The discourse of nation and culture: Its impact on Palestinian—Jewish encounters in Israel

International Journal of Intercultural Relations 26 (2002) 409–427

The discourse of nation and culture: Its impact on Palestinian—Jewish encounters in Israel$ Zvi Bekerman* Melton Center, School of Education, Hebrew University, 91905 Jerusalem, Israel

Abstract The purpose of this study is to examine the discursive resources which shape national majority–minority rhetoric used in the context of the Nation State, as manifested in the case study of Arab–Jewish intergroup encounters in Israel. By discursive resources, I mean the deep-rooted cultural schemes that organize the way we interpret our environments in verbal communication. The research method adopted is qualitative and based mainly on discourse analysis of data gathered during Arab–Jewish encounters conducted in a university setting. The findings point to two prominent rhetorical patterns: one guided by the discourse of nation and the other guided by the discourse of culture. The interpretative work uncovers the discursive resources, which seem to guide and shape the encounters communicational exchange. The analysis sheds new light on the basic paradigmatic premises that sustain the difficulties encountered in this educational effort and suggests possible avenues for their amelioration. r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Intergroup encounters; Jewish–Arab conflict; Educational interventions; Majority–minority relations; Paradigmatic change; Discourse analysis

1. Introduction There is a rather long history to the attempts, through inter-group encounters, to address and overcome inter-group conflicts. Psychological premises have in one way or another guided all this activity (for a review see Abu-Nimer, 1999; Weiner, 1998). $

The author is extremely grateful to Ifat Maoz for her helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper and to Vivienne Burstein, always critical and challenging in her editing. *Tel.: +972-2-5882120; fax: +972-2-5322211. E-mail address: [email protected] (Z. Bekerman). 0147-1767/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 1 4 7 - 1 7 6 7 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 1 4 - 7

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Since the development of the ‘‘contact hypothesis’’ (Allport, 1954) numerous strategies of inter-group intervention have been developed and implemented in a variety of structured and semi-structured settings. Contact hypothesis in its different disguises suggests that inter-group contact might help to alleviate conflict between groups and reduce mutual prejudices (Gaertner, Dovido, & Bachman, 1996; Horenczyk & Bekerman, 1997; Wood & Soleitner, 1996). For this to be achieved, contact should take place under the conditions of status equality and cooperative interdependence while allowing both for sustained interaction between participants and for the potential forming of friendships (Allport, 1954; Amir, 1976; Pettigrew, 1998). Recently, Hewstone (1996) has carefully analyzed the theoretical bases and the possible outcomes of the different ‘‘contact’’ strategies at hand. Horenczyk (in press) has aptly summarized the differences between these strategies and maintains that both decategorization and cross-categorization approaches seem to allow for an increase of complexity in inter-group perceptions. The former achieves this by renouncing group identity while the later by affording the superimposition of new categories over existing group ones. Inter-group categorized contact approaches leave group identities intact, making them central to the intergroup encounter. The optimism on which these theories are predicated is far from proving itself justified. Sherif (1966) argues that compelling success has not been fully replicated and recent studies have speculated about the possible effectiveness of these theories in conflict-reduction endeavors (Abu-Nimer, 1999; Maoz, 2000b). Traditional contact paradigms seem to have assumed that encounters could be conducted in isolation, removed from external tension and, as such, could have healing effects which would ultimately impact the outside world. To judge from the ongoing activity in the area of rapprochement and dialogue in conflict-ridden areas such as Israel, it is reasonable to assume that political and or structural reform stand a better chance, if at all, to dissipate intergroup tension. However, Bar-Tal (2000) encourages us to consider that with structural change achieved still there would be need for reconciliation efforts. More current analysis (Bar, Bargal, & Asaqla, 1995; Halabi & Sonnenshein, 2000; Suleiman, 1997) has taken a more contextual approach, emphasizing the inevitability of accounting for the socio-historical situatedness of the encounter activity, which must always be recognized as taking shape in dialog with the outside world. Recently, Maoz (2000a), trying to overcome the ingenuousness at the base of the assumption that contact per se can overcome serious differences, theorized about the need for a new paradigm. This paradigm would account for the inevitable penetration of outside power struggles, identity clashes, and structural asymmetry into contact situations. Through a more naturalistic approach, Maoz (2000a, b) charted the dynamics of power as they are expressed in communicational interactions. Her studies show a strong relationship between inter-group power relation’s struggles and the possible outcome of encounters. They also point to the focal dilemma encountered by the participating groups, that which advocates surrendering a unilateral identity for the sake of togetherness as opposed to that which rejects common agendas so as to sustain group particularity.

