Over
60 years ago, as one of the greatest
refugee tragedies of contemporary
history unfolded in the shadow of
the postwar era, the newly established
United Nations drafted and adopted
the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. If nothing else, this document
was a reaction against the crimes
of National Socialism and the murderous
consequences of World War II. At the
same time, however, these very rights
were being ignored, broken and violated
in the former British colonial protectorate
of Palestine.
For over 60 years now, Palestinians
have been struggling for the self-evident:
the recognition of their existence,
the recognition of the injustice committed
upon them, and the recognition of
their basic rights. For decades their
voices have not been heard, and Palestinian
and Arab documentations, personal
accounts, reports, and research related
to the ethnic cleansing of 1948 have
been marginalised, ignored or merely
waved aside as a modern oriental fairy
tale. Palestinian objections and appeals
to the established interpretation
of the founding of the state of Israel
have found little or no consideration
in Western discourse, whether it be
before the United Nations, in the
media, in scholarly activity or amongst
the general Western public. It was
only when, as part of the First Intifada
in 1987, Palestinians in the occupied
territories rose up and a year-long
people's revolt against the occupation
directed the eyes of the world to
the existence of injustice, thus distressing
Israel's economy, that the international
community was finally forced to act.
Over the course of the subsequent
Oslo Peace Process, a critical school
of historiography in Israel formed
for the first time and its proponents
became known as post-Zionist 'New
Historians.' In Israeli military archives,
then just opened for the first time,
they found documents and evidence
that proved that hundreds of thousands
of Palestinians were murdered, terrorised
and expelled by paramilitary precursors
to the IDF in the run-up to the founding
of the state of Israel. Palestinian
villages were raided, destroyed or
annexed to the newly-established Jewish
state as ethnically cleansed territories.
Some of these historians were able
to verify that systematically planned
and implemented expulsions had been
dealt. It was therefore first through
the research results of these 'New
Historians' - so it would seem - that
these findings and historical interpretations
found their way into the discourse
of the Middle East Conflict. It was
only through the confirmation and
attestation of non-Arab scholars -
more precisely, 'white' scholars -
that the events of the Nakba, the
expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians,
the existence of occupation and the
fate of Palestinian refugees penetrated
the consciousness of the Western world.
The following questions thus arise:
Under which conditions can displaced
persons, refugees and those marginalised
portray their own history? How and
under which premises are their reports,
their narratives and their historiography
heard and recognised?
'The most demoralizing aspect of the
Zionist-Palestinian conflict,' wrote
Edward Said in 2000, is 'the utter
polarity between the Israeli and Palestinian
mainstream points of view.' According
to Said, there was 'simply no common
denominator, no common narratives,
no possible scope for an actual reconciliation.'
Said's suggestion that Palestinian
and Israeli historians review history
together seems impossible up to the
present day.
With the symposium 'Remapping Palestine,'
the Union for Antiracism and Peace
Policy continues the event series
on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
and invites Israeli, Arab and European
scholars and NGO activists to discuss
and deepen the analysis of historical
and geographical developments as well
as their implications and perspectives
in the Middle East Conflict. Major
topics will include, among others:
the historical lines and structures
of the conflict in Israel/Palestine;
the present-day situation in the occupied
territories, particularly in the West
Bank; the reception of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict in the West; the contemporary
politics of investors and the prospects
for a just and permanent peace settlement
in Palestine/Israel.
|
|
Programme:
Wednesday,
19 October 2011
18.00 - 18.45 | Opening
and Welcome
19.00 - 21.30
The Ongoing Nakba
- The History and Structure of a Century-Long
Colonisation
Lectures and podium discussions with:
- Joseph
Massad, Lecturer of "Modern
Arab Politics and Intellectual History"
at Columbia University, USA
- Salman
Abu Sitta, Founder and President
of the Palestine Land Society, UK
The definiting self-image of hegemonic
scholarship in Europe and the United
States is the principle of objectivity.
