The discursive origins of Israeli separatism: The case of the Arab village

Abstract

We should note, however, that the achievements of the control system cannot in and of themselves explain the success of the discourse on the Arab village. Indeed, with the benefit of hindsight, one must acknowledge today that what the control system produced was a “secondary order” reality at best, a representation superimposed over, and obscuring other social realities. It never managed (nor did it try) to stop the proletarianization of peasants. It never managed (though it did try) to put an end to illegal construction and de-facto urbanization. It did not even manage to repress the emergence of grass-roots national political organization in the villages. More often than not, its sole achievement was to obscure official (and academic) perception of these processes. Thus, one often finds nowadays settlements to which the term “village” is officially applied, while their physical structure already merits urban status. Urbanization took place in the villages regardless of the designs of planners, and this fact alone is enough to demonstrate how discourse detached them from reality. This was also why, in 1976, Orientalists and government experts were completely taken by surprise, when the “committee for national direction” (composed of “village” mayors!) organized mass demonstrations to protest government plans to confiscate more Palestinian lands. The events of this day, later known as “land day,” signaled the emergence of rural Palestinians as a national political force to be reckoned with. Quite contrary to what the notion of “hamula struggle” led them to believe, experts discovered that the villages were an effective mobilizing ground for national political action.