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2. Present paradigmatic limitations Educational interventions in the form of inter-group encounters have been widely and most uncritically accepted. Only recently has a study been conducted which questions the na.ıve acceptance with which dialog settings have been received (AbuNimer, 1999). The encounter approach has been mostly sustained and developed on the basis of somewhat constrained theoretical approaches. Encounters are based on psychological and psychodynamic perspectives on individual and personality development (Katz & Kahanov, 1990) or, when they underline individual change through inter-group relations, on sociological and socio-psychological premises. The rather low number of existing studies on the effects of these encounters may suggest a low level of success. Still criticisms have been few. Maoz (2000a) has cautiously raised doubts about the possible benefits of this approach when implemented in sites of actual conflict reflecting asymmetrical relations of power. Abu-Nimer (1999) questions whether the encounters as developed today are not misleading, especially for Palestinian students, since they are not planned for and thus fail to produce political change. Others (Halabi & Sonnenshein, 2000) have pointed to the fact that the traditional approaches to inter-group encounters may contribute to sustain further the present imbalance of power relations between the groups involved. To counter these weaknesses, these theoreticians suggest a variety of strategies. Maoz points to the potential of the interactive problem-solving approach (Kelman, 1998) in particular when the issues are problems simultaneously important to both groups involved. Halabi (Halabi & Sonnenshein, 2000; Sonnenschein, Halabi, & Friedman, 1998) argues for the need to strengthen group identity and achieve minority empowerment, and Abu-Nimer (1999) makes a case for the empowerment of all groups involved in the encounter so as to increase their ability to criticize their environment while at the same time emphasizing that encounters themselves are not a substitute for structural change. Notwithstanding Maoz’s commendable effort (Maoz, 2000a), present critiques, though certainly uncovering basic problematic issues in educational encounters, fall short from offering new theoretical paradigms through which to approach these activities. This statement is true at two levels. For one, they fail to go beyond an essentialist approach to identity; and second, they neglect, in spite of their noting the influence of external forces in encounter situations, to account for the tight relationship between this essentialist perspective of identity and the larger sociopolitical context—i.e. the nation-state. As I will show below these two issues, the concept of self and identity and the coming into being of the political organization of nation-state, are intimately related and should be taken into serious consideration when trying to understand the possible outcomes of the educational encounters as well as the educational strategies that should be adopted to better them. Undertaking a long critique of the concept of identity in its traditional positivist psychological meaning is unnecessary; loads of academic works have been devoted to this issue (Bakhurst, 1995; Gee, 1992; Harre & Gillett, 1994; Potter & Wetherell, 1990; Watt, 1997). These studies point at the relatively modern appearance of this

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concept and its tight connection to socio-historical and philosophical developments in the last 400 years of Western intellectual history. Identity as a unitary and autonomous construct has come under attack as being a product of exclusionary power relations (Bhabha, 1994; Hall, 1996), a monologic posture which tries to overcome through domination that which is ‘‘by nature’’ dialogic: the self and identity (Bakhtin, 1981; Gee, 1992; Mead, 1934; Sampson, 1993). Similarly, social identity and its constitution have been analyzed as products of power relations which establish dichotomous hierarchies in which the powerful attain the status of essentiality while the weak are reduced to the rank of an unfortunate but necessary accident (i.e. man/woman; black/white; Jew/Arab) (Laclau, 1990). Regarding this second point, it is worth recalling that recently historian, sociologists, culturalists and even psychologists (Billig, 1995; Gellner, 1983; Giddens, 1991; Smith, 1992) have expounded on the radical influence on conceptions of ‘‘identity’’ becoming primordial and essential of the slow but steady development of the most universal of modern structures and ideologies: the ‘‘nation state’’ and ‘‘nationalism’’. The powerful machinery developed by the nation state, mostly in the shape of massive educational efforts which market universal (anonymous) literacy, has been successful in making look natural or banal, as Billig (1995) would have it, the detailed practices through which nation states become almost invisible settings in which we ‘‘mistakenly’’ hold a sense of individuality—an individuality always measured against a contingent other (Laclau, 1990) and that modern court of human appeal: the ‘‘high’’ culture of the nation state (Williams, 1961). Theoreticians have identified the national structure as one of the cruelest systems on the historical scene (Bhabha, 1990; Mann, forthcoming). For the community to be imagined in its national oneness (Anderson, 1991; Hobsbawm, 1983) borders had to be widened and groups lumped together through homogenizing efforts; culture had to be reified and the individual, and his relation to the sovereign, strengthened so as to undermine the power of smaller communal identifications. Concealed behind the promise of universal equality was the sovereign’s demand to have no other than an individual, stripped of any group affiliation, under his rod (Mendus, 1989). The nation-states scheme has become so powerful that, like language in the Sapir Whorf hypothesis, nationalism seems to shape and direct our most basic paradigmatic conceptions both on society and individual identity. The discursive resources it offers evoke its power. By discursive resources I point to the deep-rooted cultural schemes that organize the way we interpret our environments in verbal communication. Discursive resources are patterns of talk that are available to organize communicational processes of given groups through a mediating textual form embedded in the symbolic realm of a given social setting (Neuman & Bekerman, 2001); in our case the setting shaped by the power of the nation-state. The case study reported here will interpret Israeli Palestinian–Jewish encounters in the light of the above-mentioned theories. Through interpretative work conducted on intergroup encounters session transcripts I will uncover those discursive resources, which seem to guide and shape the encounters’ communicational exchange. The analysis will shed new light on the basic paradigmatic premises that sustain the

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difficulties encountered in this educational effort and suggest possible, though difficult, avenues for their amelioration.

