Dag Jørund Lønning
Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen
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A characteristic of ethnic and national conflicts, is the strive for community consensus. [1] To gain legitimacy for all the efforts - economic, social and cultural - which are needed to wage a war, leaders and policy-makers need the support of their own group. Such a support is seldom gained through open public discussions of pros and contras, but rather through the manipulation of national or ethnic symbols. As the anthropologist A.P. Cohen (1992), following Fredrik Barth (1969), shows, symbols which bind communities together are relational in their character. That means that they exist in relation to or in opposition to a community other, something outside the boundaries of the community self. Such symbols, or stereotypes, which define the entire existence of communities, function to organise ordinary inter-community interaction. During war-times, however, ethnic symbols may gain new meanings and organise new contexts. Through nationalist rhetoric - with the aim of producing national consensus - specific, often narrow, meanings of hitherto multivocal symbols are emphasised (For a good example from Sri Lanka, see Kapferer, 1988). One particularly effective strategy is to stress the negative properties of the ethnic or community other and the danger the other presents to the self. This is part and parcel of enemy-making. During war, communities may close their boundaries. Former friends may become foes, and foes become friends. Typically, sanctions, formal - through prohibitions against meeting the enemy - or informal - through public rebuttal - may follow against people who refuse to adhere to the new meanings.
In ethnic conflict, the contacts across the ethnic boundary are reduced often proportionally to the violent escalation of the conflict. And proportional to the reduction of contact, the individual collects more and more information about the other from his own group. A repertoire of narratives concerning the adversary circulates on both sides of the conflict-infested ethnic boundary, and in this two-way process enemy-images are formed and cemented (for a wider discussion of enemy images, see Lønning, 1995 b). On the ultimate level of conflict escalation, opposing world views clash. The individual on each side looses his individuality, and becomes the carrier of all the "evil" properties of his own ethnic group (See e.g. Heraclides, 1989, Lønning, 1995, Spillmann and Spillmann, 1991). Palestine has a long history of conflict, and large parts of both Israeli and Palestinian national identities have been developed as oppositions towards the adversary. Events connected to the conflict are to a large extent interpreted on the public level, and the individual is given very limited space for alternative interpretations. The ethnic boundary parallels a physical border - the Green Line - with severe limitations on inter-ethnic contacts.
But with all these internal Israeli differences in mind, how can one explain that the Israelis have reacted as one monolithic entity in their dealings with the Palestinians? To create a common sense of belonging between people with so different backgrounds, a new collective Israeli identity had to be produced from the top. The impressive construction and dissemination of a new language - the modern Hebrew - has contributed significantly to this unification. But another and different system of symbols has been at least equally important; the long Jewish history of living with persecution has been reinterpreted and employed to illuminate the conflict with Israel's Arab neighbours. The Holocaust has been utilised for this purpose. Naturally, establishing connotations to this horrible manifestation of Jewish suffering, builds bridges over internal differences and produces a strong common front. These symbols flourish in official and grassroots rhetoric in Israel, where the Palestinian struggle has been, and is, presented as yet another pogrom and often a potential new Holocaust (see also Heradstveit & Bjørgo, 1992).
Pogroms and the Holocaust are symbols carrying emotional importance for every Jew. When meaning-producers interpreting the situation of today incorporate such potent symbols into more or less coherent interpretation frames, they are constructing meanings carrying their own intrinsic motivation and potential for hegemony. Such frames are intrinsically motivating because of their focus on inevitability; they convey the message that a Jew, being a Jew, always has to be alert. The threats of new pogroms are ever-present, even in Israel. All Israeli prime ministers have employed such rhetoric, with Begin being the prime example. He openly compared Arafat to Hitler, and the Palestinian National Covenant to Mein Kampf (See Heradstveit og Bjørgo, 1992, Segev, 1993). This theme was also prevalent in Prime Minister Rabin's speech outside the White House on the eve of the signing of the Oslo agreement 13 September 1993, as well as in his Nobel Peace Prize lecture.
On November 3, 1994, The Jerusalem Post wrote about the outcry in Israel when it became known that the Polish President Lech Walesa planned to invite Yassir Arafat to the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Menashe Lorency, a member of an organisation for Holocaust survivors was interviewed: "Arafat doesn't have to be in Auschwitz ... He was the continuation of what they did there." A couple of days later, The Jerusalem Post cartoonist pictured Arafat outside Auschwitz uttering: "It's never too late to learn a thing or two". On November 6, however, The Jerusalem Post could inform their readers that Foreign Minister Shimon Peres had intervened directly in the matter. Lech Walesa had changed his mind about inviting Arafat for the ceremony.
