Toward a Sociology of the Palestinians
Keywords: 
Palestinians
Abstract: 

It is possible to identify three distinct stages in Palestinian history which have relevance for a sociological study of the Palestinians: pre-1948, 1948- 1967 and 1967 up to the present. While each period is characterized by a specific type of social experience, the post-1948 periods saw the transformation of the Palestinians from a majority to a minority in Palestine. In spite of differences in the regional locations of the Palestinians, this subordinate minority status produced a shared historical experience and eventually the crystallization of a Palestinian identity. For this reason the post-1948 sociology of the Palestinians has to draw largely upon the sociology of minorities. More specifically, as far as the larger segment of the Palestinians is concerned (particularly those living in Israel and the occupied territories, Jordan and, to a lesser extent and for different reasons - in Lebanon, Syria and the Gulf), theirs is the sociology of the colonized.

 

Elia Zureik is Associate Professor of Sociology, Queens University, Ontario, Canada, and coordinator of this special issue. This study is based on the author's forthcoming book The Palestinians inIsrael, A Study in Internal Colonialism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978). 

Full text: 

 

It is possible to identify three distinct stages in Palestinian history which have relevance for a sociological study of the Palestinians: pre-1948, 1948- 1967 and 1967 up to the present. While each period is characterized by a specific type of social experience, the post-1948 periods saw the transformation of the Palestinians from a majority to a minority in Palestine. In spite of differences in the regional locations of the Palestinians, this subordinate minority status produced a shared historical experience and eventually the crystallization of a Palestinian identity. For this reason the post-1948 sociology of the Palestinians has to draw largely upon the sociology of minorities. More specifically, as far as the larger segment of the Palestinians is concerned (particularly those living in Israel and the occupied territories, Jordan and, to a lesser extent and for different reasons - in Lebanon, Syria and the Gulf), theirs is the sociology of the colonized. [1] 

 

In contrast, the study of pre-1948 Palestine is best understood in terms of the sociology of settler regimes and the resulting modes of contact and domination which accompany such a process. [2] This process is characterized by peasant land alienation in the context of an alliance (implicit and at times explicit) between Arab landlords and Zionist settlers. The pre-1948 social structure of Palestinian Arabs is characterized by segmentation and domination in which the Palestinians, while comprising a numerical majority, assumed gradually a minority power status.

 

The study of the Palestinians has mushroomed noticeably in the last decade or so, This is not to say that prior to this date there was no research on Palestinian society, as demonstrated by a recently published annotated bibliography on the subject. [3] What has typified the more recent research on the Palestinians has been the increasing attention which Palestinians have directed toward analyzing their own situation, and, more importantly, the adoption of theoretical perspectives which depart from traditional writings characteristic of historiography and diplomatic history. This research, together with that carried out by other social scientists, has brought numerous fresh insights and placed the study of the Palestinians into the realms of social science proper.

 

In attempting an outline of a Palestinian sociology, one is confronted with divergent assumptions and theoretical perspectives. These assumptions necessarily lead to different conclusions and policy implications. For this reason, it becomes incumbent upon us in presenting a general framework for a Palestinian sociology to show how and why our approach diverges from, as well as converges with, existing research.

 

Pre-1948

 

It is accurate to say that whatever studies Arab writers conducted on pre- 1948 Palestine during the time of Zionist colonization and British occupation were limited in their scope; on the whole, they did not match the output of experienced Zionist writers of the time whose skills and orientations were European in origin. Arab writers at the time did not have among them, the equivalent of Ruppin, [4] Granott, [5] Bonne [6] and Gruenbaum, [7] not to mention the more influential writings of key Zionist ideologists such as Herzl, Weizmann, Gordon, Borochov, Jabotinsky, Ben-Gurion and others. While among the former group were those who wrote what became in Western circles standard works on the land-tenure system, demography and economics of Palestine, it was another group of writers who focused primarily on the sociological features of the "Arabs of Eretz Israel. " Among the known writers of this genre, we note Waschitz, [8] Patai [9] and Shimoni. [10] 

 

The fact that most of the former professional writers, in particular Ruppin, Granott and Gruenbaum, were active Zionists and occupied high positions in the Jewish Agency in charge of colonization in Palestine mattered little to Western researchers. In all likelihood, and for a very long time, their works were considered as the authentic interpretations of Palestinian society.