3. The case study: Encounters between Jewish and Palestinian Israeli university students The work examines discursive events that took place in one session of a full year Palestinian/Jewish dialog/encounters course aimed at developing in the participants a sensitivity towards the complexity of the relations between these groups in Israel and in the wider Arab–Israeli conflict. The course offered by the School of Education at an Israeli university during the 1998–1999 academic year, progressed under the rather optimistic political outlook that followed the Oslo agreements. All sessions were observed by the author and annotated as well as video recorded. Eight Palestinian (six female and two male) and eight Jewish (all female) undergraduate students participated in the course. All participants, but one, were in their middle/late twenties and most studied towards their first degree in education. The older participant, a Jewish female in her early forties, had been a teacher for many years and was back at the university to earn an MA degree. The meetings, held once a week, lasted one and a half hours each. Two moderators (a Jewish female and a male Palestinian) facilitated the sessions. Both were studying towards their MA degrees at the School of Education and were, in addition, professional group leaders from the School for Peace at Neveh Shalom. Throughout the weekly sessions participants (for the most part on their own) decided on the agenda that would be discussed with very little intervention on the part of the moderators. Approximately, every three/four meetings a uni-national session was held, and the lecturers in charge of the course had two to three classes in each semester dedicated to theoretical issues related to identity and culture in crosscultural encounters. The language of teaching at the university is Hebrew, thus all students participating in the course were expected to be fluent in this language. The fact that two moderators participated, a Palestinian and a Jew, indicates the commitment of the organizers not to allow language to become a barrier for dialog. One of the Jewish participants indicated that she had some working knowledge of Arabic because of her current residence in one of the Jewish settlements in the Palestinian areas occupied after the Six Day War. One of the Palestinian participants (female) indicated that though she understood Hebrew, she would prefer to speak Arabic. Geographically, she came from an area near Jerusalem, occupied since the Six Day War. Indeed for the most part during the year whenever she talked, Arabic was the language she used. The Palestinian moderator or one of the Arab students present translated her statements. All other students lived within the internationally recognized borders of the State of Israel. For all practical purposes it could be said that the university course was build according to the traditional parameters (Amir, 1976) that would allow for a successful contact situation. That is to say, it was planned to continue for an

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extended period of time and allowed for a relative high acquaintance potential between participants; its context permitted individuation of group members and finally, the participants in both groups were of equal competence and similar in number.

4. Methodology I approach the study with the traditional ethnographic commitment to thick description (Geertz, 1973) by which I mean an attempt to render in detail, theoretically informed descriptions of what was going on and what was being produced in the cross-cultural encounter while participants shared in conversation. More specifically I aligned myself with the theoretical traditions developed by what has come to be known as discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995; Jaworski & Coupland, 1999; Potter & Wetherell, 1995). I focus primarily on the verbal practices adopted, the sorts of resources drawn upon by participants in interaction, and the contents through which they constructed and described their worlds (Potter & Wetherell, 1995). The videotaped materials provided me with rich data on verbal and non-verbal intra- and inter-group communications. The videotape, which became the basis of the present analysis, was carefully transcribed in its entirety using a reduced version of the Jeffersonian system developed for conversational analysis (Atkinson & Heritage, 1984). In the present paper and for the sake of the untrained in conversational analysis, I have rendered the transcription using a more conventional annotation. The extracts are translations from Hebrew. In an attempt to preserve the authenticity of the language, the translation contains some phrases that may seem awkward in English. The text was subjected to extensive analysis. I performed a series of codings, which helped me identify central themes recurrent in the conversations. I then documented the interpretative repertoires and strategies which the participants used to construct their communicational choices when talking about issues they considered to be of central importance to the problems raised in the encounter. Finally, I focused on central sections of the encounter session and passages that concentrated on talk related to my themes of interest. All the passages selected might not have used the specific words I was after but instead used similar or related terms or just drew on associated themes which in my view seemed fit for the analysis intended. This approach was adopted for the purpose of allowing us to identify the participants’ resources and practices used in identity construction and negotiation through language in social interaction. The session analyzed took place at the beginning of the second semester immediately after a weekend retreat at the Neveh Shalom School for Peace in which participants, from all four Israeli universities conducting cross-cultural Palestinian/ Jewish Israeli encounter courses, had met to further their understanding of crosscultural issues. During the weekend the participants had the opportunity to participate both in guided educational activities and in joint social events.

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A central activity of the weekend retreat had been designed in accordance with the problem-solving approach (Kelman, 1991) and consisted of a simulation wherein representatives of both groups, 50 years into the future and after peace had been reached between Israel and all its neighbors, had to discover new means to achieve a sense of common citizenship and national pride for both the Palestinian Arab and Jewish populations in Israel. In my analysis, I will concentrate on events which took place starting approximately 30 min into the session under study. Prior to these events the group had been commenting on their experiences throughout the weekend. At first the Jews within the group seemed to be trying to emphasize the success of the weekend encounter mostly in all aspects related to the social activities, while the Arab representatives expressed much more qualified views, giving the impression that while the Jews were trying to use the weekend experience as a bridging point, the Palestinian group was not inclined to allow this to happen. This failed attempt to construct a successful weekend story paved the way for a long exchange between both groups regarding some of the issues they considered to be central in their current conflictual situation and those which would have to be considered if radical change is what is expected in the future. In general, the discussion in this session was shaped by patterns already identified through my reading of the transcripts of all previous weekly encounters. The selection of the specific session for analysis was justified on three principal bases. First it took place after a full semester of activity in which participants had reached a high level of acquaintance with each other’s ideological perspectives and personal narratives. Second, in the weekend retreat, participants had considered a variety of perspectives on future solutions to the conflict. Last, and plausibly following from the above, in this session we find well-articulated expressions of the pattern I had identified and will later call the ‘‘discourse of nation’’ and the ‘‘discourse of culture’’.

