra- el’s borders as barriers as well as potential gateways for expansion. In other words, borders, from the state’s inception, have been concurrently sanctified and trivial- ized.3 This logic influenced the students’ imagination of their country.4 While they did outline the state’s border, and created a division between “inside” and “outside,” a national body versus its surroundings, the body was quite unlike the one found in standard cartographic depictions. Drawing the shape of the state turned out to be a complicated task. The limits of this study should be spelled out at the outset. First, no comparative case is offered here. A comparison would allow us to assess whether the geographical knowledge of students, as manifested here, differs from that of students elsewhere. Especially illuminating would be a comparison with geographical perceptions of youth in conflict zones. Second, the exercise of mental mapping has its limitations.5 As new navigating technologies have grown popular, standard maps are less available and per- haps no longer act as models for our mental maps. Their role in the lives of the partici- pants should be taken into account. Finally, there are gaps between one’s geographical understanding and the ability to draw it; individuals’ variations in their drawing skills will inevitably be evident in the sketches. Despite these reservations, an analysis of the students’ mental maps discloses clues regarding the contemporary relations between young citizens and “the national space.” The paper begins with a short methodological section, followed by an outline of the major findings, under a subsection called “the ambiguous geo-body.” It then moves on to review the literature on borders as embraced and rejected concurrently, and touches briefly on its manifestation in the school curriculum. It ends with a sum- mary and discussion, suggesting that there may be a bright side to the indefinite attitude towards borders in Israel/Palestine.

[Continued from previous page] (London: Routledge 1986); Robert M. Kitchin, “Cognitive Maps: What Are They and Why Study Them?” Journal of Environmental Psychology, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Mar. 1994), pp. 1–19; Rob Kitchin and Scott Freundschuh, eds., Cognitive Mapping: Past, Present and Future (London: Routledge, 2000); Roger M. Downs and David Stea, “Cognitive Maps and Spatial Behaviour: Process and Prod- ucts,” in The Map Reader: Theories of Mapping Practice and Cartographic Representation, eds., Martin Dodge, Rob Kitchin, and Chris Perkins (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), pp. 312–17. 3. Adriana Kemp, “From Politics of Location to Politics of Signification: The Construction of Political Territory in Israel’s First Years,” Journal of Area Studies, Vol. 6, No. 12 (1998), pp. 74–101. This seemingly contradictory stance has been put into action: the country’s de facto borders expand and contract continually. On the erasure of borders, see Arnon Soffer and Tal Ya‘ar-Vizel, Gevulot she-Hayu: ha-Dinamikah le-He‘almutam min ha-Nof [Borders That Were: The Dynamic of their Dis- appearance from the Landscape] (Haifa: University of Haifa, 1999). 4. On border education in the Israeli system, see Yoram Bar-Gal, “Boundaries as a Topic in Geographic Education: The Case of Israel,” Political Geography, Vol. 12, No. 5 (Sep. 1993), pp. 421–35; William F.S. Miles, “Border Pedagogy in Israel,” The Middle East Journal, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Spring 2011), pp. 253–77. 5. Daniel R. Montello, “Cognitive-Map Design Research in the Twentieth Century: Theoreti- cal and Empirical Approaches,” Cartography and Geographic Information Science, Vol. 29, No. 3 (2002), pp. 283–304; Chris Perkins, Rob Kitchin, and Martin Dodge, “Cognition and Cultures of Mapping,” in The Map Reader, eds., Dodge, Kitchin, and Perkins, p. 299. MENTAL MAPS OF ISRAEL/PALESTINE M 239

METHODOLOGY

This paper is based on a study of spatial perceptions conducted between 2009 and 2011 among 400 university, college, and high school students.6 The population comprised citizens of the State of Israel, both Jewish and Palestinian/Arab.7 This paper focuses on a sample of 96 high school students with equal numbers of Jewish and Palestinian students. The students were enrolled in three schools, two Arab/Pal- estinian and one Jewish. The Palestinian students were from large villages located in the areas known as the Triangle and Wadi ‘Ara, while the Jewish students were from Haifa. The fact that the Jewish students were from a city and the Palestinians were not is somewhat representative of the situation at large: Israeli governments have not established new Arab towns since 1948.8 As a consequence, the Palestinian villages have expanded and some have grown to the size of towns, but are lacking the required infrastructure.9 The socioeconomic backgrounds of the students were varied. Their parents’ occu- pations ranged from doctors and academics, to teachers and nurses, and less frequently, school attendants and unemployed persons. Generally speaking, many of the students were from a middle-class background. In the Palestinian students’ cases many mothers did not work outside of the home. Yet the two student populations diverge; we must bear in mind that the Israeli educational system is separate for Palestinians and Jews. Although the curriculum