In the public debate, this interpretation-frame is used nearly daily. Newspapers are often packed with letters to the editor where the present conflict is compared to one of the many pogroms the Jews have faced in the past, particularly the Holocaust (See Lønning, 1995a, for examples). In many of the more informal conversations I had with Israelis, such meaning production also occurred. A central theme in much of this rhetoric, is that the Jews need to show strength in the face of the Palestinians to prevent what happened yesterday from happening today (See also Breines, 1990).
The results of these symbolic manipulations, along with factual attacks which are interpreted according to this logic, have been the production of a tremendous fear among the Israelis. People, including so-called left-wingers, all the time told me that travelling to a Palestinian area or meeting Palestinians face to face filled them with horror. "Just the idea gives me the creeps", was one comment I got. Of course it can be dangerous for an Israeli to travel to the Occupied Territories, because he may be considered an occupier. But the magnitude of these fears took me by surprise. People are in short terrified, as I personally experienced many times.
The Israeli images the Palestinian as innately threatening. As the Israeli anthropologist Danny Rabinowitz (1992) has shown, the Palestinian is not first and foremost "uneducated" or "dirty", but "irrational" and "dangerous". Fear has become a collective Israeli evaluation, a community symbol capable of isolating friend from foe. Because of what Israelis believe is the collective wish of the Palestinians to commit new pogroms against the Jews, fear lurks everywhere. A wide range of precautions thus have to be taken to protect the individual and the nation.
One of the most central concepts in Israeli public discourse, is the concept of security. This concept is used by almost everyone, left-wingers as well as right-wingers. Security can be looked upon as a summary of all those strategies that are necessary to utilise towards the Palestinians to prevent what happened yesterday from happening today.
When Israeli soldiers or citizens commit an act of violence against Palestinians, it is nearly always legitimated by employing the security concept, and thereby it is also accepted in the general public. The shooting of children in the Occupied Territories has been legitimated by the media and by the government by manipulating the security-concept. During my stay, it was e.g. employed when a three year old girl was shot and killed; "the car she was sitting in did not stop when it ought to", when an eight year old boy was killed; "he threw stones", and when a carpenter working on a roof was killed; "he was too close to those who threw stones". But, sometimes it is impossible to maintain this explanation. An eleven year old mentally retarded boy in Gaza played in the streets with a toy gun, and was shot through the head and killed by a soldier who said that he thought the gun was real and that the boy would shoot him. For this killing the soldier got 14 days in prison, a sentence which at least in my eyes was not particularly harsh. But in the public debate, this was also placed under the interpretation frame "legitimate killing because of security reasons", and sending the soldier to prison sparked a public media debate.
This particular Israeli frame has been born in seemingly endless conflict with an ethnic or national other. The image of the enemy has become stronger and stronger over the years as new generations have been borne into and forced to live with the conflict. The need to produce and maintain internal unity in the face of this enemy, has, as we have seen, given the frame very particular characteristics. The interpretation frame likening the Palestinians with lurking danger, and particularly with the Nazis, the ultimate evil enemy of humanity and the archetypal Other for all Jews, being Jews, has become hegemonic in Israeli society.
There is one important conflict-theoretical lesson to be learned from the Israeli case. As Emily Brontë so vividly portrayed in her famous novel Wuthering Heights, when the seeds of hate are sown, they grow roots, ripen and bear fruits. Long-term conflicts may gradually develop two non-reducible levels. The conflict has a macro-political side with the conflict over territory, etc., but due to strong rhetoric production of enemy images from politicians and other rhetoricians seeking public support for war-like activities, the conflict also develops its own dynamics on the "grassroots" - or individual level - where certain attitudes - like hate and fear - become disseminated, developed and strengthened through ever widening social fields. Through meetings between "ordinary" people removed from political power- and negotiation-channels, the conflict is conceptualised and experienced within interpretation frames that are radically different from elite-political discourse channels. Resulting understandings of the conflict may thus also be different, and gradually such interpretations may become detached from macro- political events. The conflict has gained a new dimension, where hate and fear on the individual level provide strong signalling guidelines for political elites. This has happened in Israel, where the most important issue in any election campaign is which p arty can provide the most effective protection against the threatening Palestinian/Arab surroundings. Among the large majority of Israelis, the conflict is conceptualised as a collective conflict. There is friend and foe, but no in-between.