 

It is almost a truism to say that ideas and theories are best understood in their social context. Mannheim's notion [11] of the socially unattached, free- floating intellectual is of questionable validity, particularly when examined in the context of the plethora of Zionist-Western writings on Palestine. We are not implying here that an Arab interpretation of Palestinian history is, by definition, more valid than a Zionist accounting of the Palestinian experience. Our point is that ideas about society flourish when they are presented in a dialectical fashion. This controversial, or oppositionary, interpretation of Palestinian society has been traditionally lacking. The monopoly exercised by Zionist writers is not to be understood solely in terms of their ideological commitments, but also in terms of the frameworks of analysis adopted. Usually these frameworks have relegated the study of the Palestinians to decoding their cultural and psychological make-up at the expense of objective historical factors which would account for the retarding impact of Zionism and British imperialism on Palestinian social development.

 

Key assumptions which underlie the reasoning of Zionist writers on pre- 1948 Palestine are many; they range from issues dealing with political history to those dealing with demography and land ownership. For our purpose, I have singled out two sociological features of such key assumptions. First to be noted is the nature of the social process surrounding class transformation of the Palestinians from peasantry to proletariat. A sophisticated elaboration of this factor runs as follows: the pull of the Palestinian peasants to the city and urban centres of Palestine was due to land tenure and inheritance systems which, coupled with large size families, put the economic viability of the land in jeopardy. Thus, writers such as Carmi and Rosenfeld [12] provide a detailed examination of the process of proletarianization among Palestinian peasantry, pointing to the important finding that such a process did not bring with it a new socio-economic order to the Arab village, but perpetuated existing traditional social structures. However, what Carmi and Rosenfeld ignore is the role of Zionist colonization in the dispossession of Arab land, the role of British tax and concession policies in the context of encouraging intensive agriculture and industrialization, and the general impact of a competitive well-financed Zionist sector on existing Arab economies.

 

A second argument, related in part to the above point, is based on the premise of two independent sectors, the Arab and the Jewish, with no functional relationship between them. To the extent that the impact of the Jewish sector on the Arab one is acknowledged, it is to note that the presence of a modern and technologically advanced settler group is likely to have a "revolutionary" impact upon Arab society in terms of abolishing feudalism, raising their living standards and transmitting new technological knowledge; above all, it is implied that the presence of a modern regime will speed up the withering away of the "Asiatic mode of production," to be replaced by a modern-industrial one in which class antagonisms will be the main catalyst in a societal transformation which will signal the advent of an egalitarian social order devoid of feudal exploitation. [13]

 

Before commenting on these claims, we would like to provide a disclaimer to the converse orthodox position which postulates that the pre-1948 Palestinians were colonized either by the British, Zionist settlers, or both, in the classical sense of colonialism. While it is true that the attitudes and orientations of most Zionist settlers towards the indigenous Arab population in Palestine exhibited a sense of superiority characteristic of white settlers in Africa and elsewhere, [14] the main structure had other, more important features. The pre-1948 situation resembled more a dual society with one party, mainly the Zionists, deriving benefits from the sponsoring imperial power at the expense of the other, namely the indigenous Palestinians. Thus, the goal of Zionist settlers was to displace through land purchases and expropriation as many Palestinians as possible.