6. The study was carried out in cooperation with Dr. Mohamad Masalha. 7. With regard to terminology: although this study was conducted in Israel and among its citizens, the geographical discussion refers to the entity that encompasses the State of Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as the Golan Heights, hence the use of the term “Israel/Palestine.” From here on, the use of the term “Palestinian” refers to Palestinians who are citizens of the State of Israel. The term is popular in the self-definition of this population: “In numerous surveys con- ducted over many years, the majority of Arab citizens define themselves as Palestinian rather than ‘Israeli Arab,’” See Ilan Peleg and Dov Waxman, Israel’s Palestinians: The Conflict Within (: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 2–3n4. Many Palestinian scholars of Israel tend to use this term. For examples, see Nadim Rouhana, “The Political Transformation of the Palestinians in Israel: From Acquiescence to Challenge,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring 1989), pp. 38–59; and, Ramzi Suleiman, “Perception of the Minority’s Collective Identity and Voting Behav- ior: The Case of the Palestinians in Israel,” The Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 142, No. 6 (2002), pp. 753–66. For an extended discussion on the terminology used for Palestinians in Israel, see Aziz Haidar, “Mavo’” [“Introduction”], in Sefer ha-Hevrah ha-‘Aravit be-Yisra’el 1: Ukhlusiyah, Hevrah, Kalkalah [The Book Arab Society in Israel 1: Populations, Society, Economy], ed. Aziz Haidar (Jeru- salem: The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, 2005), pp. 13–18. 8. Other than those established for Bedouins, as a form of forced resettlement. 9. Over four-fifths of the Palestinian Arab population in Israel lives in villages. See Adel Manna, “Mavo’: Shinuy ve-Hemshekhiyut be-Havayotam shel ha-Ezrahim ha-‘Araviyim be-Yisra’el — Te- munat Matsav” [“Introduction: Change and Continuities in the Existence of Arab Citizens in Israel — Status Report”], in Sefer ha-Hevrah ha-‘Aravit be-Yisra’el 2: Ukhlusiyah, Hevrah, Kalkalah [The Book of Arab Society in Israel 2: Populations, Society, Economy], ed. Adel Manna and Ramsees Gharrah (Jerusalem: The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, 2008), pp. 19–20, with statistical tables, pp. 54–57. In contrast, 90% of the Jewish population in Israel lives in urban localities, see Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Shenaton Statisti le-Yisra’el 2011 [Statistical Abstract of Israel 2011] (Jerusalem: CBS, 2010), p. 124, available at www.cbs.gov.il/shnaton62/st02_12x.pdf. 240 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL does not differ significantly, there are occasional variations between the textbooks.10 More important is the fact that there are achievement gaps between the “Arab,” as the state defines it and Jewish educational systems, always more favorable towards the latter.11 Therefore, we may assume that within our sample the Jewish students enjoy an educational environment better supported by the state compared to their Arab/ Palestinian counterparts. The choice of focus on high school students rather than older subjects was aimed at studying those who are still steeped in official school curricula. For Jews, compul- sory military service intensifies movement through the country and the use of maps (es- pecially among men), thus improving geographical knowledge within certain military professions. The focus on high school students, it is hoped, eliminates the variable of acquiring knowledge for military purposes.12 We asked students to draw two maps on a blank page: one of their “country” (al-bilad in Arabic and ha-arets in Hebrew) and its bordering states, and anoth- er map of “the Middle East” (al-Sharq al-Awsat and ha-Mizrah ha-Tikhon).The choice of the term “country” was intended to avoid as many ideological connota- tions as possible, although there is political baggage attached to any terminology. Other terms that could have been used — such as “the state” or “Israel” — are of- ten taken to be political statements, implying recognition and acceptance of these entities. In any event, the term “country” did not raise any objections among the participants.13 Nevertheless, we should bear in mind that the intervention of this study cannot be understood neutrally. The mere exercise of drawing a map of the country echoed assignments carried out in class, which is couched in a nationalis- tically oriented curriculum. In addition to the map drawings, we used a questionnaire to elicit informa- tion on difficulties posed by this task, as well as the participants’ backgrounds (age, sex, religiosity, parents’ profession, and approximate income). We also con- ducted focus groups (four within this sample) and interviews (four within this sample, who were not in the focus groups). We asked about sources of geographic knowledge, the students’ acquaintance with maps, places, borders, and neighbor- ing countries, and their travel experience (with whom, when, to where). The study clarified that the map drawing exercise, supposedly presented as a simple repeti- tion of work previously done in class, posed a challenge to many, as well as a source of frustration.

10. Miles, “Border Pedagogy in Israel,” p. 262. 11. Khaled Abu-Asba, “Ma‘arekhet ha-Hinukh ha-‘Aravit be-Yisra’el: Hitpat′hut u-Temunat Mat- sav ‘Akhshavit” [“The Arab Educational System in Israel: Development and Current Status Report”] in The Book of Arab Society in Israel 1, ed. Haidar, pp. 201–21; Adel Manna, “Hinukh ve-Haskalah Gevohah” [“Education and Higher Education”], in Book of Arab Society in Israel 2, pp. 157–59, with statistical tables, pp. 160–206. 12. While Jews are obliged to join the army at 18, the majority of Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel are not (the main exceptions being those from the Druze religious population and some Bedouin tribes). 13. Most participants dedicated the bulk of their time to the country’s sketch, while the maps of the Middle East were given less attention, possibly due to lesser knowledge, and ended up being less elaborate. As such, the Middle East maps will not be analyzed here. MENTAL MAPS OF ISRAEL/PALESTINE M 241