On what we can call the "grassroots"-level, a peace process has been going on for several years. After the Intifada broke out, small groups of Israelis and Palestinians from the Occupied Territories decided to come together in so-called dialogue groups, under the assumption that direct inter-ethnic encounters would effectively combat enemy images and stereotypic thinking. The first dialogue group in Beit Sahour was very successful at the outset. The members told me about how fantastic and revealing it was meeting the other for the first time. Individuals who entered the dialogue with their intra-ethnically produced meaning systems, gradually became able to see the adversary in a new light, as a partner in a common future instead of an enemy.
Not long after the group was initiated, the members decided to form other groups in other places. Dialogue should produce winds of change over the violence-infested land. This did not happen, however. Nearly all the new groups disintegrated, and the new members quit. For the first time the obstacles collective ethnic meanings present became apparent to the members. The Likud often prevented dialogues from taking place through road-blocks, curfews, arrests, etc., but such obstacles could be circumvented - as Israelis often did by smuggling Palestinians in their cars - obstacles grounded in ethnic meanings could not. The result is that inter-ethnic dialogue is a very limited activity in Israel-Palestine even though seven years have passed since the first group started. The current peace process - with the Israeli government talking officially to the PLO - has only had a limited effect on the number of people who are willing to join.
For most new members, the first meeting is just too difficult. While the first group in Beit Sahour grew out of activists, who had had various kinds of personal contacts with Palestinians before, most of the new members were totally fresh. In the first meeting, one not only meets the other, but also on one level oneself. Attitudes about the other which have been formed intra-ethnically are suddenly confronted by the sheer presence of the other. And, when a complete cultural interpretation frame has been built around such attitudes, discovering that this meaning system may be based on false premises, may become too painful. Quitting is thus easier than introspection. Particularly for Israelis who consider themselves radical, the first meeting is critical. Attitudes concerning the Palestinians which are considered radical in Israel are suddenly questioned as such by the Palestinians themselves. Withdrawal into Israeli society where their attitudes are recognised as liberal thus is a viable option.
Secondly, people are generally too afraid to join. Israeli dialogue members are regularly told - even by left-wing members of Peace Now - how lucky they are to be alive after having returned from a dialogue session at the West Bank. Many people carry images about huge mobs waiting with knifes and stones if they go unarmed to a Palestinian city. Thus the most effective means a dialogue member can use in his recruitment attempts is his own body, the sheer fact that he has been many times among Palestinians without being hurt. This provides a second-hand account, however, and is not always effective.
Thirdly, every collective meaning system has sanctioning mechanisms against offenders. These sanctions may be particularly harsh against individuals in one's own midst who challenge the very us-versus-them aspect of the conflict, a building block of the Israeli interpretation frame. Among many Israelis, especially among people on the political right, peace-making inter-ethnic co-operation and dialogue is conceptualised as a deviation from or a violation of cultural norms concerning how to relate to established enemies. Opponents of such activities construct narratives that try to exclude the Israelis who meet Palestinians from the moral universe to which these cultural norms apply. Israelis who meet Palestinians in peace-making activities are defined out of the Israeli community, the Israeli community as it is conceptualised by the narrative-producers by the utilisation of concepts and meanings deriving from the national interpretation frames. If you manage to brand a person or group as traitors, as "people who work against their own community, and thereby for the terrorists who are working to launch a new pogrom against the Jews", powerful rhetorical devices have been created. For the narrative-producers, trying to produce connotations to national interpretation frames represent, first, an attempt to make cultural sense out of what they see as a dangerous and norm-violating activity, and, second, a means to reinstall the social order; to sanction the offenders, who become legitimate objects of contempt. Sanctions seldom involve physical attacks, although one of my informants barely survived such an attack from a settler, [4] but are nevertheless very effective.
Together with some other people, one of the Israeli dialogue members participated in a weekly demonstration against the occupation in central Jerusalem. Every week they faced severe accusations from passers-by. One time a car stopped and some Israelis jumped out and started threatening the dialogue member and his compatriots. They called them "traitors", and one of the intruders shouted at the dialogue member: "I wish Hitler had killed all of you in the gas chambers in the Holocaust. You are not real Jews."