The 'historical establishment of the
truth' in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict is hence unable to be fulfilled
through the inclusion of Palestinian
narratives - at least so the established
discourses seem to suggest. As these
narratives were 'biased' and 'subjective,'
the Israeli narratives would meet the
criteria of objective scholarship. The
real expulsion of Palestinians and the
military conquest first came into play
as a result of the denial of the very
existence of Palestinians. Herzl invented
the myth of a 'land without people for
a people without a land,' Golda Meir
also said that there was not 'something
like a Palestinian people,' and the
incumbent Israeli foreign minister Lieberman
demanded that all Arab representatives
in Knesset be executed and that all
Palestinians remaining in Israel be
deported. Lieberman's suggestions are
a striking example that the denial of
the historical Nakba continues to this
day, that unworked history overtakes
the present, and that the continued
Nakba is still threatening the Palestinian
population.
Until today, the debates, especially
those in Europe, have been informed
by stereotypes with respect to the Palestinian
position. To what extent do discourses
shape facts and realities, and, inversely,
how do realities shape discourses?
21.30 - 22.00
Buffet
Thursday,
20 October 2011
14.00 - 16.00
Workshop:
The Construction of Orientalist Foreignness
and Western Identity as Illustrated
by the Middle East Conflict
Oliver Hashemizadeh, Dar al Janub
In the last decades, countless ambitious
and noteworthy projects and initiatives
for peaceful cooperation between Israelis
and Palestinians have been introduced.
Intercultural initiatives are especially
effective as a possible bridge of understanding.
With specific examples as our reference
point, in this workshop we would like
to work on the challenges and obstacles
to intercultural dialogue between Palestinians
and Israelis.
16.00 - 16.30
Coffee break
16.30 - 18.30
Lecture and workshop:
The Prospects
and Obstacles of Memorial Work on the
Nakba in Israel
Umar al-Ghubari, NGO "Zochrot"
With the means of sensitisation campaigns,
since 2002 the Israeli NGO "Zochrot"
has been working within Jewish Israeli
society for a reworking of history in
Israel/Palestine. Through activism,
workshops and memorial work, Zochrot
strives to raise awareness of the expulsions
and the Palestinian Nakba in Israel.
Their goal is to 'Hebrew-ise' the Nakba,
and to bring the ethnic cleansings in
Palestine into discourses within Israel
and the larger Jewish community, therefore
creating the first conditions for future
peace. For more information, see: www.zochrot.org.
18.30 - 19.00
Break
19.00 - 20.00
Lecture:
Mapping Palestine:
for Its Survival or Its Destruction?
Presentation of the "Atlas of Palestine
1917- 1966"
Salman Abu Sitta
The Palestinian scholar Salman Abu Sitta
has been researching Palestinian history
for over 40 years, during and following
the establishment of the state of Israel.
In doing so he has not only documented
the Nakba, but he has also depicted
a comprehensive image of Palestinian
society from the beginning of the last
century up until the present. His most
recent book, Atlas of Palestine, uses
British, Zionist and Arab sources to
document a country that still does not
officially exist.
20.00 - 20.30
Break
20.30 - 22.00
Podium discussion:
The Palestinian
Right of Return from Different Perspectives
With:
- Salman
Abu Sitta
- Ali
Hweidi, General secretary of the
Palestinian NGO "Thabit",
Lebanon
- Umar
al-Ghubari
More
than 4 million Palestinian refugess
are registered today with UNRWA (United
Nations Relief and Works Agency), and
tens of thousands more are believed
to be unregistered or so-called Non-ID
refugees, who are barred from UNRWA
benefits. More than one million Palestinians
live in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon
and Syria. The right of return is an
existential question for many Palestinians,
which epitomises the expulsions, disposession
and historical injustice suffered in
the 1948 war. Since 1948, the right
of return has been certified in Resolution
194 of the United Nations General Assembly.