THE AMBIGUOUS GEO-BODY

The country, as drawn in many of the students’ maps, was contained within clear lines, often strongly etched (see Figures B1–B3, C1–C5 in the slideshow linked to in the Appendix). We may say that it pointed to the students’ assumption that there is a definite line “out there” surrounding the country. However, the “body” created by these outer lines tended to have many different versions, and differ from the cartographic shape in standard representations. For the students, the country had what Thongchai Winichakul called a “geo-body,” but its shape was not clearly defined.14 Another striking feature of these maps was the country’s island-like depic- tion. It was drawn as disconnected from its surroundings, floating in a void (Figures B1–B6, C1–C7, F2, and F5). The borders between countries neighboring Israel/ Palestine were often missing, creating an ostensible continuity of all space other than that of “the country” itself. Often, sea and land turned to one, lacking distinc- tion. These island-like shapes applied to 60% of the Jewish students’ maps and 55% of the Palestinians students’. The versions of this island/country were diverse, from maps similar to the actual one to those only vaguely resembling it. Since Israel/ Palestine is adjacent to four states, with two of which it has open border crossings, the island-like imagination was somewhat perplexing.15 Why was there no sketched recognition of the independent states that surround the country? Were their borders meaningless?16 Gender turned out to be another factor influencing the “island” representation: young women, both Palestinian and Jewish, were slightly more inclined to draw the country as an island (63%) in comparison to young men (50%). Moreover, the women tended to give the island/country a softer outline. The country was narrow at the top (north) and at the bottom (south), with wavy lines connecting top to bottom, especially on the western side (Figures B3–B5, E1, and E2). Could this suggest that the country is given a human-like silhouette?17 The country’s coastal boundary should have been the easiest one to draw, in the- ory. Defined by the Mediterranean Sea, it is a permanent line that does not involve relations with another political entity. This line was indeed present in all maps and the Mediterranean Sea was often labeled, yet sometimes the sea expanded at the expense of the and the rest of Egypt (Figures C1, C2, C5, and F5). In some cases, the distinction between sea and land was altogether missing, allowing for an ongoing line to continue from the north to the south of the country, sometimes all the way down

14. Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994). 15. With Egypt, the border is no longer as open as before due the regime changes and subsequent security crises that occurred after this study was conducted. 16. As was suggested in the introduction, a comparison would enlighten this discussion. Excep- tionally interesting would be to check on whether such island-like mental maps are prevalent in other zones of conflict. 17. Maurice Agulhon, Marianne au Combat: L’Imagerie et la Symbolique Républicaines de 1789 à 1880 [Marianne in Combat: Republican Imagery and Symbolism from 1789 to 1880] (Paris: Flammarion, 1979); Maurice Agulhon, Marianne au Pouvoir: L’Imagerie et la Symbol- ique Républicaines de 1880 à 1914 [Marianne in Power: Republican Imagery and Symbolism from 1880 to 1914] (Paris: Flammarion, 1989). 242 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL to Eilat (Figures C1–C3). In other words, the sea signified the western boundary, not always taking into consideration the presence of Egypt. The country’s western boundary has a slight concave curve as well as a gen- eral trend from northeast to southwest. However, 50% of the students diverged from this actual shape. Twenty percent described the line as having no curve at all, run- ning along a straight north–south line. The remaining 30% created another puzzling sketch: The country’s western border either ran along a northeast–southwest line until as far as Haifa or Tel Aviv–Jaffa, and then changed directions to northwest– southeast, or simply looked like a convex “C” curve (see different types of the west- ern border in Figures B1, B4, B5, C1, C2, C4–C6, E2, and E4). In some cases, the country’s geo-body was reminiscent of an actual living body, coming to a narrow closure in the far south at the town of Eilat. Why is the coastal line tilted easterly when in fact it runs westerly? Is it because the southern part of the country is negligible in the lives of most students, far from the eye and far from the heart? Is it part of a more general trend to ignore any terrae incognitae? Altogether, the students’ knowledge of the country’s southern region was poor. They tended to draw it smaller in proportion to its actual size, mentioning only a few sites and communities. This may also be due to the geographical origin of these students’ sample; the central and central-northern regions. Local and regional centricity is a common phenomenon in mental mapping.18 The city of Eilat stands out as an exception in the students’ drawings of the south- ern region. Although we did not ask the participants to indicate it, both Jews and Pal- estinians mostly did (roughly 75% or the Palestinians and almost 90% of the Jews). Eilat is a popular tourist attraction for both populations. Its role may have been as what I term a “peg”: a definite point at the edge of the country. A peg marking the country’s southern limit may be especially salient when the border line itself is little-known. In spite of the participants’ general lack of knowledge of the southern border, the Gaza Strip was relatively prominent on the sketches. Its borders were often marked and its name was registered on the map. The timing of this study should be reiterated here; it was conducted three to five years after Israel’s withdrawal from the Strip, and shortly after its reinvasion in the winter of 2008/9. Throughout the research period, Gaza was in the media’s headlines and this prominence may explain its visibility. Yet again, as with the entire geo-body, the students’ depictions of Gaza did not always resemble its actual shape. Although most commonly it was a narrow strip running along the Mediterranean seashore (Figures B2, D1, and D2), it was given two alternative shapes. In one, the Strip barely touched the seashore and extended into the hinterland (Figure D3). In the other, it was located far from the sea, isolated in the heart of the desert, on the border line with Egypt (Figure D4). It seems that the students’ exposure to contemporary matters penetrates their maps, yet is not necessarily informed by geographical acquaintance. While the western border was relatively well defined, other borders were less so. In ten percent of the Palestinian students’ maps, either the northern border or the southern one remained “open,” without any line that closes off the geo-body (Figures E1–E4). In other words, an empty space was substituted for the exist-

