Landscape of Hope and Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps

275 Pages·2005·1.856 MB·English

by  Julie Peteet

Landscape of Hope and Despair
TheEthnographyofPoliticalViolence
CynthiaKeppleyMahmood,SeriesEditor
Acompletelistofbooksintheseriesisavailablefromthepublisher.
Landscape of Hope
and Despair
Palestinian Refugee Camps
Julie Peteet

UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress
Philadelphia
Copyright(cid:1)2005UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress
Allrightsreserved
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericaonacid-freepaper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Publishedby
UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress
Philadelphia,Pennsylvania19104-4011
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Peteet,JulieMarie.
Landscapeofhopeanddespair:Palestinianrefugeecamps/JuliePeteet.
p. cm.—(Ethnographyofpoliticalviolence)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN0-8122-3893-1(cloth:alk.paper)
1.Refugeecamps—Lebanon. 2.PalestinianArabs—Lebanon—Socialconditions.
3.PalestinianArabs—Lebanon—Economicconditions. I.Title. II.Series.
HV640.5.P36P48 2005
362.87(cid:1)089(cid:1)927405692—dc22 2005041612
Contents
Preface vii
1. Introduction:PalestinianRefugees 1
2. PreludetoDisplacement:ProducingandEnactingKnowledge 34
3. AidandtheConstructionoftheRefugee 47
4. ProducingPlace,SpatializingIdentity,1948–68 93
5. LandscapeofHopeandDespair 131
6. TheGeographyofTerrorandReconfinement 170
Conclusion:RefugeeCampsandtheWall 217

Notes 227

Bibliography 239

Index 253

Acknowledgments 261

Preface
The landscape of human history is littered with displacements, diaspo-
ras, forced migrations, treks, and flights; violence and terror form the
substanceofinnumerablememories,silences,andnightmares.Overthe
courseofseveralcenturies,theAtlanticslavetradedisplacedtwelvemil-
lion Africans. In the nineteenth century, the Cherokees were forced
down the ‘‘Trail of Tears,’’ the Navajo were marched on the ‘‘Long
Walk,’’andtheHereroofSouthernAfricawereforcedintotheKalahari
Desert. In the twentieth century—dubbed the ‘‘century of refugees’’
(Loescher 1993)—the displaced were iconic figures evoking war and
humanrightstragedies.
In the first half of the twentieth century, the breakup of empires
spawnedlarge-scaledisplacements(Marrus1985).TheendoftheOtto-
man Empire was followed by the forced removal of hundreds of thou-
sands of Armenians and the expulsion of the Asian Greeks from the
emergentTurkishstate.Atthesametime,inthesouthernUnitedStates,
economic pressure, discrimination, and terror compelled thousands of

African Americans to make the ‘‘Great Migration’’ to the North, por-

trayed in the stark yet colorful murals of artist Jacob Lawrence. The

depression and drought of the 1930s gave rise to the westward move-

mentofthe‘‘Okies,’’migrantsfromKansas,Oklahoma,andWestTexas,
poignantly rendered in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. In Europe, the
displacement of over thirty million people in World War II is unparal-
leledinmodernhistory(Zolbergetal.1989).
While these movements were propelled by violence of various kinds

such as the structural violence of poverty and the threat of starvation,
orracialist-driventerroranddiscrimination,ethnonationalistexclusions
orchestratedbyexpandingandconsolidatingstateshaveplayedaprom-
inentrole.Modernwarfare, withitsadvancedtechnologiesdesignedto