 

Still the central question remains. How is one to account for the development of the pre-1948 Jewish sector and the underdevelopment of the Arab one? How is one to explain the politico-economic domination whereby at the end of the British Mandate in 1948 the Palestinians increasingly occupied a subordinate role vis-'a-vis the Zionist settlers in the power nexus? Ten main factors could be brought to bear: (1) The superimposition of a capitalist mode of production on a system of peasant economy which is governed by communal ownership of the land and subsistence economy, resulting in further expropriation of land and surplus labour among the peasants; (2) The policies of the British government, in particular its tax policies, tended to favour and give concessions to an industrially oriented economy and intensive agriculture, both of which were more prevalent in the Jewish than they were in the Arab sector ; [15] (3) The importation of capital and technology by the Zionists which, together with the already on-going European-capitalist penetration of the area, [16] made it difficult for traditional Arab industries to survive in the face of a more advanced European-style economy ; [17] (4) In spite of sporadic clashes and disagreements concerning tactics (and not principles) between Zionist colonizers and British imperial interests in the area, the thrust of pre-1948 events, particularly during the crucial Arab Rebellion from 1936-1939, was characterized by an Anglo-Zionist alliance; [18] (5) As noted by numerous British commissions on Palestine, the influx of Jewish immigrants, with or without the consent of the British, proceeded without taking into account the wishes of the indigenous Arab population and the economic absorptive capacity of Palestine; (6) Due to the closure of the Jewish to the Arab sector in the areas of education, culture and economy, it was impossible for diffusion of knowledge and technology from the former to the latter to take place; (7) A rigid adherence by the Zionist settlers to an exclusivist set of institutions and ideology enabled Jewish workers to secure higher wages and better working conditions contrasted to Arab workers; [19] (8) The Arab leadership failed to establish a meaningful link with the masses in which national goals transcended sectarian and familial aspirations; (9) Unwillingness of Arab landlords to invest money earned from land transactions into the Arab sector, [20] and (10) The emergence of a consuming-parasitic class of Arab city dwellers-landowners whose main concern was to emulate a Western life-style characterized by non- productive pursuits.

 

It should be stated here that in no way do we discount the internal factors typical of Arab village life such as religious influence, traditional familial and kinship systems, and inheritance and land tenure. [21] What is problematic in the study of pre-1948 Palestine, which in our view has received little attention so far, is the role political and economic forces play in maintaining a traditional social order. Consider the hamula as one such institution. Its perpetuation during the mandate (and later on in Israel) is due in large measure to the manipulative policies exercised by the British and Israelis toward the Arab sector, and the distorted form of urbanization and class transformation according to which peasants were forced off the land to become rural proletariat; concerning the latter factor, Arab urbanization in Palestine resembled more a process of partial ruralization of the cities, a phenomenon encountered in many Third World cities nowadays, with two important exceptions: first, the bulk of the proletariat remained in the village; second, city-based industries were mostly non-Arab controlled, either by the British, Zionist settlers or international concerns.

 

There is one final feature of Palestinian class structure which is worth mentioning. Contrary to the claim made by Western and Israeli writers, Palestine did not exhibit a system of feudalism similar to that present either in European or other Middle Eastern societies. [22] I have dealt with this issue at greater length in another paper. [23] The relationship which governed landlord and peasant was guided by Muslim law which embodied a different system of economic relations. According to one researcher, it was, in the Western sense, an "irrational economics." [24] 

 

In any case, less than 10 percent of the populated area of Palestine came under the direct control of large landlords. Thus, the absence of a widespread and institutionalized form of feudalism in Palestine gave rise to an autarkic village political and economic structure. It was this relative autonomy of the peasants and their lack of dependency on feudal lords (compared, for example, to Europe) which enabled them to participate on a large scale in the Arab Rebellion from 1936 to 1939. [25] 

 

This observation is in line with the consensus among writers on pre-1948 Palestine that the historical development of Arab class structure did not evolve in the "normal" European way. The close proximity and contact between the aristocracy and peasantry in Europe and the subsequent alliance between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and the crystallization of an oppositionary industrial proletariat, on the other, had no parallel in Palestinian society.