18. Gould and White, Mental Maps. MENTAL MAPS OF ISRAEL/PALESTINE M 243 ing border line, thus creating continuity between “the country” and its neighbors. Hence, while the common image of the country is that of an island, it is also, more rarely, imagined as a body broken open. The northern border also posed sketching difficulties for the participants. Histori- cal and sociological research touches on the permeability of the northern border.19 The porous perception of this border may be the outcome of Israeli military incursions and responses to them: Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 and 1982, occupied parts of it from 1982 to 2000,20 and again fought in it in 2006. From the opposite directions, Palestinian militants launched attacks and rocket salvos on Israel from Lebanon, and were followed later by Hizbullah assaults. While some of these events were considered by the students “forgotten history,” the students did relate to the 2006 Israeli campaign in Lebanon and the missile attacks on Israel as significant events in their lives. One may venture that this is at least one reason why the northern line was vague for many students. The greatest challenge for the participants was the Green Line surrounding the the West Bank.21 Roughly 50% of both Palestinian students and Jewish students did not even attempt to draw it although they were asked to do so (Figures F1 and F2). Only 33% of the Jewish students and 5% of the Palestinian students were reasonably ac- curate in their delineation of its whereabouts. In all the other cases, they recreated the West Bank in new forms. For instance, 11% of the Jews drew it as an island (Figures F6–F7), surrounded by Israel and 7.5% drew it as being parallel to the border with Jor- dan (Figures F3–F4). In contrast, the Palestinian students had their own special spatial imagery: 9.5% located the West Bank on the East Bank, in Jordan (Figure F5) and some united the Gaza Strip with the West Bank, representing the two as one. The confusion regarding the Green Line was accompanied by the absence of West Bank towns on the maps. The vast majority of participants were dumbstruck when asked to note the location of Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, and Tulkarm:22 70% of the Palestinian students did not know the location of any of these and 42% of the Jewish students could indicate only one. Sometimes the six towns did appear on the maps as randomly scattered names.23

19. Asher Kaufman, Contested Frontiers in the Syria-Lebanon-Israel Region: Cartography, Sover- eignty, and Conflict (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2014); Adoram Schneidleder, “Les Libanais de Galilée: Pratiques et Production d’une Frontière Israélo-Libanaise” [“Lebanese in the Galilee: Practicing and Producing an Israeli-Lebanese Border”] in Occupation Israélienne et Régime du Mouvement en Palestine: L’Illusion de la Séparation [Israeli Occupation and Movement Regime in Palestine: The Illusion of Separation], eds. S. Latte Abdallah and C. Parizot (Arles, France: Actes Sud, forthcoming). 20. During Israel’s 18-year-long occupation of southern Lebanon, the border was partially open for Lebanese coming to work in Israel. 21. The name “Green Line” is used to the 1949 armistice line between Israel and Jordan, which served as a de facto border until 1967. 22. On the Arabic questionnaire, the modern Arabic names of Nablus and Hebron were used: Nabulus and al-Khalil. The Hebrew terms for the cities — Shekhem and Hevron, respectively — were used on the questionnaire for Jewish students. 23. One Jewish student explained the nature of the exceptions, namely the locations with which he was acquainted. His father, he noted, once told him that Nablus (Shekhem) was closer to Haifa than Tel Aviv was, so he placed Nablus at the northwestern edge of the West Bank. 244 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

A number of studies have been conducted with regard to the Green Line.24 From these, it is evident that the ambiguity towards this line has been at the basis of Israeli policy for decades. Ever since occupying the area in 1967, Israel has expropriated land and resources, established hundreds of settlements, and built extensive infrastructure in the West Bank, while in parallel clinging to a discourse of an eventual exchange of land for peace25 Back in 1967, the Knesset decided to excise the Green Line from all but historical maps.26 Hence, at least within the school framework, students have had little exposure to maps depicting the Green Line. While this may explain students’ dif- ficulty in drawing it, it does not explain why they had trouble drawing locations within the occupied West Bank. Altogether, students acknowledged a sense of disappointment with their lack of knowl- edge; some even writing “shameful” on their maps (Figure A1). When Ya’ir, an 18-year-old Jewish student completed his map and questionnaire, he reflected on the process:

When I first had to do this exercise, I said to myself, “oh no,” because once dur- ing civics class we had already spoken about the fact that people don’t know the country’s borders and agreed that it’s disgraceful (mahpir); people hear about it all the time and still don’t know it. And then, suddenly, oops, I don’t know it ei- ther [laughs]. Especially since we have teachers like Tal, and others, who have fo- cused on the topic beyond the curricular expectations. So it was embarrassing. I was ashamed, worrying that I may not know enough. And I felt that I am to blame. And so I started drawing the map from the places I know best — my home, [Mount] Carmel, and then the Coastal Plain, which is the route I pass every six months, in approximation. Because altogether I live within a stretch of seven kilo- meters and rarely stray outside of it.