Another Israeli dialogue member is a rabbi. He was asked in his synagogue if his next activity would be to drink Jewish blood. As with several others, he had often been called a self-hating Jew, a term which has also been applied to many Jewish critics of Israel in the Diaspora. The rabbi further told me about a fellow rabbi who used to be chief rabbi in France. He was a prominent man in the French resistance movement during World War Two. When he came to Israel he got involved in peace-groups, and was labelled a pro-nazi in his synagogue.
Such sanctions severely and effectively limit both the work of dialogue groups as well as the number of people who are willing to attend.
It is important to emphasise that dialogue has been effective for some of the Israelis who have joined. Dialogue involvement has lead to internalisation of new inter-ethnic meanings, and total dedication to inter-ethnic aims. However, as enemy images pervade the wider Israeli landscape, and because Israeli dialogue members are still a part, if marginalised, of this community, even long time members have to relate to the collective meanings. As a conclusion I would like to read a part of an interview I had with an Israeli woman who had participated in dialogue with Palestinians for many years. This interview is a good example of the conflicts of loyalty which develop among people who work with the ethnic Other in a political situation characterised by collective ethnic conflict. "Ora" is reflecting over her role in Israeli society:
Well, I think I belong here. If the situation gets worse, in the sense that the internal Israeli regime becomes less and less democratic - maybe they will start hunting people, like in the McCarthy-period or something like that - then I believe life might become too difficult for me here. But I can't actually figure myself as an emigrant. Maybe I'm not part of Israelism, but in one way or another I'm part of the society here... I don't know. If things get worse, if, for instance, I will no longer be able to conduct my work - which is very important to me, and which has influenced me a lot, as it has been my first real meeting with Palestinians from the territories - or if I will no longer be able to belong to different political groups? I don't know, but I don't think this will happen. Especially as long as the radical left is too small to actually bother anybody... But I'm a part of this place, and I'm part of the Middle East. But maybe I'll leave if things really get tough... I don't know, but at least I love my work... We Jews in the radical left sometimes say: How could French people do it in Algeria? We feel frustrated. We know there were French who said: "OK, we're on the other side. Let's get guns and go to Algeria to fight De Gaulle". We just can't do this. I mean... Last year I had to go through a deep personal crisis because of my feelings of alienation. I felt so alienated that I told myself: "Well, what you really should do is to cross the border, go to a Palestinian village and join this or that organisation." But - not only because of the structure of the Israeli society, but also because of the structure of the Palestinian society - this is impossible. I just can't do it. Well, if there's ever a civil war here, where Israelis will be involved in the struggle against fascism I don't know yet what Bibi Netanyahu [5] will do - then of course I will take part, and I know on which side. But as the situation is now, it doesn't seem too realistic. And what should I do? Plant a bomb in the right-wing headquarters? I can't do that. After all it's my people, I can't do it. What I'm doing now is to actually work on the Palestinian side, and that's what makes my life meaningful. But I don't know what I'll do if things get worse. If the state doesn't change and maybe becomes more totalitarian against the Arabs inside Israel, then maybe. Maybe it will be easier for me to take part in a civil war inside Israel, if, for instance, the Israeli Palestinians revolt. But right now I don't see myself as... Well, I know that people like Ilan Halevi in fact broke out, joined the PLO, and is now working as a diplomat in the PLO. But he didn't only cross the border, he also left the scene. He's in Vienna or something like that. That just doesn't seem possible to me... Sometimes I feel strongly that I don't belong on this side. There are times when I go through real identity crisis, but I also know that t here are no other opportunities. And we don't idealise the Palestinian society. As a woman I have much more freedom in the Israeli society, even though the occupation has made things worse. But, I think I can work better for the Palestinians from the Israeli side. That's at least what I think. It's all very complicated." (Lønning, 1995a: 180-182)The interview indirectly visualises what I have been trying to state between the lines in this paper. "The work of culture" - to borrow a title from Obeyesekere - has to be taken into account in conflict and peace research. If this discipline remains as macro-politically oriented as it is today, important driving forces of ethnic conflicts will be ignored, and novel ways of conflict resolution thus overlooked.
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© The author and Nordic Society for Middle Eastern Studies. Archived 29.11.95