Arabic in Israel

Language, Identity and Conflict

Muhammad Amara

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351663885
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Langues

In Arabic in Israel, Muhammad Amara analyses the status of Arabic following the creation of the State of Israel and documents its impact on the individual and collective identity of Israel's Palestinian Arab citizens. The interplay of language and identity in conflict situations is also examined. This work represents the culmination of many years of research on Arabic linguistic repertoire and educational policy regarding the language of the Palestinian citizens of Israel. It draws all of these factors together while linking them to local, regional and global developments. Its perspective is interdisciplinary and, as such, examines the topic from a number of angles including linguistic, social, cultural and political.

1

LANGUAGE, IDENTITY AND CONFLICT

Introduction

Both language and social identity play central and essential roles in the lives of communities, as will be detailed in this chapter. On the one hand, language is considered one of the most important indicators that contribute to shaping and enhancing social identity. On the other, social identity is the cultural and behavioural compass for groups and societies. The relationship between language and identity is very close and intertwined. In this context, it is worth mentioning that the units shaping identity have changed over time in accordance with the change in human thinking concepts (Ferro, 2015). Two hundred years ago, for example, the most important social units were religion and tribe. Subsequently, national and ethnic identities appeared, becoming the most important identities in many communities around the world.

In this chapter, I will examine the relationships among language, identity and conflict, initially in the wider Arab context and then in the Israeli context. First, I will discuss the concept of social identity in the context of contemporary studies as well as its relation to language.

Identity and identities

Human identity is defined by Lakoff (2006, p. 142) as: ‘a continual work in progress, constructed and altered by the totality of life experience. While much of the work in support of this belief concentrates on the larger aspects of identity – especially gender, ethnicity, and sexual preferences – in fact human identity involves many other categories. Identity is constructed in complex ways, more or less consciously and overtly.’

Tajfel and Turner (1985, 2004) explain that, in addition to our individual identity, we also have a social identity that includes the knowledge of our belonging to a specific social group and the emotional values and meanings attached to this belonging. This process, based on Tajfel and Turner’s theory, is a mental one through which people divide, categorize and arrange their social milieu. It also allows them to adopt different patterns of social activity and specify their location in the social texture, grants them a unique social identity and provides them with social identification of themselves. These methods of identification include a comparison that enables people to know the extent to which they are similar to or different from others, or the extent to which they consider themselves to be better or worse than individuals from other social groups. Social categorization is deemed the basis both for the preference to belong to a certain social group and for the discrimination against other, different groups. The theory of social identity is based on the motivational component which, according to Tajfel and Turner (1985), explains the universal tendency of people to compare themselves with the in-group and diminish the value of the out-group. Based on the social identity theory, these processes are built on prejudices, stereotypes and negative discrimination between groups.

The social identity theory explains that conflicting situations between groups encourage the process of erasing individual identity, which then leads to dealing with people as representing a unified social category as opposed to distinct individuals. When the social system is characterized by hierarchy and the inequitable division of resources, the social situation is characterized by ethnocentrism and antagonism between groups. Tajfel and Turner (1985) claim that ethnocentrism is often one way – from the high-status group to the low-status group, with the latter group often possessing positive views of the high-status group.

Low-status groups often tend to internalize the prevalent social evaluation regarding their inferiority and reproduce it, thereby engendering a reduction in their self-worth. The social identity theory claims that the members of the low-status group will not declare conflict until their culture is challenged. This means that on the one hand, whenever the social system is perceived as more legitimate and the boundaries between the groups are permeable, the members of the low-status groups tend to adopt an individual strategy based on assimilating into the prevalent culture as a means of ensuring their social promotion as individuals. On the other hand, when the social situation is not perceived as legitimate, members of the low-status groups frequently adopt group strategies. They reject the social status quo that perpetuates their inferiority and endeavour to alter their social status. Social identity is thus related to patterns of behaviours or actions (Le Page and Tabourert-Keller, 1985).