inflict high casualties and a propensity to remove civilian populations,
has produced mass movements and enabled exclusivist states to expel
undesirable populations.1 In the twentieth century, ‘‘ethnic cleansing’’
inemergentstatesmultipliedinrapidityandscale.
viii Preface
Nineteenth-century administrative and bureaucratic interventions in
the lives of displaced Native Americans (see Biolsi 1995) and their
reconstitutionassubjectsindexedashifttomodernityandthedisplaced
asadiscursiveformationandobjectofintervention.Therelieforganiza-
tions that responded to the Armenian and Greek displacements were
precursorstothefull-fledgedinstitutionalizedandbureaucraticrefugee
aidregimesthataroseinWorldWarIIanditsimmediateaftermath.Two
world wars fostered the emergence of international aid regimes and
legalframeworkstomanagethemillionsdisplacedbymodernwarfare.
Thepostwarperiod,theendofBritishcolonialism,andthepartitions
it left in its wake, also generated mass displacements. The Great Parti-
tion of 1947–48, which gave birth to India and Pakistan as separate
nation-states, is one such example. Subsequent Cold War conflicts in
postcolonial arenas generated refugee flows from Central America,
South Asia, and Africa. In the 1990s, the end of the Cold War sparked
newandunanticipatedconflictsasstatesweakenedorfellapart.Despite
international mechanisms of intervention, sanctions, diplomacy, and
peace keeping, the last decade of the millennium brought mass dis-
placement and ethnocide in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo. There were
‘‘more refugeesin theearly1990sthanatthe endof WorldWarII;the
DPs[DisplacedPersons]wereonlythebeginningofaflow,nottheend
as had been hoped’’ (Wyman 1998: 3). At the turn of the twenty-first
century, the world’s refugee population was 13,000,000.2 Palestinians
andAfghanstoppedthelistastheworld’slargestgroupsofrefugees.3
ThisbookcentersononecommunityofPalestinians,refugeesinLeb-
anonsince1948,andrecountshowtheyhavecraftedmeaningfulplaces
and identities. In 1948, around 700,000 Palestinians were displaced by
theemergingIsraelistate.Palestiniansrefertothiseventasal-nakbah,a

calamity or disaster of monumental proportions that occupies a singu-
larly traumatic place in Palestinian collective memory and the national
narrative. These Palestinians remain displaced, often stateless, while
thoseintheWestBankandtheGazaStriphavelivedunderIsraelioccu-
pationsincethe1967conquest.4
I write thispreface from a different geographical and temporal zone
ofPalestine,theoccupiedWestBankandEastJerusalemwherePalestin-

iansareundergoingwhattheyperceiveasthefinalstageofZionistcolo-
nizationofthelandanddispossessionoftheindigenouspopulation.In
thePalestiniannationalnarrative,thedisplacementof1948ranksasthe
beginningoftheconquestofPalestine.Theoccupiedterritoriesarefast

losing their Palestinian character as land confiscation, settlements, the
policy of closure, and more recently, a 24-foot cement wall, have func-
tionedtogethertocontinuedispossessingthePalestiniansoftheirlands
and obstructing their eventual sovereignty. Administrative measures to
Preface ix
strangleeconomiclifeandhumiliatePalestiniansareintendedtotrans-
form the demographic landscape by diluting the Arab population. In
this way, Israel acquires more territory with fewer people. It will not
repeat the mistake of 1948 and produce massive numbers of refugees.
Instead, Palestinians will be displaced ‘‘voluntarily’’; they will appear as
migrants rather than refugees and thus will attract little international
attention.Migrantswillnothavethelegalstatusofrefugees.
ThecurrentpredicamentofthePalestiniansremindsusthat,inthenew
millennium, societies continue to be decimated by the expansion of
colonial states. The Palestinian community in Lebanon is a historical
and social product of a particular colonial strategy and thwarted Pales-
tinian national ambitions. Local resistance to colonial projects, once
dubbed ‘‘savagery,’’ is now dubbed ‘‘terrorism.’’ In current colonial
(ratherthanpost-colonial)situations,howdoesonenavigatesuchadif-
ficult ethnographic terrain in terms of scholarly focus and methodolo-
gies?Partoftheanswerconsistsofanolderanthropologicaloutlookand
approach.Anthropologyhasalongtraditionof‘‘salvageanthropology,’’
describing and documenting populations and cultures disappearing
with the advance of stronger, more technologically sophisticated, con-
queringsocieties.Theinventoryandsalvageapproachwasdevelopedby
ethnographersdocumentingthedeclineoftheNativeAmericanwayof
lifeafterthewholesalelossoftheirlandsandforcedtransfertoreserva-
tions.Ethnographyingeneralhasshiftedoverthecourseofthelastcen-
tury from capturing cultures in their supposedly ‘‘pristine’’ state to
observing, recording, and analyzing the process of destruction itself.
Contemporaryanthropologistsstilltakeinventory,sotospeak,butthey
have also carved out a role that makes them a part of the process of