 

Post-1948

 

The war of 1948 had two main consequences. First, it saw the exodus of a large segment of the Palestinians to become refugees and displaced persons in the Arab countries and other parts of the world. Second, it reduced the status of the Palestinians in their own homeland to that of a minority who, until 1967, lived under Israeli, Jordanian and Egyptian rule. The 1967 war resulted in bringing almost one-half of the Palestinians under Israeli control.

 

Our purpose below is neither to provide a historical run-down of the events since 1948 nor to describe the conditions surrounding the Palestinian exodus. Our objective is rather limited to attempting to provide an outline for a sociological analysis of the Palestinians as a colonized minority.

 

Regarding the Palestinians living in pre-1967 Israel, their situation could be characterized as follows: [26] (1) The continuation of the proletarianization process which had begun in pre-1948 Palestine; (2) The institutionalization of effective systems of social, political and economic control legitimated by Zionist ideology; (3) Further land expropriation and marginalization of the Arab sector; (4) Insuring Jewish dominance in the face of a high rate of Palestinian natural increase through the passage of the Law of Return and the Nationality Act, both of which grant automatic Israeli citizenship, on the basis of religious criteria, to Jews anywhere in the world who would like to settle in Israel; (5) An efficient system of co-option whereby Zionist hegemony is insured through selective occupational recruitment of Palestinians as long as allegiance to Zionist political culture is insured; and (6) Cultural domination via the school system and mass media, through state manipulation of Palestinian national and political symbols.

 

The model of internal-colonialism when applied to the Arabs in Israel differs from the dual society model applicable to pre-1948 Palestine. As we noted earlier, there the Palestinians did not constitute an internally colonized minority. However, this model also differs significantly from the fashionable models of cultural and social pluralism which are the favourite of most Israeli and Western social scientists. The thrust in Israeli research on the Arabs in Israel is to focus on their cultural and psychological characteristics, and attribute the economic stagnation of the Arab sector to something akin to Patai's "Arab mind. " [27] This obsession with cultural traits at the expense of historical factors is symptomatic not only of the treatment of the Arabs, but is also typical of established trends among Western social scientists who write in the tradition of "modernization" in the Third World. The upshot of this research is that the Arab-Jewish problem is depicted as one centering on cultural and psychological differences. Its roots are seen as grounded in irrationality and misunderstanding and not in an institutionalized form of domination. The policy implications of such a theoretical perspective are clear: the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is to be sought in "educating" the Arabs in a modern culture, which would appreciate the significance of an advanced Israel and would enable them to adjust better to its modern culture.

 

In spite of the disadvantaged position of the Arabs in Israel, compared to the Jewish population, typical Zionist writings on the subject do not hesitate to stress that the position of the Arabs in Israel is, relatively speaking, better than that of their Palestinian brethren outside Israel.

 

These assumptions are not, in fact, borne out by empirical evidence. Concerning the former claim, the converse appears to be true: the higher the level of education among the Arabs in Israel, the more aware and dissatisfied they become with their status in Israeli society. Militancy among Arab intellectuals and university students in Israel is a case in point. [28] Concerning the latter claim, recent data available on Palestinians outside Israel, compared to those inside it, produce a different picture. On the university level, the attainment of the Palestinians in the occupied territories as well as in the Arab world and outside it exceeds by far that shown by the Arabs in Israel. [29] This is not a new phenomenon; two recent Israeli Arab researchers have noted that as early as 1966 the rate of Arabs in Israel attending universities was lower than that shown in the Arab world, e.g., in Syria and Egypt. [30] They point out that even at the primary level the percentage of Palestinian youth in the occupied territories attending schools is similar to if not higher than that shown by Israeli Arabs. [31] 

 

More importantly, this researcher has discovered that the earning power and occupational attainment of Palestinians living outside Israel surpasses that of the Arabs in Israel. As the Zahlans point out in their contribution to this issue, it is estimated that one of every ten high level manpower individuals in the Arab world is a Palestinian. [32] If studies of patterns of upward mobility were to be carried out on Palestinians in general, there is no doubt that the results would show one of the highest rates of upward mobility in the Middle East as a whole. It is in this context that the "culture-cum- psychological" explanations of the disadvantaged position of the Arabs in Israel are shown to be of dubious validity. [33] 

 

Unlike the cultural model of pluralism, and other variants of it, the internal colonialism model accounts for possible politicization and reaction against forms of domination. Rather than assert a static and segmentalized image of a pacified/controlled minority, it leaves the possibility open that a structural transformation in the status of the colonized minority, such as proletarianization, is likely to bring about a change in its level of awareness and consciousness.