5. Findings The analysis reveals two distinct patterns of discourse which dominated the scene. I call the first, for lack of better terms, the ‘‘predictable’’ one and the second, for similar reasons, the ‘‘less predictable’’ one. The first, as the title of the paper implies, is tightly related to the discourse of nation and the second to the discourse of culture. 5.1. The discourse of nation In the discourse of nation, imprisoned in the ‘‘discursive resources’’ of national rhetoric, both Palestinian and Jewish participants seem to hold true to a definition of personal and group/national identity best in tune with the modern positivist psychological western paradigm (Hall, 1996; Harre & Gillett, 1994). Their identities are assumed to be primordial and essential and the conflicts between them are viewed as arising from the present nation/state world configuration, a reality also assumed

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to be primordial and necessary, and indeed reflecting the fact that nationalism has become the most successful ideology of modernity (Billig, 1995; Gellner, 1983). In the session under consideration, many issues were raised regarding the possible integration of Israeli Arabs into the Israeli society as equals. As a rule, what characterizes these discourse segments is a clear separation between the groups; it is clear throughout who ‘‘they’’ and ‘‘we’’ are. The assumed fixed reality of national identities shapes most of the interaction in these segments. Indeed both groups envision national identities and entities to be necessary and primordial; they would all readily agree that a Jew is a Jew and an Arab is an Arab, but here the similarities end. For the most part Arabs perceive Jews, for whatever their personal, ethnic or political affiliations may be, as those involved in sustaining a situation which denies Arabs legitimacy as citizens of the State of Israel and negates the historical and lawful rights of Palestinians to a national home. G, an Arab female participant, reflected on this issue when saying: G: ywe (the Arabs)ythere until we are given permission. So all (the Jews)ythey (the Jews) do not allow us into the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) and don’t let us study some disciplines (hints to the fact that Palestinian students are not welcomed to some fields of academic research). So what are we waiting for? we are sitting here and waiting for equality? I don’t want to wait this way umyin this waiting fifty years, ayto to get the rights that noty(Jews do not give us) I don’t want to be repressed all fifty (years)—I want to live, very simply. So umyI umyso this country will be fifty years old, and I’m in ‘so called’ equalityyI umywill be one hundred, one hundred and fifty. How old will I be? So much time for equality. On their part Jews have difficulties delimiting the meaning of the category ‘‘Arab’’. ‘‘Arab’’ in their statements can stand for: a citizen of the state of Israel who is Arab, an Arab representative of the Arab world/people, a Palestinian, that is to say one of those Arabs who since (though not only) the war of 1967 have struggled for the creation of a Palestinian State. In spite of this ambivalence in their view, an Arab is an Arab, throughout. Arabs repeatedly react to this ambivalence not by denying the variety of definitions involved in it but by justifying them. Some 15 min into the session D, a Jewish female participant, and F, a Palestinian male participant sustained the following exchange: D: I felt (during the weekend simulation) that the idea was to clean, to clean certain factors, to clean certain variables in they, in the relations between us? For example we talk, we always the Jews,ythe Jewish group, the Jews the citizens of the country of Israel, and you always talk in the name ofythe Arabs of the country of Israel and also the representatives of the Palestinian nation o-of the country ofy F: we are part of the Palestinian nation D: yes yes yesyI I’m saying you are alwaysythere is a double meaning also the citizens of the country of Israel and also the citizens of the country of Palestine

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that not citizens, not you but in the nameyof the citizens of the country of Palestine that will rise, hhh and also more part (of the) Arab (nation) and thisymeaning we talked about different kinds of ayresources meaningyin your different kinds of voices. D’s continuous assertions about the Jewish group and her multiple self-repairs when defining the Arab group, along with F’s intervention are convincing examples of the affirmations and ambivalences pointed to above. A second identifiable pattern relates to the different ways in which the State of Israel is to be understood: as an ethnic/national or a civic/national entity. In the midst of a heated argument Jews express their willingness and expectation to have Israeli Arab citizens enroll in the army. For Jews this is, in essence, an expression of their willingness to offer equality to the Arab citizens of Israel. Arabs hear this offer as a challenge to their expectations for equality. This pattern is exemplified in the continuation of D and F’s exchange. D: yI know that let’s say if I was saying to you now comeyenroll in the army, so you (the Arabs) would have said ‘no how come, this is an army which is a repressive army, a conquering armyy’ I accept this very much, but at the moment (in the simulation)yso at the moment there is a country (with equality for all its citizens)yyes this is what I expectedy.(that you join the army)yto belong more to the Jewish country. Andy F: ybut belonging: is: not through serving in the army. We will not fightywe will not fight against Arabs with the Jews: we won’t reach this kind of situation D: yyes but I thought that if the country would belong to both of usyyou understandy F: yyes it will be for both of us but, I I I am from the Arabyworld, I can’t fight, fight the Arabs. A few minutes latter in the transcript, L, a Jewish participant reacting to E’s (male Arab) statements about his hope that the day will come when he ‘‘will accept belonging (to the state) because he will be accepted in Israeli society as his Jewish friends are accepted today’’, states: L: I hope, the hope is, that they will change priorities and so really there won’t be this situation. There is no reason that you (plural—the Arabs) will live here and not feel like all of us (the Jews) and that you won’t have rights like all of us. L sounds ready to accept the ultimate challenge of offering full equality to Arab Israelis. Her statement does not go unnoticed in its possible debilitating consequences for present Jewish hegemonic power. It is D, our previous speaker who had, just a few minutes ago, offered Palestinians the opportunity to join the army, thus, in her view attaining full equality, who questions L regarding the extent of her commitment to equality: D: But are you willing to give up the Jewish symbols of the state? L: I wasn’t talking about the Jewish symbols; I wasn’t talking about if I want a statey

