LAND OF SYMBOLS: CACTUS, POPPIES, ORANGE AND OLIVE TREES IN PALESTINE

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which Palestinians experience belonging to a place and how these experiences and their related ideas and symbols inform social organization through their representation, performance, and manipulations over time. In particular, I explore the articulation of symbols and symbolic representations in relation to the Palestinian encounter with the Zionist project in Palestine starting from the early twentieth century to the present. I demonstrate how dominant symbols change according to changes in the political realities and shifts in the dominant agencies. The most prominent aspect of Palestinians' representations of nationhood and peoplehood through these different symbols across time has been the articulation of their rootedness in the land of Palestine. Hence, the Palestinian “narration” of nationness has been a narration of communities and peoplehood in relation to the land, a narration of formation and reformation in the Palestinian cultural imaginary in the face of its reconfiguration by the Jewish nationalist project in Palestine.