Ya’ir’s quotidian living space is a small, bounded one in the vicinity of home. Ya’ir was suggesting that the national space is not one that is regularly experienced, even in a small country like Israel. But Ya’ir did feel that he was expected to know it, and blamed himself for having been ignorant. However, as we have seen, this “igno-

24. David Newman, “Boundaries in Flux: The Green Line Boundary between Israel and the West Bank — Past, Present and Future,” University of Durham International Boundaries Research Unit Boundary & Territory Briefing 1.7 (1995); Dan Rabinowitz, “Borders and their Discontents: Israel’s Green Line, Arabness and Unilateral Separation,” European Studies, Vol. 19 (2003), pp. 217–31; Larisa Fleishman and Ilan Salomon, “Israel’s Eastern Border: Ask Not ‘Where Is the Green Line?’ Ask ‘What Is the Green Line?’” Geoforum, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Mar. 2008), pp. 1021–43; Cédric Parizot, “Temporalities and Perceptions of the Separation between Israelis and Palestinians,” Bulletin du Cen- tre de Recherche Français à Jérusalem No. 20 (2009), http://bcrfj.revues.org/6319; David Newman, “The Renaissance of a Border That Never Died: The Green Line between Israel and the West Bank,” in Border Lines and Borderlands: Political Oddities at the Edge of the Nation-State, eds. Alexander C. Diener and Joshua Hagen (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), pp. 87–106; Anne B. Shlay and Gillad Rosen, “Making Place: The Shifting Green Line and the Development of ‘Greater’ Met- ropolitan Jerusalem,” City & Community, Vol. 9, Vol. 4 (Dec. 2010), pp. 358–89; Christine Leuen- berger and Izhak Schnell, “Constructing Israel’s Boundaries: People, Maps and the Messy Practice of Delineating Borders in a Conflict Region,” unpublished manuscript. 25. There are endless sources on this topic. For example, see Gershom Gorenberg, The Unmaking of Israel (New York: HarperCollins, 2011). 26. Miles, “Border Pedagogy in Israel,” p. 259. MENTAL MAPS OF ISRAEL/PALESTINE M 245 rance” was not a personal matter, but rather all-encompassing. However, other students were not as troubled with Ya’ir as he was. Sha’ul, another Jewish student who was two years younger than Ya’ir and attended the same school, answered the following when asked after the exercise whether he was bothered by the difficulties he encountered:

It upsets me a little. If it was on [a quiz show on] TV and someone would say, “Don’t you know where this and that is in your country?” which is altogether one meter by one meter [i.e., very small], it would upset me and I would think to myself: he is stu- pid. But at the same time I cannot envision myself going home and opening the atlas.

Both Sha’ul and Ya’ir are probably not aware of the context that defines their geographic perceptions. Yet perhaps one implicit reason for Sha’ul’s refusal to open the atlas is a milieu that trivializes the country’s geographical knowledge, and specifically the whereabouts of its borders. The next two subsections ask what kind of milieu is it.

Borders: Embraced and Rejected

In his book Imagined Communities, one of Benedict Anderson’s fundamental pos- tulates was that a national community imagines its sovereignty by assuming ownership over a well-defined territory.27 Indeed, in the last two centuries, scientific cartography prospered alongside the rise of nation-states.28 To Anderson, the pictorial delineation of the borders, the logo, was a seminal step towards the consolidation of an emerging nation-state. Cartography, he further argued, was closely bound to colonialism and that is why mapping projects first prospered in the colonies. Other scholars went further to argue that the act of mapping often preceded the establishment of states, outlining their future form in blueprint.29 Thus, new nations, often under colonial pressures, carved out what Winichakul called the national geo-body.30 Cartography served to deliver a mes- sage of appropriation; the geo-body allowed members of the nation to think in terms of a collective self through a process called territorialization. This was a passion for a symbolic shape of the state, a logo-manifesting territoriality. However, there is almost always a tension between the lust for territorial control and the forces that challenge it, primarily the lack of a cohesive community that forms the nation of the state. Almost all states, especially in the late 20th century, consist of several different peoples, and their borders divide tightly knit social groups. Especially in postcolonial settings, state borders make little sense to those whom they enclose, and are often understood as barriers rather than means of protection. The fact that they are byproducts of a colonial history further adds to the perception that they sow division rather than promote cohesion.31

27. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nation- alism, second edition (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 7–8. 28. Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 170–78. However, cartography was central to some earlier regimes, such as in the case of France under King Louis XIV. 29. Matthew H. Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843 (: The University of Chicago Press, 1997). 30. Winichakul, Siam Mapped. 31. Crawford Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven, CT: Yale [Continued on next page] 246 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

Emerging states have often treated borders as frontiers. Historian Frederick Jack- son Turner argued that the of America’s westward growth was defined by its thirst for conquest and overcoming the “wilderness.”32 The “pioneers” rejected the idea of stable borders, together with old customs, social hierarchies, and governmental control, favoring an expansionist mode that offered a chance to “overcome nature,” ex- plore “virgin” land and take possession of the “newly discovered” areas. Integral to this was the disregard and erasure of indigenous populations. Thus, what Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling would later call “frontierity” was at the basis of this expansionist phase of the nation-state. Frontierity can also be understood as a form of colonization, including in the case of Israel.33 Frontierity and territoriality were contradictory forces guiding the establishment of the State of Israel. Founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion persuaded the Jewish National Council, the governing body of the Jewish community in pre-State Israel, to ex- clude any mention of the new state’s borders in its declaration of independence, arguing that, “Since ancient times, the borders of the Jewish people’s autonomy have retreated and advanced in accordance with the permutations of history.”34 This statement indirectly supported the conquest of territories taking place at that very moment —the 1948 Arab- Israeli war — including territories not assigned to the Jewish state by the United Nations’ partition plan. Moreover, it would also serve as a blueprint for the years to come. Adriana Kemp elaborated on the application of Israel’s frontierity, demonstrating how, as early as the 1950s, borders were not taken to be finalities, but rather as potential gateways to expand into what lay beyond them.35 She exemplified this with the incur- sions of commandos from Israel’s infamous Unit 101 into Jordan during the 1950s. These raids stirred the imagination of Israelis and were remembered and narrated long afterward. Kemp wrote that

