"To Put One's Fingers in the Bleeding Wound": Palestinian Theatre under Israeli Censorship

Abstract

It is said to have begun on 8 December 1987 when four Palestinians were killed and seven injured by an Israeli driver in Gaza Strip. Masses of Palestinians in nearby Jabaliya refugee camp demonstrated against Israeli troops during funerals to protest random, senseless loss of life. Details of what appears to have been bizarre road accident were quickly lost sight of in upheaval known as intifidia, word whose literal meaning, a shaking off, came to denote what is occurring in Israel's Occupied Territories: Palestinian uprising, accompanied by cultural revolution within Palestinian society. Old forms of social organization dependent upon traditional hierarchies such as clan and family, preeminence of notables, and absence of women, have been supplanted by proliferating popular committees that organize and direct spontaneous political upheaval of men and women, old and young.1 Not just Israeli intelligence community but even Yasir Arafat and leaders of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) were taken by surprise (Schiff and Ya'ari 1990:67-68). Certainly intifada had been preceded by years of similar Arab-Israeli conflicts in which wildcat strikes, mass demonstrations, and ad hoc boycotts were met with deportations and arrests, imprisonment and censorship. But since beginning of intifada, familiar rhythm of terrorism and counterterrorism has intensified in much same way that Palestinian political graffiti, whitewashed or written over by Israelis, now reappear incised on walls only to be chiselled away by Israeli soldiers and, finally, published in collection of graffiti, edited by Palestinian journalist, which Israeli censors promptly banned (Peretz 1990:II4). Terms used to describe techniques for surviving in everyday life under Israeli occupation include muqdwama, resistance, and sumud, the state of perseverence and hanging on. They apply with equal accuracy to