 

Within the context of the Palestinians in Israel, it is possible to identify three types of politicization: identification with the Communist Party, attempts to establish nationalist movements such as Al-Ard of the mid-'60s, and, more recently, Sons of the Village, and an increase in the involvement of the Arab intelligentsia in the political affairs of the Arab community, such as the recently formed coalition between university graduates and nationalist- communist elements which led to victory in Nazareth's 1975 local elections.

 

In the context of a hegemonic Zionist culture, it would be unrealistic to expect Arab efforts in this direction to be a complete success. However, they are far from being a total failure either. While the extent of Arab politicization has not solved the predicaments facing the Arabs in Israel as a subordinate group, they have at least managed to keep alive a sense of Palestinian identity and an attachment to the homeland, things which would have been difficult to sustain in the absence of an experienced Arab leadership and an open political culture.

 

It would be presumptuous to attribute whatever Arab politicization there is solely to the intellectual elites among the Arabs in Israel. [34] As a matter of fact, one of the handicaps of this elite was, and continues to be, its inability to establish an effective grass-root political movement which would involve the majority rural-proletariat of the Arab masses. Only then would Arab solidarity take on a dimension which would be difficult for the Israeli authorities to contend with. The Land Day protests and the general strike a year ago may have been championed and even led by Palestinian elites; their success, however, is due primarily to the united front exhibited by the peasantry. Alienation from the land may yet prove to be the crucial catalyst in any future Arab uprising in Israel.

 

The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by Israel has created of the occupied territories what amounts to Bantustan regions. Utilization of the West Bank for cheap labour in Israel, without granting any political or economic rights to the Arab workers, has reduced the territories to being an economic satellite of Israel. Some Israeli social scientists have become sensitive to this South African or Rhodesia-like situation, which is increasingly making a mockery of the Zionist claim of "normalization" of Jewish social structure. Thus, according to one Israeli social scientist, Israel is becoming a "nation of bosses. " [35] Other Israeli and Western social scientists describe the economic relationships between the occupied territories and Israel in terms of traditional, neo-classical economics where politics are portrayed to be separate from economic developments. Thus, it is stressed that the benefits accruing to the occupied territories in terms of raising the G. N. P. outweigh any other disadvantages. [36] There is no doubt that if such a comparison were to be carried out, using routine economic indicators, the Blacks in South Africa and even in Rhodesia would also come out better off than most Blacks in neighbouring African countries. The trouble with this analysis is that it divorces politics from economics, and does not see, or is not willing to acknowledge, that the political consequences of colonialism in the name of G. N. P. growth are neither a preferred moral nor national goal.

 

Even if one analyses the long-term effects of Israeli economic policies vis-a- vis the occupied territories, the picture points up to a stagnant, dependent economy. The much-touted rise in G. N. P., which is due in great measure to exploited Arab labour in Israel and to the influx of Palestinian earnings in the Arab world, is offset by the lack of any industrial development and investments, severe retardation of once thriving tourist and commercial sectors, and no improvements in the Arab agricultural sector. For all intents and purposes, the Bantustan status of the West Bank and Gaza is apparent in its unlimited resources of quasi-free labour, its role as a major consuming region for Israeli products, and further distortion of its demographic and class structure through the tacit Israeli encouragement of young professional Palestinians to emigrate.