. . . during Israel’s first decade, its borders were shaped simultaneously by two different, and often contradictory, cultural idioms: one “territorialist,” the other “frontierist.” . . . The territorialist idiom bore the deliberate intention of domesti-

[Continued from previous page] University Press, 1994); Willem van Schendel, The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia (London: Anthem, 2005); Mathew Horsman and Andrew Marshall, After the Nation-State: Citizens, Tribalism and the New World Disorder (New York: HarperCollins, 1994); Hastings Donnan and Thomas M. Wilson, Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation and State (Oxford: Bloomsbury, 1999). 32. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Henry Holt, 1921). 33. Gershon Shafir, Changing“ Nationalism and Israel’s ‘Open Frontier’ on the West Bank,” Theo- ry and Society, Vol. 13, No. 6 (Nov. 1984), pp. 803–27; Elia Zureik, David Lyon, and Yasmeen Abu- Laban, eds., Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine: Population, Territory and Power (London: Routledge, 2011). 34. Uri Ne’eman and David Arbel, Hakhra‘ot Gevuliyot: Erets Yisra’el mi-Halukah le-Halukah [Border Decisions: The Land of Israel from Division to Division] (Tel Aviv: Miskal, 2011), p. 245. 35. Kemp, “From Politics of Location to Politics of Signification.” It was Baruch Kimmerling who inspired Kemp to analyze the Zionist project through the lens of “frontierity.” According to Kimmerling, frontierity had various degrees in Israel-Palestine depending on the availability of “free land” (i.e., having an abundance of low-cost territorial resources and being relatively empty of inhabitants). Low degrees of frontierity shaped Jewish society. See Baruch Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory: The Socio-Territorial Dimensions of Zionist Politics (Berkeley, CA: University of , 1983), p. 7. MENTAL MAPS OF ISRAEL/PALESTINE M 247

cating space by rendering it a sovereign, demarcated political territory; whereas the frontier idiom, which is distinctive though not exclusive to the Israeli case, voided the concept of border of its original political meaning by trivializing and depoliticizing the contour of the “geobody” while simultaneously politicizing the areas beyond. The dialectics between the sacralization and trivialization of territo- rial boundaries was fraught with consequences for the process of identity forma- tion: it precluded the possible evolution and institutionalization of a Western-type national identity in which political territory and national territory are conceived as normatively and desirably congruent.36

This duality was manifested in the policy towards territories captured and oc- cupied by Israel (some later relinquished) — the Sinai Peninsula, southern Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. Thus, throughout its exis- tence, Israel has viewed its political territory as within the borders of the state, as well as outside of them.37 Universal consequences contribute to this duality. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari introduced issues of de-territorialization back in the 1970s, alluding to changing relations between labor and land.38 The term was later invoked to describe general trends of deteriorating ties between cultural forms and specific territories. Arjun Appadurai wrote of the embattled relationship between states and nations, not- ing that “states and nations are at each other’s throats, and the hyphen that links them is now less an icon of conjuncture than an index of disjuncture.”39 Charles Maier further elaborated on the decline of territoriality from the late 1970s, arguing that territorial discourse reappears merely as an “elegiac enclave.”40 The significance of a nation-state’s borders is further challenged by what is often termed globalization: vast, worldwide movements of population and goods.41 Despite the above critiques, territoriality definitely matters. Delimited spaces are central in Israel, and growing more abundant. Barriers, fences, and walls are being built around and within the Occupied Territories, along the Israeli-Egyptian border, and all over the country; fences proliferate on the perimeter and in the core. Thus, contradic- tory philosophies of openness, frontierity, and de-territorialization coexist alongside ideas of closure, fencing, and territorializing. These intrinsic tensions are also mani- fested in Israel’s geography education.

36. Kemp, “From Politics of Location to Politics of Signification,” p. 76. 37. The early 1980s saw the intensification of Jewish settlement in the Occupied Territories, pro- moted through maps. This was a “high point” in the trivialization of the territories’ boundaries. 38. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 431–37. 39. Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” in Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks, eds. Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas M. Kellner, revised edition (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), p. 594; Horsman and Marshall, After the Nation-State; Donnan and Wilson, Borders. 40. Charles S. Maier, “Consigning the Twentieth Century to History: Alternative Narratives for the Modern Era,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 105, No. 3 (Jun. 2000), p. 829. 41. Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1998); Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” 248 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