Nevertheless, it has been omitted and
deferred in all peace initiatives presented
until now. Is the right of return a
feasible option? Is it an obstacle or
a prerequisite for a just and lasting
peace in Israel/Palestine?
Friday,
21 October 2011
14.00 - 16.00
Lecture and workshop:
Zionism and Spatial
Planning in Jerusalem/Al Quds
Viktoria Waltz, Architect, Expert in
Spatial Planning, Germany
The creation of a state with a Jewish
majority population - if not that of
an ethnically cleansed Jewish state
- was the goal of the Zionist founders
of Israel. With the expulsions of 1948
and, as a further consequence, the occupation
of the body of Palestine in 1967, this
goal was realised to a certain extent.
Yet a Palestinian minority lives in
Israel as second-class citizens, and
there are millions of Palestinians living
in the territories occupied by Israel.
The Israeli bureaucracy imposes countless
sanctions through settlement buildings,
the construction of the wall, and state
building and planning laws in order
to disposess Palestinian land and to
continue the expulsions wtihin a 'legalised'
framework. In her lecture and workshop,
Viktoria Waltz, former Lecturer in the
Department of Spatial Planning at the
University of Dortmund and former governmental
advisor to the Palestinian housing department
in Gaza and Ramallah, will offer insights
into spatial planning measures for naturalisation
and expatriation by the Israeli state.
16.00 - 16.10
Coffee break
16.10
- 16.30
Statment from
Annette
Groth, Member of German Bundestag/Party
DIE LINKE (the Left)
16.30 - 18.00
Lectures and podium discussions:
"NGO-isation"
in the West Bank and Palestinian Refugee
Camps: The Politics of Selective Western
Investors and the Role of NGOs
With:
- Fawaz
Hammad - Lecturer for Health Economics
at the Arab American University
Jenin
- Ali
Hweidi
- Viktoria
Waltz
- Annette
Groth
Non-profit
organisations and non-governmental organisations
play an increasingly important role
in order to compensate for, extend or
simply to replace the lacking state
agendas in many societies. In the occupied
territories and in Palestinian refugee
camps, the essential task of creating
social benefits, education and empowerment
opportunities, as well as socio-political
projects and initiatives, falls to NGOs.
NGOs often rely on money from public
sources. In the case of Palestine, it
becomes apparent that sometimes the
American and European guidelines for
the allocation of help funds for development
policy result in a dubious outcome,
and politically motivated influences
frequently prohibit independent Palestinian
projects. To what extent do the policies
of Western investors reach their declared
intentions, on which points do they
miss their goal, and to what extent
do NGOs pursue at times an interventionist
Western policy in place of their governments?
18.00 - 18.30
Break
18.30 - 20.00
Lecture:
Out of the Frame
- The Struggle for Academic Freedom
in the Middle East Conflict
Ilan Pappé (Israeli Historian,
Author and Professor at the University
of Exeter)
Hardly any other area of contemporary
historical research is as fiercely contentious
as the study of the events before, during
and after the founding of the state
of Israel. The concept of the Nakba
is until today virtually unknown to
hegemonic Western historiography. As
an historian, Ilan Pappé belongs
to the generation of Israeli scholars
who have become world-renowned for their
research results. In his most recent
book, Scholarship as an Instrument of
Rule, Pappé illustrates the difficult
path of implementing new dynamics in
a hegemonic production of academic knowledge,
which could harbour the seed for a peaceful
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
20.15 - 22.00
Concert with
Alp Bora
Dabka Dance Troupe
19 - 20 October 2011:
Exhibition of
Palestinian Craftsmanship - presented
by the NGO "Thabit", Lebanon
Conference languages: English, German
An event by: Dar al Janub - Union for
Antiracism and Peace Policy
Sponsored by:
Austrian Development Cooperation
The City of Vienna - Vienna Culture
In cooperation with:
The Society for Austrian-Arab Relations
Pax Christi Austria
Anna Lindh Foundation Austria
Coordination Forum for the Support of
Palestine
|