 

The status of the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank under Jordanian rule is not all that different in its dependent nature vis-a-vis Jordan. Like Israel's, Jordan's policy was to discourage any economic development within the West Bank and any genuine form of political participation. Jordanian policy was to cultivate the traditional Palestinian leadership as a co-opted elite in order to mediate between the Jordanian regime and the local Palestinian population. It is this traditional leadership which has lost its status in recent local elections in the occupied territories.

 

One could say that there is one notable exception in the guiding principles of each regime. The Jordanian rule was mainly patrimonial, designed to sustain the authority of the royal household, while Israel's goals are not designed to serve the interests of one ruler per se, but to further the ''national" goals as they are defined by Zionist ideology. A second distinguishing characteristic is that Israel's ultimate objective is to exclude as much as possible of the Arab population from its institutional and national framework, while the Jordanian policy was designed to impose Jordanian citizenship and identity on the Palestinians. Both regimes used different means, although the ends are the same: the obliteration of Palestinian identity.

 

It is ironic that contemporary research on the Palestinians in the Arab world is rather limited, in spite of an upsurge in Palestinian research facilities. In the view of this author, this is due to two main reasons. First, the lack of comprehensive and reliable national statistics provided by the host countries concerned; and secondly, the fact that for a long time, the Palestine problem was defined primarily as a pan-Arab problem. The Palestinian political identity was subsumed for a long time in the all-embracing melting pot of Arab nationalism. Almost every Arab government championed the cause of the Palestinians as perceived not necessarily by the Palestinians, but by the Arab governments concerned. Here lies the crux of the research problem which was faced by the Palestinians until the mid or late '60s, when the PLO assumed the task of spokesman for the Palestinians. The rise of the PLO signalled the articulation of the Palestinian problem as seen by Palestinians themselves.

 

Studies on the educational attainments of the Palestinians, case studies of youth politicization, [37] patterns of occupational recruitment, [38] Palestinian camp life, [39] and sociological studies of certain Palestinian communities in the Arab world, [40] are few in number but significant nevertheless. This research, conducted mostly by Palestinians, is problem-oriented. It sets out to investigate the potential of Palestinians to meet the needs of a national community. Some of this research has exposed a few popular myths. First, the treatment of Palestinians in the Arab world has not been benevolent as popular wisdom has it; instead, it resembles in terms of class discrimination, and regional and political differentiation, the situation of other oppressed minorities throughout the world. [41] The sooner this fact is recognized, the easier it becomes to acknowledge the pluralist character of Arab society, taking us away from the mythical image of a homogenous Arab society.

 

It is this emphasis on the "oneness" of Arab society (although it has linguistic and cultural validity), which has taken its toll at the expense of the Palestinians. It is precisely this argument which is advanced by Israeli policy- makers and most Israeli Orientalists, on the following lines. Since the Palestinians are an inseparable part of a homogenous Arab society, so the argument goes, why do not the Arab regimes absorb the Palestinians into what amounts to an extension of their "natural" environment?

 

A second falsified myth, to which we alluded earlier, questions the validity of the notion of traditionalism when applied to the Palestinian case. Neither the level of politicization of Palestinians, nor their sense of motivation, bear witness to a passive and backward social structure, as postulated by conventional writers on the Third World.

 

The research on the Palestinians is still in its infancy. It is designed to map out the basic historical and demographic features of the Palestinians in order to gather data for future planning. Here, too, research on the Palestinians has to safeguard against the fetishism of abstract empiricism. A research methodology has to be developed in line with the problem at hand. Artificial separation between the researcher and the phenomenon investigated is likely to lead to an imposed definition of, and solution to, sociological problems. The ultimate objective of such a research must be to tap the authentic experience of the Palestinians. Here the object-subject dichotomy dissolves. Borrowing from Freire's methodology, [42] the existential being, the Subject, becomes the central unit of analysis in a research process designed to unfold and at the same time transform the world one experiences -this is the essence of praxis. The purpose of the research must be neither to mystify nor overwhelm the masses. Through dialogical training, the usual us-them dichotomy in research is substituted by reciprocal interaction between the researcher and Subjects. It is, as Paulo Freire remarks, research for and with the people, but not about the people.