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D: But he was talking about that. He was talking about how there will never be a full belonging as long as the state is characterizedy(by Jewish symbols: flag, anthem, etc.) Even when Jews, as is the case for L, are ready to acknowledge the need to offer full equality, this equality does not easily acknowledge the need for Arab national, cultural and/or symbolic legitimization. Following the conversation it becomes apparent that Jews and Arabs make a concerted effort to facilitate boundary maintenance. Although the constant call for civic and symbolic equality on the part of the Arab contingent seems to indicate that overcoming these barriers on the part of the Jews would enable the redefinition of the fields of affiliation and belonging from ethnic/national identity to some type of ‘‘neutral’’—civic/national—citizenship, it is apparent that the Arab group will not necessarily favor this situation. On the Jewish side, although the need for equality could be rationalized in terms of long-term objectives, it is clear that even if achieved it would be difficult to envision the renunciation of a mutual overlap between the identity of the state and that of the Jews. The national discourse resources feeding the dialog and their assumption of a fixed reality of national identities allow only for the reaffirmation of undifferentiated group identity. Having reviewed the discourse guided by the rhetoric of nation, I turn now to the one that developed under the rhetoric of culture. 5.2. The discourse of culture Almost an hour into the session a Palestinian female participant opens a new segment in the conversation. She is wearing a veil and dressed in an outfit which identifies her as an observant Moslem. This Arab woman, who rarely talked throughout the encounters and was quiet till this point in the session, asks for a turn to talk and, while seemingly reading from a written statement, makes some comments, in Arabic, regarding cultural struggles. M: I want to talk about the subject of cultureythe thingythat I realized fromythe fromythe place that we went to, the conference that took place hhh that there is a struggleythe struggle that uhyis found uhyis a cultural struggle umythe culture of the Jews the culture of the uhyArabs isyI imagine is a struggle; umy the cultural struggle is more important, umyfrom the struggle of uh.. the struggle of the humanyon the land and an instrument of education, an instrument of politics, a that isyumyfor example what is the definition ofythe culture? For example, I’m saying that hhh the culture is a different things hhh that each of the two nations own that is, the Jewish side and the Arab sideyhhh and every nation has to preserve its uhycultureyum and on the umythat is on the umythe place that is, on the land that is on, place that is it has bordersyhhh umyfirst of all we the Arabs have toybe proud of our culture, and not to represent cultures of umythe cultures of the other side...hhhyas if for example me what I feel here as ifythe umywe for example umylieyas if oneycheats

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himselfythat I want the emblem of freedom and the emblem of democracy and I want the country and I want hhh the equality, and the protection of the land, and these took and these gave but at the same time I’m not preserving my culture hhh also regarding uhythe culture and its connection with the religionyumyI turn to the Arab students, that we, umythat from our culture’s point of view the real one, we have to uhytake it from our Islamic religionybecause the Islamic religionyis a wonderful religion hhh. In M’s view, first, culture is a given; second, the cultural struggle is more important than any human struggle about land, product of politics and education. Preserving culture and being proud of it should come first; land, place, and borders second. Within the lines of anti-colonialist and fundamentalist modern discourse (Lawrence, 1995), the Arab participant attacks the cultural egalitarianism and universalism preached by modern nationalism, while at the same time pointing at the dangers of a national culture with its potential threat to foreshadow religious centrality and displace religion’s saving power (Elias, 1998; Fornas, 1995; Smith, 1998). The introduction of culture as a rather new concept in the discussion produces a surprisingly huge amount of discursive work, mostly expressed in the efforts invested by participants in investigating possible new identity categories as well as reviewed old ones. From now on most of the discussion will be conducted within the in-group and little conversation will take place between groups. Each group becomes an observer of each other’s dialog. First, Arab identity, till now presented as homogenous, becomes differentiated. A female Arab participant, shocked by the possible implication that Arab and Muslim are synonyms, repairs the previous Arab interlocutor (M), reminding her that: ‘‘there are Christians (Arab) as well!’’ Further on into the session, B, a female Arab participant, adds to the Christian and Muslim differentiation by pointing to sectors in the Arab society that are more, or less, assimilated into the majoriterian Israeli/ Jewish host society. B: I think thatynot that hereythat means it’s right (what M just said). We’re not giving up our culture, but there are things that happened by forceyforce, and things that it’s impossible to escape from them. That we live together, us and the Jews here, there are produced, that are sharedyas time flowed, that’s what time does, this shared life works. But I also have my culture thatythat I don’t relinquishy Further statements are made by the Arab party as to the fact that though having adopted some Israeli/Jewish cultural patterns alien to traditional Arab culture, this does not mean that they have relinquished their Arab culture in its totality. This differentiation carries the taste of a separation between modern and traditional culture within the Arab group to which a last differentiation is added: that of high and low cultures (Elias, 1991; Gellner, 1983; Williams, 1961) within the Israeli context. This differentiation is raised by an Arab participant who expresses sadness