Borders and Geography in the Israeli Educational System

From its inception, the Zionist assumption was that knowledge of the land cultivated love for the nation.42 Much attention was dedicated to a discipline known as moledet, literally meaning “homeland.” Textbooks on the topic were produced in Hebrew as early as the late 19th century.43 This salience of “knowing the land” (yedi‘at ha-arets) continued after the establishment of the state, when geography became an important topic in schools for both Jewish and Arab students.44 More- over, studying the country was a popular extracurricular activity, fostered by in- formal education bodies such as Zionist youth movements and the Society for the Protection of Nature.45 Yet throughout this period, the representation of the borders posed a challenge to the curriculum, partially because they would continue to change.46 Teaching the bor- ders to schoolchildren and youth was no simple matter. Yoram Bar-Gal demonstrated how authors of geography textbooks adhered to a variety of solutions: Some offered vague descriptions: “the country extends from the east to the Mediterranean Sea, from the south to the Mountains of Lebanon;”47 some noted that there was a discrepancy between natural and political borders.48 Others declared the existence of a “problem” — a gap between “the borders recognized by the international community,” “Israel’s neighbors,” and “the borders that the inhabitants of Israel see as desirable.” Still others invoked an earlier phase of the border as a model for a map, such as drawing the bor- ders of Mandate Palestine in 1982, despite their obscolescence.49 Analyzing geography textbooks more recently, William Miles showed that this last method of conveying a double message is still applied; different representations of the country, reflecting past eras, are juxtaposed side by side.50 Miles, along with Yoram and Bruria Bar-Gal, also points to a general decline in Israel’s geography stud-

42. Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948, trans. Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000). 43. Bar-Gal, “Boundaries as a Topic in Geographic Education,” p. 425. 44. Christine Leuenberger and Izhak Schnell, “The Politics of Maps: Constructing National Ter- ritories in Israel,” Social Studies of Science, Vol. 40, No. 6 (Dec. 2010), pp. 803–42; Majid Al-Haj, Hinukh be-kerev ha-‘Aravim be-Yisra’el: Shelitah ve-Shinuy Hevrati [Education among the Arabs in Israel: Control and Social Change] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1996). 45. Yoram Bar-Gal and Bruria Bar-Gal, “‘To Tie the Cords between the People and Its Land’: Ge- ography Education in Israel,” Israel Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Spring 2008), pp. 47–57. 46. Yoram Bar-Gal, “Perceptions of Borders in a Changing Territory: The Case of Israel” Journal of Geography, Vol. 78, No. 7 (1979), pp. 273–76. 47. Menashe Harel and Dov Nir, Ge’ografiyah shel Erets-Yisra’el: Fisit, Kalkalit, Yishuvit ve- Hevelit [Geography of the Land of Israel: Physical, Economic, Local and Regional] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1965), p. 17, quoted in Bar-Gal, “Boundaries as a Topic in Geographic Education,” p. 427. 48. Efrayim Orni and Elisha Efrat, ha-Ge’ografiyah shel Artsenu: Sefer-Yesod be-Yedi‘at Erets- Yisra’el [The Geography of Our Land: Basic Book in the Knowing of the Land of Israel] (Tel Aviv: Ahi’asaf, 1972), pp. 7–8, quoted in Bar-Gal, “Boundaries as a Topic in Geographic Education, p. 427. 49. Arnon Soffer, Ge’ografiyah Kelalit shel Erets-Yisra’el [A General Geography of the Land of Israel] (Haifa: Gastelit, 1982), p. 5, quoted in Bar-Gal, “Boundaries as a Topic in Geographic Education,” pp. 428–29. 50. Miles, “Border Pedagogy in Israel,” p. 260. MENTAL MAPS OF ISRAEL/PALESTINE M 249 ies education.51 According to Bar-Gal and Bar-Gal, the national geography curriculum remained unchanged for four generations, despite major revisions within the discipline. Moreover, the Israeli curriculum focused on localism at the expense of universalism. Global factors have been, and remain, largely disregarded.52 Another indication to the deterioration in geography education is manifested in the mere ten percent of current high school students who choose to include it in their matriculation.53 Hence, despite the old doctrine of fostering national sentiments through “homeland” geography, the teaching of the discipline has undergone a steady decline. Part of this decline may have to do with the persistent border dialectics described so far. If the State’s territoriality carries an inherent message of ambiguity, a double message regarding what consists of its “political territory,” it cannot be easily clarified within the curriculum.

SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS

By considering the “mental maps” of students in Israel, this study tried to de- tect their image of the country, including the Occupied Territories, and specifically its perimeter, or what Thongchai Winichakul named the “geo-body.” The findings show great variability in cartographic forms. Many students were only vaguely aware of the difficulties they would have in drawing a map of the country until they were confronted with the task. At the same time, the findings may suggest that “knowing the country” was not a high priority. Before considering the implications of these trajectories, let us reiterate the main variations that we encountered in the maps. The most evident “lack of borders” pertains to the Green Line, i.e., the line that divides pre-1967 Israel from the West Bank. The students’ mental maps show that this line is mostly unknown, whether they are Palestinian citizens of Israel or Israeli Jews. When students managed to draw it, it was either misplaced or demarcated as smaller than it actually is. In interviews, some students mentioned their encounters with checkpoints, interpreting them as indicators of the Green Line (which they are usually not). However, they could not extrapolate from these occasional encounters a coherent border line. Borders, as Paolo Cuttitta demonstrated, are often manifested through points rather than lines. They are played out at visa, consular, and ticket offices, as well as on the high sea through patrol ships stopping potential migrants. Cuttitta calls these “punctiform manifestations.”54 Where the Green Line is not made evident by the Separation Barrier (which often does not go along the line), it is also played out through punctiform manifestations.