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Elia Zureik is Associate Professor of Sociology, Queens University, Ontario, Canada, and coordinator of this special issue. This study is based on the author's forthcoming book The Palestinians inIsrael, A Study in Internal Colonialism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978). 

1 Two comprehensive studies on post-1948 Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank are: Sabri Jiryis, The Arabs in Israel (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976); and Jamil Hilal, The West Bank: Its Social and Economic Structure, 1948-1974 (Beirut: Palestine Liberation Organization, 1976).

2 See the collection of papers in I. Abu-Lughod (ed.), The Transformation of Palestine (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1971). 

3 Walid Khalidi and Jill Khadduri (eds.), Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1974).

4 Arthur Ruppin, Three Decades of Palestine: Speeches and Papers on the Upbuilding of the Jewish National Home (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1936).

5 A. Granott, The Land System in Palestine (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1952).

6 Alfred Bonne, State and Economics in the Middle East (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955).

7 Ludwig Gruenbaum, National Income and Outlay in Palestine (Jerusalem: Economic Research Institute, Jewish Agency, 1941); and Outlines of a Development Plan for Jewish Palestine (Jerusalem: Economic Research Institute, Jewish Agency, 1946). 

8 Y. Waschitz, The Arabs in Palestine (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 1947) (Hebrew).

9 Raphael Patai, On Culture Contact and Its Workings in Modern Palestine, American Anthropological Association Monograph, Vol. 49, No. 67, 1947.

10 Y. Shimoni, The Arabs of Eretq Israel (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1946) (Hebrew).

11 Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), pp. 136-146. 

12 Shulamit Carmi and Henry Rosenfeld, "The Origins of the Process of Proletarianization and Urbanization of Arab Peasants in Palestine," Annals of New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 220, 1974, pp. 470-485.

13 This has become a standard argument in Zionist writings on pre-1948 Palestine. See M. Aumann, "Land Ownership in Palestine: 1880-1948," in Michael Curtis et al. (eds.), The Palestinians: People, History, Politics (New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1975), pp. 21-29. A more sophisticated route via Marxism to a similar end is the one adopted by S. Avineri. See Bryan Turner's critique of this approach in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Spring 1977), pp. 169-177.

14 Referring to the settler-writer Smilansky, who immigrated to Palestine at the turn of this century, Yona Bachur notes that "the stories of Moshe Smilansky have a mawkish, paternalistic flavour, not far removed from the writings of white settlers in Southern Africa or the plantation owners in the deep South of the United States," p. 46 in New Outlook, Vol. 8, No. 3, 1964, pp. 40-64. A more recent comment along these lines is made by S. Smooha, who, while making the usual Zionist qualification that "Zionism remains essentially a Jewish liberation movement," goes on to add that "Zionism inherited the spirit of superiority, paternalism and a civilizing mission which Europeans had towards Asian and African people," p. 62, in Pluralism: A Study of Intergroup Relations in Israel, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of California at Los Angeles, 1973.

15 See Talal Asad, "Anthropological Texts and Ideological Problems," Economy and Society, Vol. 4, 1975, pp. 251-282; Fawwaz Trabulsi, "The Palestine Problem: Zionism and Imperialism in the Middle East," New Left Review, No. 57, Sept. /Oct., 1969, pp. 53-90.

16 For a lucid discussion of the impact of European capitalist penetration in the eighteenth and nineteenth century Middle East, see I. M. Smilianskaya, "From Subsistence to Market Economy, 1850's" in Charles Issawi (ed.), The Economic History of the Middle East, 1800-1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 226-247.

17 See footnote 15 above. 

18 Nevill Barbour, Nisi Dominus (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1969).

19 Y. Kolton, The Jewish Question and its Solution (Tel Aviv, 1923), see pp. 64-88 (Hebrew).

20 The nature of alliance between Zionist settlers, Arab landlords and British interests is illustrated by Patricia Garrett, Orphans of Empires: A Case Study of the Palestinian Refugees, M. S. thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1970.

