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An Oral History of the Path to Palestinian and Jewish Reconciliation in Two California Communities ______

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An Oral History of the Path to Palestinian and Jewish Reconciliation in Two California Communities ______ CONVERSATIONS FOR PEACE: AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE PATH TO PALESTINIAN AND JEWISH RECONCILIATION IN TWO CALIFORNIA COMMUNITIES _________________________________ A Project Presented to the Faculty of California State University, Fullerton _________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in History _________________________________ By Allison Helise Rubalcava Approved by: ____________________________________________ ____________ Dr. Arthur Hansen, Committee Chair Date Department of History ____________________________________________ ____________ Dr. William Haddad, Member Date Department of History ____________________________________________ ____________ Dr. George Giacumakis, Member Date Department of History ABSTRACT This study examines the interplay of memory, myth, and history in the construction of collective memory, collective identity, and historical narrative . The result of this interplay is conflicting historical narratives. In spite of conflicting narratives, a number of contemporary Palestinian-Jewish organizations in the United States use dialogue as the foundation of their cooperative efforts to demonstrate that peaceful coexistence is possible between Palestinians and Jews. In the process a new collective identity is formed based on historical and biblical commonalities rooted in religion and culture. This project’s use of oral history technique is two-fold. First, oral history provides the narrative that comprises the bulk of this study and is used to broaden understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict and issues of collective identity formation. Second, oral history (or dialogue) is the vehicle used by the peace groups in their meetings and community outreach projects. The two groups included in this study are representative of a larger grass roots movement of conflict resolution founded in dialogue. i TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………… i INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………….. iv PART I History, Theory, and Historiography…………… 1 Chapter I. This Land is Your Land, This land is My Land: Historical Identification of Arabs and Jews with the Land of Palestine and its Manifestation into Nationalism……………… 2 The Jewish Situation………………………………………… 3 The Arab Situation………………………………………….. 9 Imperialism and Nationalism……………………………….. 13 The Palestinian Situation……………………………………. 20 The Current Crisis…………………………………………… 22 II. My History is Better Than Your History: The Implications of Collective Memory and Revisionism for Jewish and Palestinian Identity………………………………………… 25 Historiography……………………………………………… 27 Collective Identity and Collective Memory…………...……. 33 Conflicting Narratives………………………………………. 35 Reconciliation……………………………………………….. 40 PART II The Peacemakers Speak for Themselves……………. 41 III. The Establishment of the Dialogue Groups……………………………. 48 IV. Nobody has a Monopoly on Suffering…………………………………. 60 V. Who am I, Who are You, Who are We?………………………………… 87 VI. Areas of Conflict……………………………………………………….. 122 VII. Blessed are the Peacemakers……………………...…………………… 154 VIII. Visions of Peace………………………………………………..…… 189 IX. Can They Make Peace?………………………………………………. 202 APPENDICES……………………………………………………………… 208 1. Arab-Israeli Conflict Timeline………………………………….. 209 ii 2. Maps…………………………………………………………….. 211 3. Dialogue Group web-index……………………………………… 224 4. Dialogue web-resources…………………………………………… 227 5. Cousins Club of Orange County Documents…………………… 230 6. Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group of San Mateo Documents…… 241 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………… 249 iii INTRODUCTION We are a people without a state and therefore a people without credentials, without representation, without the privileges of a nation, without the means of self- defense and without any say in our fate. David Ben-Gurion, 1945. David Ben-Gurion, Zionist leader and first prime minister of Israel, asserted the right of the Jews to have a homeland safe from persecution with the political powers of a recognized state, a goal achieved in the 1948 war in which Israel declared independence. It is ironic that Ben-Gurion’s words can also be read as a prophecy of the Palestinian experience after the birth of Israel. The core issue for both Jews and Palestinian Arabs is identity, a person’s connection to others and their connection to a land, expressed through collective memories that lead to a collective identity. Frequently in the modern world, issues of identity and the sense of belonging lead to nationalistic movements when power and control over one’s destiny is desired. The “Holy Land” reflects Palestine’s religious territorial identity. For Jews the Holy Land is the land of the Jewish biblical kings David and Solomon, and Jerusalem is the site of their sacred temples; for Christians this is the land of Jesus’ birth and the source of Christianity and Jerusalem is where Jesus last preached, was crucified, and then resurrected; and for Islam, a faith that also reveres the Judaic and Christian prophets, Jerusalem is the site of the Prophet Muhammad’s ascension to heaven on a night’s journey from Arabia. Likewise, Palestine is the land many Palestinians have lived in for centuries, and Jews have also had a continual presence in the land for thousands of years. Palestine holds both political and religious territorial identities for both Jews and Palestinians. The varied religious, political, and cultural collective identities that Jews, Muslims, Christians, Palestinians, and Israelis iv experience in regard to Palestine are continuously competing for superiority. However, interfaith and intercultural dialogue groups seek to merge these identities into one shared identity. This oral history project seeks to examine the dynamic nature of collective identity formation through the experiences and reconciliation efforts of California-based Palestinians and Jews who belong to either the Cousins Club of Orange County or the Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group of San Mateo County, two encounter groups engaging in dialogue. The common thread between the dialogue groups is their affirmation of the basic humanity of Jews and Palestinians as well as the mutual acceptance that both communities have suffered tremendous spiritual, material, and physical losses. Jews and Palestinians both share suffering by virtue of dispersal and exile from their homelands and as a consequence of the loss of loved ones in violent wars. These common memories tie the Jews and Palestinians together, enabling group members to form a new and united cultural memory. The Cousins Club and the Living Room Dialogue Group base their respective dialogue on a common heritage reaching back in time well before the modern conflict. In fact the name “Cousins Club” is founded on the historical commonality of a shared Semitic heritage and of religious ties to the patriarch Abraham. This study emphasizes the historiographical and methodological implications of memory, myth, objectivity, and truth. Memory and history are intertwined concepts frequently allowing the emergence of conflicting narratives of particular episodes on the historical timeline. Regarding Palestine, the question of conflicting historical narratives are infuriating some and invigorating others as scholars begin to re-tell the story of Israel v and Palestine from perspectives other than the widely accepted Zionist viewpoint. Rather than focus on the differences between the historical narratives of the Jews and Arabs, group members look for issues that unite people around constructive changes, thus reducing the divisiveness of ethnic and religious tensions. These groups have a goal of reducing the disparity between the differing historical narratives of the Jews and Palestinians and minimizing stereotypes of one another through face-to-face dialogue that promote accommodation rather than confrontation. History is the record of the human experience. Traditional primary sources including documents, letters, treaties between governments and correspondence between nations, all provide excellent understanding of the causal relationship between historical events. Thus, a document such as the Balfour Declaration has tremendous explanatory value in determining the origin of the Arab-Israeli conflict. However, personal testimonials of history facilitate a greater depth of understanding; and oral history is an excellent method for gaining insight of the experiences of marginalized and under- represented people. There are some that would refute the validity of oral testimony in the conveyance of real or true history; however, one should keep in mind that much of our knowledge of past times is based upon oral tradition. Oral testimonies offer the raw material for a more complete historical narrative and the oral histories recorded for this study remind us of the humanness of our experiences. Chapter One is an overview of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from both the Zionist perspective and the Palestinian perspective illustrating the attachment of each to Palestine. This chapter provides the reader with an historical framework to understand the transcribed oral histories of the Jews, Israelis, and Palestinians who vi participated in the study. Chapter Two draws on the theories of the social sciences and social historians in the discussion of collective memory and the formation of collective identity and the impact of such on historical narrative. These social theories are used to explain the formation of collective identities and their culmination into nationalistic movements—the primary
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