Arabic in Jordan and Palestine

This chapter discusses the interface between Palestinian and Jordanian nationalism and the effect of globalisation on both. This binary, while encouraged by the Jordanian regime, particularly after the events of 1970, has an echo in the production of knowledge about Jordanian versus Palestinian nationalism and also about Jordanian versus Palestinian Arabic. In addition, another dimension of this scholarship is the ease with which Western scholars can move across borders, which is not the case for the indigenous scholars, even when they are affiliated with European or American universities. This has direct implications on the scope of the research and on the questions that can or cannot be asked. As for research on Palestinian Arabic in the West Bank and Gaza by Palestinian scholars, this seems to be confined to anthologies and dictionaries of Palestinian Arabic. An exception is the research done on Bethlehem in the 1990s. This may be directly related to the increasing difficulty of moving from one location to another for Palestinians.

Orientalisation, Securitisation and Minoritisation of Arabic

This chapter discusses the affinity between the teaching and the scholarship of Arabic and the nation-building in Israel. The three generations of scholars identified in this chapter have contributed to the discourse of subordination of Arabic. Academia has also played a role in strengthening the ties between the Arabic language and the national security of Israel. A study of the Arab (MK) Ahmad Tibi’s style in his Knesset speeches reveals that Arabic is used for making or reinforcing a point he is generally expressing in the Hebrew language, thus Tibi, while getting attention for his message, is still confining Arabic to a subordinate position to that of Hebrew. Moreover, in analyzing interviews of journalists and students, the mood in regard to the Arabic language seems gloomy, as they sense its subordination to Hebrew, as well as their subordination as a group to the Jewish hegemony of the majority. At the same time, however, these interviewees demonstrate a linguistic repertoire that is highly sophisticated and diverse.

Modernisation, Globalisation and Citizenship in Israel

This chapter discusses the difficult position of the Arabic language from the point of view of the ‘volatile conditions’ of Arab citizenship in Israel. Azmi Bishara’s political career is a good example of the limits of citizenship for the Arabs in Israel. The chapter also discusses the meaning of ‘official’ languages, the role of language academies, the language arrangement in bilingual schools, and lastly the new imagined nationality of ‘Aramean’ and its genealogical connection to Aramaic. This new identity is in line with the state’s continuous attempts to fracture the Palestinian community in Israel, but at the same time it is drawing inspiration from the fragmentation of Arab communities in surrounding states such as Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.

Historic Background

This chapter lists the major events of Palestinian history. It also discusses what each of the following groups of people considers most significant in the history of the conflict. These groups are: Palestinians in Israel, Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Jordanians and the Israeli Jews. There is no doubting the fact that the ‘Israeli-Arab’ conflict has shaped the history and the identity of the people in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and to a lesser but still significant extent, the history and identity of the people in the Arab world for much of the past century. The chapter also discusses the Arab Nahḍa and the role of Palestine in it. It juxtaposes the Nahḍa project with Zionism as a national movement.

Introduction

Palestinian poet laureate, Mahmoud Darwish writes that land is inherited like language. Most accounts of Arabs in Israel focus on the lost inheritance of Arab lands. This book investigates the problematic place of the Arabic language in Israel. While Arabic is an official language of Israel, according to a law which goes back to the year 1922, during the British Mandate, it is at the same time the language of the ‘Arab’ enemies surrounding and infiltrating Israel, the language of the Palestinians who remained in Israel after 1948 and who constitute today about 20 per cent of the total population, and also the language of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It is, moreover, the language of a dwindling number of speakers from the Mizrachi Jewish community. How are these seemingly contradictory positions of Arabic resolved, and what space is given to Arabic in the state? That is what this book is trying to answer.

Conclusion

While the Palestinians lost their inheritance of the land, which has resulted in a century of political conflict, the Arabs’ inheritance of the Arabic language in Israel, while much less visible as a conflict, does not lack the same political intensity. Further, in studying Arabic, if a researcher confines herself to the modernist tools of for example, ‘diglossia’ and ‘code-switching’, she misses out on very complex social, historic, and political phenomena which make Arabic into what it is today.

Autobiography and Language Choice

This chapter studies the writing of Sasson Somekh, Anton Shammas and Sayed Kashua through the lens of their personal biographies, their background and their language choice. All three are native speakers of Arabic, albeit, from three different generations and three different faiths, but they all choose to write in Hebrew. The language choices of these authors help us understand the asymmetrical relationship between Israelis and Arabs, as well as the global linguistic homogenisation and perhaps the effects of collective traumas on the individual. The chapter concludes with a section on the ‘Arab Jew’, and the challenges of maintaining both constructs of this identity in Israel, in the case of the documentary of the ‘Ethnic Devil’ broadcast on Israeli television in summer 2013, and the case of the sociologist and poet, Sami Chetrit, an Arab Jew who does not speak Arabic.

The (in)Visibility of Arabic: The Linguistic Landscape

A Linguistic Landscape (LL) analysis of the symbolic presence of Arabic in public spaces presents a picture of a language in distress. While Arabic appears second to Hebrew on most road signs, and this is generally followed by English, one can note the following: (1) the Arabic script is mostly a transliteration of the Hebrew name of a place, and not the Arabic name, (2) Arabic is generally written carelessly, with mistakes in spelling, grammar and/or lexical choice, (3) many signs in Jerusalem appear with the Arabic crossed out with dark paint, (4) in spite of the municipal regulation of signage in a city like Jerusalem, subtle acts of resistance which escape the regulator, can still be noticed, such as in the Saladin’s sign in East Jerusalem’s main commercial street, (5) in Nazareth there are signs in Arabic letters, but with Hebrew and English structures given Hebrew syntax. Lastly, this chapter follows the narrow streets of the Old City of Jerusalem from Hebron Gate to Jaffa Gate. While the distance is short between these two major gates, the different signs and their organisation, along with the choice and order of languages, tell the story of a city where Arabic and Hebrew are present. The representation of Arabic and Hebrew reveals a divided city where speakers of these languages live separate lives as they share this very sacred sliver of space.