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over the fact that Arabs in Israel have not developed enough in areas such as poetry, literature and theater. G: AndyumyM. talked about the Islamic culture that she’s so proud of. I’m also proud of the Islamic culture but umydon’t forget that in the Arab culture, not the Islamic umythere are umyumya lot of poets and writers and a lot of intellectuals who aren’t Muslim also um: Christians and also umy, umythose who aren’t Christian and who aren’t Muslims (and after a few seconds and a few unclear interventions she adds) we’re all Arabic culture not Muslim culture and not Christian culture (and a few seconds latter she adds) Palestinian Arab Israelis are here in front of you, we are more conservative about our culture, more than other Arab countriesyyes. We are here onyon the subject of the culture umywe are in closure umyfor more than fifty yearsywe umyin the Arab sector we don’t really have theater umythat’s considered developed. Umywe don’t have umyactors that are so umythey (the Jews) have the talent and the standardsy Jews react to this statement by observing that assimilatory trends have influenced both Arab and Jewish segments in the Israeli population. J: yif this country is worthwhile, for you and for us, so surely you’ll have to relinquish, or I don’t know, it changesyculture changes, like they even the ultra-orthodox (Jews) that they are part, that they would like to be only ultraorthodox and to insolate themselves, and what their Judaism will be observed, the living besides umybeside something else, the shared life changes them, and they do relinquish some of their traits. Following this observation the Jewish group establishes more in-group differentiations. Most of the segments concerning Jewish ingroup differentiations deal with the forced assimilation or isolation of minority ethnic or religious Jewish subgroups a product of secular/Zionist colonizing influences (Bekerman & Silverman, 1999; Smooha, 1996; Smooha, 1998). While J, above, differentiated between religious and secular, in the following segment he distinguishes between Sefardic (Mizrachi) and Ashkenazi (Jews from western countries) Jewish subgroups. J: ydo you know how different? Do you know how different? A Mizrachi and an Ashkenazi home are? I’m from a completely Ashkenazi home just a moment, hear me out. My boyfriend from a completely Mizrachi home right down to the letter. Do you know how hard was for me to go in there?ydo you know what? his mother brings him Turkish coffee and Turkish coffee never came into my house. What are you laughing about there are differences. M, the Arab woman responsible for introducing the rhetoric of culture into the dialog, distinguishes between those faithful to traditional Arab culture and those assimilating to the modernizing forces represented by secular Zionism. J, a Jewish voice, speaks in similar terms about the assimilatory forces active upon the Ultraorthodox minority and further differentiated between Ashkenazi and Sefardic Jews.

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Now, K, also a Jew, will identify Sefardic with Arab and point to the secular Zionist hegemony (historically Ashkenazi) as the central assimilatory force. K: it’s not like that. There’s the culture from which I come from is Arab, from Arab culture, andywe came really from this culture, and here what happen?, what happens in this land? You say they will integrate, (exclamation, question) integrate? what integrationyI feel that slowly slowly the tradition is disappearing and we are going in one direction, that’s the Ashkenazi (Jews from western origins). And every one is going to it. The flow of the conversation is creating a possible new realignment of particular subgroups all, in one way or another, appositionally situated against the reigning Ashkenazi western secular Zionist hegemony. The scene is set for an unpredictable turn. D, a Jewish participant, abruptly states: D: I want to tell you something, just a second, just a second. I go to an Arab home I feel different from when I go into an Ashkenazi home I feel (at the Ashkenazi home) estrangedy We should pay attention to the fact that this interlocutor does not use the word Sefardic in this context but the word Arab. Although indeed Sefardic Jews have come to Israel mostly from Arab countries, it is not customary to refer to them as Arab Jews—the symbolic burden could be too strenuous—but rather as Sefardim or Mizrachim. Only recently have some protest Sefardic Jewish groups adopted the term ‘‘Arab Jews’’ to define themselves. The sequence of this rather long string in ingroup Jewish dialog comes to an end and Arabs, who seem to have disappeared from the scene, return. Surprised and confused at what has been mentioned regarding the Arab home as being better, more hearty than the Ashkenazi one, and not realizing that ‘‘Arab’’ stood in that context for ‘‘Sefardic’’, an Arab participant asks with astonishment ‘‘an Arab home is better than an Ashkenazi home?’’ A statement to which many Jewish participants react with plenty of supporting facts. Jews were not even aware that the Arab participant had understood ‘‘Arab’’ in D’s statements as meaning ‘‘us’’ (the Arab Israeli nationals). For a brief moment, in both the Jewish and Arab groups, Arab and Jew converge as descriptive categories uncovering one of the most hidden conflicts of Israel’s western hegemonic landscape: the denial of the legitimacy of both the Sefardic Jews and the Palestinians Arabs. Indeed at times identity can run in full circles and play funny tricks. The last excerpts from this session turn back to the conflict. Although in the previous section, Sefardic Jews have been represented as suffering from prejudices similar to those suffered by the Arabs (who are culturally close to them) the Arab participants soon make sure to remind the group that it is at their hands (at the hands of Sefardic Jews) that they, the Arabs have suffered the most. G: (Palestinian female) how they (the Sefardic) alienate us how they don’t like us so much I feel ity