In the aftermath of multiculturalism discourse, Sarup (1996) has developed a theory that perceives social identity as a cluster consisting of a number of sub-identities existing in a consistent movement without necessarily bearing on each other and/or clashing with each other. These sub-identities reflect the multiple meanings developing among individuals in the global reality in relation to diverse psychological, political, economic and social contexts. Individuals crystallize their identity independently through a reflexive process in which they combine their past memories with current schemas in order to create a unified narrative. In this manner, each individual builds his or her own unique identity and abolishes the need to resemble others or to be stigmatized as the ‘other’. This identity is considered stable if each of its components within the complex texture is able to move freely to the centre of the identity arena as a feedback to daily practices, in the same way as other components are able to leave this centre freely. This theory supposes the existence of a consistent movement of identity components in order to create harmony with the dynamic reality and posits that each wide social change is associated with identity change.

While the above two theories differ from each other, they concur that in case of group struggle or threat to the group, the tendency to adopt collective strategies will increase, whereas in the absence of threat, there is a tendency to adopt individualistic strategies.

Ethnic identity has become one of the most important social identities. As a term, ethnicity has roots primarily in anthropology and ethnology (Leibkind, 1999). The ethnic group is often defined on the basis of objective criteria such as biological, geographical, linguistic, cultural or religious characteristics. However, the subjective criteria seem more important than the objective ones. Hence, ethnicity is defined as a matter of ‘subjective belief in common ancestry’ (ibid., p. 140).

It is largely accepted that Barth (1970) established the subjective approach and propounded the principles for modern understanding of ethnicity. Ethnic boundaries are the ones that define the group, and not the cultural issues related to it (ibid., 1970). Instead of proposing objective criteria, the prime interest resides in boundary maintenance and shaping (de Kadt, 2000). Fought (2006, p. 6) argues that ‘most works on race and ethnicity acknowledge the important works of both self-identification and perceptions and attitudes of others in the construction of ethnic identity.’ The challenging questions concerning ethnic groups include: How are boundaries created between groups and how are they maintained? How and when do people draw the boundaries between them?

Many researchers, including liberal ones, have claimed ethnicity to be dead. As Skutnabb-Kangas (1999, p. 54) explains:

Ethnicity has been proclaimed dead many times during this century, especially after the Second World War. Liberal researchers claimed (and many continue to claim) that it was a traditional, romantic characteristic which would disappear with modernization, urbanization, and global mobility. Ethnic identities would be replaced by other loyalties and identities: professional, social gender, interest-group, state-related, global, and so on. Marxist researchers claimed that class-related solidarities that crossed national borders would replace ethnicity: International proletariat would unite against world capitalism. Post-modernist researchers now pronounce that we have, or should have, no lasting identities, only flexible temporary nomadic ones: All that is solid melts in the air.

To conclude, ethnic relations and tolerance towards other identities are related to the degree of security the groups enjoy and the way the members of the group perceive their identity. The more secure the members of the group feel, the more positive they will feel towards their identity and the more tolerant they will be towards other groups.

Conflicting identities: Palestinian-Jewish relationships inside Israel

David Grossman, the Israeli novelist, calls the Palestinian Arabs within Israel ‘present absentees’ (1992). That is to say, they are present physically in the state, but absent from consciousness and deprived of active participation in the public sphere. Anton Shammas (1995), the Palestinian novelist, maintains that the owner of the hegemonic discourse is the one who determines the boundaries of the topic and that the Palestinian Arab is a passive element in the national make-up of Israel.

Sagi (2009) claims that the discourse that has evolved in Israeli society is based on rights and not identity because it employs the language of the law and is not constructed as a direct dialogue between the two sides, namely, Arabs and Jews. They talk ‘about each other’ and not ‘with each other’. The discourse is also monological (one-sided), thereby imposing one narrative (the Jewish Israeli narrative) translated into the official language of rights, and is often conducted as discourse between prosecutors versus accused based on the legal system in the country. According to Sagi, this discourse reproduces the hierarchal relations in society, takes ethnocentrism to the extreme and further deepens societal divides.