21 No serious writer on colonialism and the Third World in general would want to attribute a uni-causal trend to underdevelopment, attributing it solely to imperialism and colonialism. Traditional aspects such as "family and kinship relations, village community structure, social hierarchies and stratifications, cognitive orientations and so forth," according to Rudolfo Stavenhagen, play an important role in maintaining a backward economy, "but equally important is how such traditional social elements dating back to pre-colonial times are often actually reinforced by the imported capitalist system even as their traditional function changes," pp. 6-7, in Social Class in Agrarian Societies (New York: Doubleday, 1975). 

22 Doreen Warriner, Land and Poverty in the Middle East (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1948), p. 65.

23 Review of Michael Curtis, et al., The Palestinians, op. cit., in Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Spring 1977), pp. 113-131.

24 Ibid.

25 Barbara C. Aswad, "The Involvement of Peasants in Social Movements and its Relation to the Palestinian Revolution," in Naseer Aruri (ed.), The Palestinian Resistance to Israeli Occupation (Wilmette, Ill.: Medina Press, 1970), pp. 17-24; also Tom Bowden, "The Politics of Arab Rebellion in Palestine: 1936-1939," Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1975, pp. 147-174. 

26 See my "Transformation of Class Structure Among the Arabs in Israel," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1976, pp. 39-66.

27 See the review of Raphael Patai, The Arab Mind, in this issue by Elaine Hagopian. An equally critical review is the one by Malcolm Kerr in The Muslim World, Vol. 66, No. 4, 1976, pp. 300-302. 

28 See Fouzi El-Asmar, "Israel Revisited," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Spring 1977), pp. 47-65.

29 See Chapter 7 of my forthcoming book, op. cit.

30 Cited in Sami Marei, and N. Dhahir, Facts and Levels in the Development of Arab Education in Israel (Haifa: Institute for Research and Development of Arab Education, University of Haifa, 1976) (Hebrew), p. 55.

31 Marl and Dhahir, op. cit.

32 See below, p. 104. 

33 See the contribution by Khalil Nakhleh in this issue.

34 For an assessment of the orientation of a sample of university students in Israel, see Khalil Nakhleh, Nationalistic Consciousness and University Education: The Dilemma of Palestinians in Israel, unpublished manuscript, Haifa: The Institute for Research and Development of Arab Education, University of Haifa, 1976. 

35 Cited in Amal Samed, "Palestinian Women: Entering the Proletariat," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Autumn 1976), pp. 158-168, p. 160.

36 See Hilal, op. cit

37 See Tawfic Farah, "Political Socialization of Palestinian Children," in this issue.

38 A comprehensive, analytical study of the Palestinian occupation structure in the Arab world is lacking. A start is provided by the statistical compilation of Jacqueline Farhood Jerisati, "The Palestinian People: Figures and Pointers," Shu'un Filastiniya (January/February 1975), pp. 399-431 (Arabic); also, Ghazi Khalil, "The Palestinian Woman and the Revolution," Shb'un Filastiniya (January/February 1976), pp. 123-144 (Arabic).

39 See Rosemary Sayigh, The Palestinian Experience Viewed as Socialifzation, unpublished M.A. thesis, American University of Beirut, 1976, and her contribution to this issue; Bassem Sirhan, "Palestinian Refugee Camp Life in Lebanon,"Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Winter 1975), pp. 91-107: Peter Dodd and Halim Barakat, River Without Bridges (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1968).

40 Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, "Educating a Community in Exile: The Palestinian Experience," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Spring 1973), pp. 94-1 11; Bassem Sirhan, Family and Kinship: Palestinians in Kuwait, unpublished manuscript, Kuwait University, 1976.

41 See Fawaz Turki, "The Palestinian Estranged," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. V, Nos. 1 and 2 (Autumn/Winter 1976), pp. 82-96. 

42 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: The Seabury Press, 1970).