I have noticed a trend by some pro-Israelis to refer to Palestinians as “Palestinians”(with quotation marks). I was wondering what are the reasons for this reference? Is this a subtle attempt to deny Palestinians their self-perceived (and world recognized) identity?
Golda Meir famously said that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian”. I assume these people are trying to make the same point.
It’s pretty obnoxious, IMHO.
Yes. It’s a semantic weapon.
To our defense, there are a few mitigating factors. First of all, it’s pretty safe to say that the concept of the Palestinians as an identifiable group is a product of the second half of the 20th century, even in their own eyes, which is a fact which many pro-Arabs often choose to ignore. Second of all, it reflects the Israeli attitude that Israel is not in conflict with the Palestinians per se, but rather with the Arab nation as a whole. The Palestinians are just the ones in the front lines.
Third of all, pro-Arabs often try to discredit the existance of Israel, and of the Jewsih presence it the Middle east. Then it’s just tit-for-tat.
I don’t like to use it myself - It’s a cheap shot, and counterproductive. The only timed I write “Palestinians” is when somebody brings up the old “I’m not anti-semitic, because I like/am Arabs, and Arabs are Semites” argument, in which case I usually say “well, I was born in what you call Palestine, so I must be a Palestinian…”
Semantics are funny, but trivial.
I think the point being made is that the concept of “Palestinian” as a distinct identity is fairly recent. This is true, but irrelevant. National identities are all more inventions than they are organic facts, including such well-established identities as “Frenchman”. The concept of “nation-state” is only a few centuries old.
The Palestinian identity is fairly young, younger than Frenchman or even Italian, though I suppose older than East Timorese or Bangladeshi. And the Palestinian nationality was formed in reaction to the Israeli national identity. However, just as Israel is there, and ain’t going away (without something really catastrophic happening), so too the Palestinians are there, and ain’t going away (short of something really ugly happening). Any reasonable peace settlement is going to wind up with two countries between the River Jordan and the sea: “Israel” and “Palestine”. It’s just that both sides have to actually accept this fact, and then they have to haggle out the borders between them (including in areas which have all sorts of religious and cultural baggage), and make mutually satisfactory arrangements for defense and security, water rights, and so on.
Certainly there are Israelis and supporters of Israel who try to deny the legitimacy of Palestinian aspirations for nationhood. And there is a very wide streak within the Palestinian people right now of denying Israel’s right to exist. No peace will be made as long as such attitudes prevail. And it takes both sides to make peace.
Thanks Alessan. Just as people would deny that Israel exists (as a country or even as something to identity with) it would be equaly as silly to deny Palestinians their own widely recognized identity.
Oh and also a thanks to MEBuckner for his explanation.
As one who often prefers the phrase “Arabs of the West Bank” I’ll state that I use it because I think that the phrase “Palestinian” implies acceptance of the claim that there was a long-standing identity of such and that such was displaced from its “homeland”, rather than the situation as described by others on this thread: that such an identity now exists, but that it is a recent creation which occurred in response to the creation of Israel.
It does not imply any particular position on the need for, or justice of, an independent Palestine in the future. My take on that is that such an entity will exist sooner or later (and should). Sooner if the terrorist acts stopped. Later if they don’t.
So what’s your take on many of the Arab and other Muslim countries blocking out Israel in maps or any mention of Israel in books?
DSeid the only problem with your logic is that calling them Palestinians (opposed to “Palestinians”) does not condone one persons account of history over the others’. It simply recognizes that Palestinians exist as an identity or people. To try to deny them this would be to shut your eyes (so to speak).
I’ll take this as a mistake, because you seem to have skipped my post dealing with this.
Oh, I saw that. Evidently I forgot to include the example I was thinking of and posted as being dealth with by it. FTR, when I was on a port-of-call in the UAE, I stopped at a bookstore and checked out a recently released US-printed annual Almanac. The pages dealing with Israel were either ripped out or had anything to do with Israel blocked out.
Interesting. Was it vandelism (like when I take out a book from the library and it has: ripped out pages, insulting words.), or censorship? If censorship was invovled, was it done by the store manger or was it censored upon arrival to the store? Does the UAE usually have a policy of censorship or what you had seen was a rare occurance?
I think we need istara to the rescue.
efrem: It was a government required and government enforced regulation. All copies of the book in question had the identical changes.
Monty: So it is censorship. Now may I ask, what is your point?
My point is that the Arab countries in the region are quite happy to go ahead right now and pretend that Israel doesn’t really exist.
istara here - but probably not to the rescue!
Anecdotally I have heard that some Israeli websites are banned here. I don’t know which ones, and I’ve never tried to look for them at home, so I can’t confirm this. (At work we are in a special free zone with totally uncensored web access).
The papers here are immensely biased anti-Israel and pro-Palestine, often boringly so.
The UAE does have a policy of censorship at the airport, I have seen them at least once flicking through a newspaper. However they are generally looking for porn. They will scribble over cleavages (even in fashion magazines) with a big black marker, and sometimes tear out pages. How much they do this probably depends on which Emirate you land in - Abu Dhabi, Dubai or Sharjah, the three main (only?) international airports.
I haven’t heard of them censoring Israeli stuff in books etc, but it doesn’t strike me as impossible. Censorship is quite heavy here (nothing like Saudi though I would point out!)
Back to the OP point: earlier on in my job here, I was getting sick of saying “Ramalla” or “the Palestinian territories” every time - the latter is such a verbose phrase for broadcast anyway - so was discussing using Palestine with our news ed. She made the interesting point that it’s possibly wrong to call it Palestine, because it doesn’t yet exist in the form desired by the people there, so calling it “territories” draws attention to the fact that work is still needed to make it “Palestine”.
However mainly for simplicity’s sake, we call the area/region/country Palestine now. We also call Israel Israel. Certain Middle Eastern publications won’t even name it as a (defined? legimate?) country. But even they are not always consistent with this.
This article - http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=55395 - uses Israeli, Israel, Gaza and West Bank, Palestinian people, Palestinians and Palestine.
Nonsense istara, you answered our question, and rekindled my faith in the sillyness of censorship (haha, police looking for porn, I wonder where those torn pages all go 
).
So, when these pro-Israel documents use quotation marks on the word Palestine, are they implying these people do not exist or that they really belong to Israel, but they just don’t know it.