resisting such culturally destructive incursions by bringing these issues
topublicattentionandonoccasionadvocatingforthegroupstheywork
among.ThequarterlyCulturalSurvivalisonevenueforsuchwork.Thus
theethnographicendeavorhasbecomemuchmorethananexercisein
understanding and analyzing cultural difference; it is also intended as
anactofintervention.Thecontemporaryethnographerinacrisissitua-
tion still observes and records, but without reifying cultural traditions,

and we locate these processes in more complex global and historical
terms.Our taskisalsotoanalyzenotjusthowviolenceandsufferingof
refugees are enacted, experienced, narrated, and coped with, but also
thehistoricityandthestructuralconditions,local,regional,andglobal,

thatunderpintheirdisplacement.
Anthropologicalscholarshiponrefugeesfacestheparticularchallenge
of advocacy.Refugees are oneof the most vulnerable groupsan ethnog-
rapher can work with and because of this raise provocative questions
x Preface
about positionality. Capturing the dilemma of the ethnographer in
instancesofviolenceandterror,Warrencommentsthatthereis‘‘noneu-
tralsubjectpositionfromwhichtonarrate’’and‘‘nouncomplicatedsym-
pathetic position for ethnographers’’ (2000: 230). Journalism, which has
moredistance,bothphysicalandemotional,fromthesourcesofitsinfor-
mation, also confronts moral dilemmas of observation, writing, interven-
ing, and advocacy. Photographer Donald McCullin has been widely
quotedforhispoignantstatementduringtheheightoftheLebanesecivil
war(1975–90):shouldItakeapictureofadyingmanortrytohelphim?
Ethnographicmethodsdevelopedsincethe eraofsalvageanthropol-
ogyeminentlypositionustoproducescholarshipontheeverydayexpe-
rience and meaning of suffering and refugeeness. Increasingly we are
witnessestohumanrightsviolationsandlistentoharrowingtalesofsuf-
fering. We become intermediaries as the people we work among plead
with us to ‘‘tell.’’ We have the capacity to extend the voices of those in
painwhichcan,intheright circumstances,betherapeuticandempow-
ering,althoughcertainlynotalways(Hayner2001:133–53).However,I
wouldcautionagainstadoptinganarrowstanceaswitnesses.
Another task of the anthropologist is to humanize those otherwise
marginalizedanddemonized,givingthemavoiceandbringingtheirlife
experiences to others. Working with populations at risk or in a state of
emergency heightens the anthropological imperative to forge beyond
theconstitutionoftherefugeebyatraumatichistorytoexplorerefugee
agency. Conflict and war’s toll on human lives are rarely rendered in
alltheirtragicdimensionsbythoseonthewinningside.Untilrecently,
anthropologists assumed a moral and cultural gap between those they
wrote about and these who formed their audience (Geertz 1988: 132).
Acommittedanthropologyseekstodissolvethatbarrierbyhumanizing

suffering, bringing it home, so to speak, making those who read wit-
nessesaswell.
Those writing on Palestinians often face a unique dilemma—how to
avoidnativismandanationalisthistoricaldiscourseandtheirsometimes
stultifying outcomes without however denying the national project to
those who are stateless? Nationalist approaches to Palestinian history
andsocietymaybesitesforcritique,butwestillfaceacentralproblem-

atic.TheobstructionofPalestiniannationalaspirationsandthelackofa
statehavehadtremendousimplicationsfortheeverydaywell-beingand
human rights of millions of Palestinians who remain stateless or under
foreignoccupation.Insomeinstances,nationalpoliticscanbeprogres-

sive, anticolonial movements with fluid and expansive boundaries of
inclusion, as occurred during the era of the resistance movement
(1968–82) in Lebanon. In freeing ourselves from the nationalist para-
digmwhichhasstructuredscholarshiponPalestine,wefacethe taskof