Palestinian-Jewish relations in Israel are marred by conflict. Crocker et al. (2005) define the Palestinian-Jewish conflict within the State of Israel as intractable and frozen. It is intractable because it is deeply rooted and self-perpetuating. It is also a result of profoundly entrenched hostility. This means that it is a continuous conflict, making it extremely difficult to reach a compromise (Smooha, 1999). As for being frozen, this is because the conflict violence is postponed while the polarization between the two parties continues and remains unsolved by political channels. Moreover, the Palestinian-Jewish conflict overlaps with other conflicts: the wider Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East and the rise of the conflict between the West and both the Muslim and the Arab world following the events of September 11, 2001. Furthermore, the Palestinians, citizens of Israel, while officially offered full rights as citizens, have chronically been treated as a putatively hostile minority with little political representation and a debilitated social, economic and educational infrastructure (Bekerman and Maoz, 2005).

The Palestinian-Jewish conflict within the State of Israel is not only a material conflict, but also an identity conflict. The focus on identity engenders and nourishes a ‘victim-victimizer’ narrative. Each side feels that the other has usurped its legitimate rights. The conflict is termed an identity conflict if at least one of the sides defines the adversary’s narrative regarding its national identity and its right to national sovereignty in the territory claimed by the two protagonists as their exclusive property. The total negation of the ‘other’ as a national entity and the ensuing active efforts to nullify its demands are perceived by the deprived side as injustice and engenders a feeling of victimization (see Auerbach, 2005a, 2005b).

The topic of identity and the feeling of victimization have preoccupied many researchers. Montville (1993), for instance, investigated the topic of identity, drawing on the contact theory developed by Allport (1954). Montville claims that each confrontation between ethnic and religious groups is characterized by violent history, always replete with feelings of dehumanization and deeply rooted in the beliefs of the conflicting parties. These beliefs are characterized by their capacity to resist attempts to change them, especially when nurtured by the intensified feelings of victimization.

Montville (1993) believes that the resolution of this type of conflict (such as the Palestinian-Jewish conflict in Israel) entails a process of forgiveness and reconciliation. According to him, this process occurs through a direct dialogue between the two sides that may bring about the de-legitimization of existing prejudices and stereotypes. It is only through the meeting of identities that a new interpretation of ‘other’ and ‘otherness’ can be generated. Only direct contact can create empathy for the human suffering of the other side, pave the way to rapprochement and engender cognitive dissonance that will challenge negative stereotypes and create social change.

The mediation narrative also focuses on the importance of identity contact in the reconciliation process (Winslade and Monk, 2000). This approach espouses post-modernism, assuming that the concept of ‘truth’ experienced by human beings consists of ideas, thoughts, feelings and experiences, composing only one limited perspective on the world. Human knowledge cannot be absolute or infinite, as it is dependent on time, place and social background in which and by means of which it was created. All things are experienced by human beings via perspectives based on culture through which they have undergone socialization. These perspectives are based on a real narrative but continue to interpret and build a different narrative and reality (ibid., 2000).

Cobb (1994) claims that it is not the historical narrative that is the most important, but rather its representation. The structural approach posits that there is one real narrative that can possibly be found by separating the narrative itself (the events in reality) from the discourse (the narratives on these events) through ethnography and use of sociolinguistic instruments. The post-structural approach supposes that there is no one single real narrative and that the appearance of the narrative is dependent on how it is recounted. Cobb maintains that in order to understand the applied side of the process, it is necessary to focus on the political side of the narrative, focusing on some stories and excluding others. In each conflict, there are several overlapping identities, and conflict resolution necessitates a dialogue between identities in order to reveal the arbitrariness of existing narratives and replace them with new ones with which the parties can live. This is a deconstruction process which assumes that it is possible to throw away all the axioms that are learnt and internalized. In the process of re-ex...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables, figures, and maps
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Language, identity and conflict
• 2 Internal and external challenges of the Arabic language
• 3 Internal and regional contexts and the Arabic language in Israel
• 4 The status of the Arabic language in Israel
• 5 Features of the Arabic language in Israel
• 6 Arabic in the shadow of Hebraization
• 7 English in the Palestinian linguistic repertoire in Israel
• 8 Hebraization of Arabic place names
• 9 The current linguistic landscape in the Palestinian Arab localities in Israel
• 10 The Arabic language in the Palestinian Arab education system
• 11 Teaching Arabic in Jewish schools: language of the neighbour or the enemy?
• 12 Language ideology and attitudes: Arabic language academies and future vision documents
• 13 Epilogue: facing the challenges
• Index