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K: (Jew)yAshkenazim are better (laughter) G: I guess so (laughing) Paradoxically, but in line with the products of western hegemonizing processes, the oppressed subgroup within the powerful majoritarian group, in our case the Sefardic Jews, are turned by both, the Ashkenazi hegemony’s ‘‘true’’ oppressors and the oppressed Arabs, into the central players in the oppression game. In spite of the surprising turns that the introduction of the rhetoric of culture has allowed identity to take, the session ends with an Arab settling all participants back into their rightful place. She says: ‘‘But in the end you are all Jews’’. The bottom line is that Jews are Jews, and Palestinians are Palestinians. Identity, national and/or other, though fleetingly liberated by the discourse of culture, returns in all its glory to assert its ‘‘banal’’ hegemonic power.

6. Analysis and conclusions Nothing seems more obvious today than that peoples/nations exist. The State of Israel undoubtedly fits the pattern of nation-states, with a hardening twist. Its homogenizing efforts were twofold. Western nationalism and its colonializing discourse depend on the concept of the fixity of the ideological construction of otherness and the ambivalence of ‘‘anxiety producing’’ persistent stereotypes. Palestinians living in a Jewish ethnic state (Ghanem, 1998; Smooha, 1996) have been homogenized and kept separate. Their ongoing separate and contested existence has been provided for by an amalgam of stereotypes and violent practices which make available their accentuated identity (Rouhana, 1997). This is obvious also in intergroup encounters like the one described in this paper. This case study shows that, at times, groups of people find themselves in situations that allow them to break up the lines which draw up the traditional boundaries of national cultural identity and refashion themselves into new/old categories. Traditional approaches to cross-cultural encounters are lacking in that the reality of the nation state is not sufficiently accounted for by disciplines which claim to have some knowledge about social identity and by scholars who try to contribute to our understanding of identity in cross-cultural encounters. Billig (1995) fittingly points to the flattened topography of identity theorizing shaped by the fact that nationalism is overlooked by identity theoreticians and made, by default, functionally equivalent to other types of identity. Reicher & Hopkins (2001) urge the social sciences to recognize the crucial influence of national structures in the shaping of group identities. This oversight is detrimental to social theory in general and more so to that which is concerned with educational interventions. In terms of the options suggested by Hewstone (1996) the two central educational perspectives guiding Jewish–Palestinian encounters in Israel seem to move in two different directions. The first tries to overcome gaps by creating familiarity, acceptance and recognition of cultural differences or rapprochement by creating new harmonizing categories—e.g. we are all students. The second tries to emphasize

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group differences, hoping to empower the minority so that it may become better positioned in the power struggle and hopefully—now with more pride—regain some ground. What is similar in both perspectives is that they work on the premise of the existence of clearly differentiated identities and cultures (much needed by those who fear confronting a complex world). These perspectives fail to recognize that these categories, though at times functional, are generated under the present conditions which have been shaped by the nation state’s ‘‘genetic’’ code; the code which has molded the problem that the well-intentioned cross-cultural encounters initiators and their theories, want to overcome. The central question we ask following the analysis is can change really be achieved without first exposing and overcoming the structures and practices which have established the present conflicting situation and their functional categories? There is a long history which connects the development of the nation state and the reification of culture and identity. The increasing tendency to conceptualize processes as if they were unchanging objects is tightly connected to the struggle for power between the old aristocracy and the raising middle class. In the period of nation formation in Europe, culture and identity, while serving initially as collective images justified by general humanist and moral values geared towards a better future, were redirected, in the process of national development, towards a particularistic past tied to a specific ancestry and a peculiar nation’s heritage (Elias, 1998; Porter, 1997). This is exactly what we see when examining the case study presented in this paper, at least at first. Throughout the section in which we analyze the discourse of nation, Jewish and Arab student related to their identities and cultures as reified. Even when, in our last segments in the discourse of nation, L echoed possible egalitarian options, D challenged the position till it faded away to finally disappear. The section in which we analyze the discourse of culture, first reified in M’s statement, presents us later, for a brief moment, with a different rhetoric potentially able to twist the previous scene. The twist compels us to review current assumptions regarding cultural identities in general and, more specifically, the functioning of cultural identities in particular nation state settings. We show how Palestinians and Jews who, in Israel, have each been lumped together through mutually exclusive national imaginings (Anderson, 1991), encountered, for a moment, discursive resources which allowed for a glance into a world which afforded them the possibility to get organized differently. The discourse of culture allows them to recognize ingroup differences which had been quieted by the national discourse. Jew as an overriding category is dissected into pre-national categories—Ashhenazi, Sefardic, Ultra-orthodox—and Arab splits into religious— Moslem and Christian—and modernizing or traditionalist categories. These might be fleeting moments, quickly forced, by powerful existing national labels enacted in law, to regress into the familiar universe of given categories. And yet these moments have the power to point at the inconstancy of cultural/national/ethnic/identities. As mentioned, culture is strongly related to the development of the nation state. When thus, culture is static, reified, and uniform. But culture has not always been