51. Bar-Gal and Bar-Gal, “‘To Tie the Cords between the People and Its Land;’” Miles, “Border Pedagogy in Israel,” p. 258. 52. Bar-Gal and Bar-Gal note that, at times, the responsibility for geography education was rel- egated to the aforementioned civil society organizations, to which membership has similarly declined. Bar-Gal and Bar-Gal, “‘To Tie the Cords between the People and Its Land,’” pp. 47–57. 53. Matriculation (bagrut) exams in Israel, undertaken in the last three years of high school, are comprised of obligatory topics and those students choose. Geography is one of the available choices. Miles, “Border Pedagogy in Israel,” p. 258. 54. Paolo Cuttitta, “Migration Control in the Mediterranean Grenzsaum: Reading Ratzel in the Strait of Sicily,” Journal of Borderlands Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2 (2014), pp. 117–31. 250 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

In light of the official attempts to erase the Green Line, these findings are perhaps not surprising. However, the inability to locate the towns within the West Bank may indicate another spatial difficulty specific to Israel’s Jewish population. “Arab places,” including those within Israel such as the Wadi ‘Ara and the Triangle are often perceived as threatening places to be avoided and thus dot the Jewish-Israeli imagination as what I have elsewhere I called “black holes.”55 Some ways of imagining the West Bank (and its position relative to Israel) in stu- dents’ mental maps appear to be outcomes of wishful thinking. This was made evident in drawings where a straight north–south line divided the West Bank from Israel, or where the West Bank was located east of the Jordan River, or even clumped together with the Gaza Strip. These imagined “solutions” to the dilemma of Israel’s eastern bor- der are rather remote from the contemporary reality. The Gaza Strip was the object of a different type of spatial imagination. Students often marked it on their maps, sometimes etched in clearly drawn lines and sometimes larger than it actually is. Gaza’s separateness may have been the outcome of a media effect, causing it to expand or contract according to exposure on the news. The Strip’s prominence could also be explained as a border “peg,” indicating a clear edge of the country, similar to the city of Eilat. While occasional border points and pegs were available to the students, border lines were more difficult to demarcate. Nevertheless, a geo-body emerged from the maps, at times almost humanized, given curvy outlines. More often than not, this geo- body was detached from its surroundings, forming the image of an island-like country. The names of surrounding countries were sometimes written beyond the border but floated in a vacuum, lacking geo-bodies of their own. Perhaps the geo-body, in essence, is more of an idea or a message rather than a projection of a reality. What are the sources that feed into these geographical imaginations? The first may be an underlying Zionist/Israeli code that defines borders as frontiers, trivializing the idea of their presence and stability. This is evident not only in the erasure of the Green Line and the de facto annexation of the West Bank but also in the expansion and recession of Israel’s other borders. The second source, connected to the first, is that schools’ curricula set forth contradictory messages regarding the country’s borders. These two major sources of influence are augmented by the general decline of geogra- phy as a scholastic discipline in Israel. What could be the implications of this blurred geo-body? Ostensibly, citizens who are not acquainted with the country’s geography can easily be maneuvered into complying or even supporting political moves which they do not fully grasp. The geo- graphic implications of a one-state or a two-state solution would be hardly discernable for the participants of this study. At the same time, these fuzzy geographical percep- tions open up a new set of potential resolutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If what matters is the symbolism of the geo-body, rather than its territorial shape, perhaps less prominence should be given to territory after all.

55. Efrat Ben-Ze’ev, “Living Together Separately: Arab-Palestinian Places through Jewish-Israeli Eyes,” in Toward an Anthropology of Nation Building and Unbuilding in Israel, eds., Fran Markow- itz, Stephen Sharot, and Moshe Shokeid (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2015), pp. 3–26. MENTAL MAPS OF ISRAEL/PALESTINE M 251

APPENDIX

The following four maps represent but a sample of those drawn by students dur- ing the research for this project. Some important recurring labels — neighboring coun- tries and capitals, seas, the Occupied Territories, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and the “peg” of Eilat — have been translated for clarity. The numbers cited in the body of the paper are in reference to a slide show available for download as a special supplement to The Middle East Journal online; see http://dx.doi.org/10.3751/69.2.5.

Map I: Figure B2

Beirut Damascus Lebanon

Syria

Sea of Galilee

West Bank (marked, not labelled)

T.A. (Tel Aviv) ‘Amman Jerusalem Jordan Gaza (Strip)

The Dead Sea

Cairo Egypt

Eilat Drawn by a 16-year-old Jewish student. 252 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

Map II: Figure C2 Lebanon (Beirut)

Syria

Damascus

Sea of Galilee

West Bank Mediterranean Sea (marked, Jaffa–Tel Aviv not labelled) Jerusalem (in West Bank)

Dead Sea

Gaza (Strip) Jordan

‘Amman

Red Sea Eilat

Egypt Cairo

Drawn by a 17-year-old Palestinian student. MENTAL MAPS OF ISRAEL/PALESTINE M 253

Map III: Figure C3

Lebanon Beirut

TA (Tel Aviv) Sea of Galilee

Mediterranean Sea

(West Bank cities labelled, but Green Line unmarked)

Dead Sea Jerusalem

Gaza (Strip)

Egypt Jordan Cairo ‘Amman

Drawn by a 16-year-old Jewish student. 254 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

Map IV: E1

Lebanon

Jordan

‘Amman

Jerusalem

Jaffa Sea of Galilee

Mediterranean Sea

(West Bank cities and Green Line both undepicted)

Eilat

Drawn by a 16-year-old Palestinian student.