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represented nor understood in this way (Bauman, 1999; Eagelton, 2000). Etymologically, culture (from Latin, work) is process-like, a bedding for growth, and, though this powerful sense of culture has been somewhat lost in modern nations, it nevertheless often seems to lie somewhere latent and ready to work when opportunities appear. Israel, to be a state and create a people, denied the inconstancy of Diaspora Jews and invented the cohesive essential Jewish people (Kimmerling, 1994). The new/old Arabs denied the inconstancies of their own and created Palestinians Arab Israelis in direct dialog with Jewish negations of inconstancy (Bekerman, 2000), a process already partially pointed to by Rouhanas’ (Rouhana, 1997) analysis of Palestinian accentuated identity in Israel. As shown in our analysis, at times subdued resources, such as the discourse of culture, allow these inconstancies to be brought to the fore and permit other identities to get organized. The moments I point to and describe seem both partially threatening and to some extent liberating to all sides. For Jews such episodes both threaten present hegemonic national power (Ashhenazi/Western/Zionist) and momentarily offer a brief rest to those who have been marginalized in the system (Sefardic and Ultraorthodox). For Arabs it allows them, for a moment, to regain some pride (when confusing the Jewish statements about the superiority of an Arab household as referring to their own) and see the enemy disintegrate (in its own subdivisions) while, at the same time, allowing them a glimpse of the inconsistencies that threaten their own unity (Muslim/Christian, Traditionalists/Modernists). For an instant it became apparent that concoction is the secret of cultural continuity as opposed to establishing and dividing which is the secret of national security and continuity (Boyarin & Boyarin, 1995; Eagelton, 2000). The events described are a tiny instance of the emergence of particularity and a perspectival identity (Castells, 1997) out from under the hegemonizing power of the universality of national ideology. It is also an event which points to the coconstructed (Smith & Bekerman, May 20, 2000) nature of categories always in need of difference in order to be sustained. This difference might be hidden or visible, but without it the clarity of national/ethnic identity would not be possible. In our example, for a brief moment the silenced hidden differences that allow this identity to become are exposed. The inconsistencies are expressed and the inner subgroup cracks are laid bare. In the bits of conversation presented, we can indeed find the elements of difference which have to be constantly negated to allow for the reality of national ethnic identities. ‘‘But in the end you are all Jews’’ is an outstanding illustration of the power of national negation. We also see in those fleeting moments, the performative nature of language in the narration of nation. Nation is always in the process of elaboration, a process which holds national culture in its most productive position, as a force for unity through subordination and amnesia. Working towards emancipation from present national formations might sound utopic, but it is worth giving it a try again. The secret to the persistence of discursive resources is their banality, which in turn is responsible for our non-reflective experience. ‘‘Aqua’’ is not the stuff of which fish are most aware (when they spin unreflectively in it). Similarly, the recursive practices inscribed in the

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banality of the nation-state blind us to the discursive resources that establish, drive and produce it. Inevitably, we are far more likely to describe ourselves and our circumstances with the discursive resources, including their hidden ideologies, that our present contexts offer us freely, rather than approaching the issue reflectively so as to uncover the building blocks of our present consciousness. While so doing we fall prey to that which holds us true to those patterns through which we endure unwelcomed experiences. From the account we might learn of the need to shift the focus of the encounters from the categories left vacant in the discursive resources that our context offers us, to the unveiling of the resources available and their shaping forces, thus engaging them in a critical dialog. Decodification, Freire’s (Freire & Macedo, 1995) metaphor for literacy learning, might be the right process through which to start to disinscribe the nation-state’s latent hegemonic power. A critical pedagogy (Apple, 1982; Burbules & Berk, forthcoming) might be the way to discern a world of relationships which has the potential to create both essentialist and dynamic identities and cultures. Any other choice will continue to obscure the distortions of the ideology which sustain the world and the reified categories we seek to change. Still we need to proceed with care. Critical approaches tend to place too much faith in the powers of reasoning and might dangerously guide us back into the creation of new meta-narratives, this time perhaps the ones of our preference yet equally misleading in their homogenizing power. To approach the discursive resources of nation-state critically does not necessarily mean doing away with them but, rather, to show how their authority is constituted and constituting. It is always to the participants in the critical inquiry that we owe the choice to integrate and/or reject oppositional knowledge. Working in this direction might help pave the way to new imaginings in sociopolitical organization, more generous in kind. Some are already experimenting with such ideas. Europe, for one, is trying to reconsider its reorganization towards what might even become unexpected meta-national structures. Some have suggested considering such innovations in the Middle East as well. Still, even if our suggestions are accepted, we will do well to remember that in the end it is concrete political/ structural change is that which helps to bring an end to human suffering.

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