Overlooking Nazareth

A critical review of 'Overlooking Nazareth: The ethnography of Exclusion in Galilee' by Dan Rabinowitz

Overlooking Nazareth is a study of relations between Israeli and Palestinian citizens of Israel residing in Natzerat Illit, Galilee. Natzerat Illit (‘Upper Nazareth’), a Jewish settlement located on the hills “towering over Nazareth to the East” (Rabinowitz, 1997:25), was created as part of an initiative to ‘Judaise’ Galilee and is separated from other Jewish settlements by a belt of Palestinian settlements. It is therefore both a frontier and an outpost. While other mixed settlements in Israel are generally the result of the movement of Jewish people into an existing Palestinian settlement (complete with dispossession and relocation of Palestinians) Natzerat Illit is mixed due to the movement of Palestinian citizens into a Jewish settlement. The way in which this occurred introduces us to the author’s main theme – the interaction between Zionism and liberal democracy.

The original vision of Natzerat Illit was of an exclusively Jewish city to rival neighbouring Nazareth. It was built cheaply and populated by successive waves of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Asia and North Africa. Two things happened in the 1970s to change the city’s demographic.

1. The municipal boundaries were finalized, and were extended to include an area of Palestinian Israeli settlement on the northern ridge. The land was not appropriated for Jewish use; the area was simply transferred from one legislative zone to another. The transfer altered the designation of the area from agricultural to urban, and the Palestinian Israeli landowners built on, subdivided and sold land resulting in residential development of the area through the 1980s.

2. Growth and the anticipation of further immigration resulted in new and improved housing compounds in Natzerat Illit. Existing residents started to buy up the new housing and sell the older, less desirable housing flooding the real estate market with low grade properties. Following the 1973 war there was an economic and energy crisis which was exacerbated by reduced immigration. The slump worsened in the 1980s and hit peripheral areas hardest. Jewish residents of Natzerat Illit found themselves unable to sell their properties, at a time when their financial security was already being eroded. On the other hand, the physical growth of Nazareth had been checked by the establishment of Natzerat Illit, but the population had continued to grow as displaced Palestinians from other areas sought new homes. Real estate in Nazareth was in demand and very expensive. Pragmatism led Palestinian Israelis to rent and buy properties in Natzerat Illit, and Jewish Israelis to lease and sell properties to Palestinian Israelis. Despite the hardline Zionist vision of an exclusively Jewish settlement, Jewish Israelis were willing to lease or sell property to Palestinian Israelis in accordance with their liberal democratic values of rational self-interest.

Rabinowitz sub-titles his book ‘The ethnography of exclusion in Galilee’ but it is really more about inclusion than exclusion. Although he refers to some of the ways in which Palestinian residents of Natzerat Illit are excluded from the residential community and municipal process, his focus is more incidents of inclusion and the ways in which inclusion manifests. He explores the double-dissonance evident amongst the Jewish residents – between the stated liberal democratic values of the nation of Israel and the basic tenets of Zionism, and between Zionism and the everyday practical decisions made on the frontier. From his consideration of the real estate market, the education system and the municipal council, Rabinowitz concludes that liberal democratic values fail to translate into action, which is instead guided by Zionist attitudes. He insists that Natzerat Illit is not unique in this failure, accusing all Jewish Israelis of the same dissonance. Further, he suggests that the inability of Israel’s liberal democratic values to translate in action is a characteristic of liberal democracy itself and can be found in liberal democratic countries the world over. With respect to the Palestinian position Rabinowitz rejects romantic views of resistance, instead presenting a grim picture of Palestinian Israelis composing ad hoc strategies of resistance that vent frustration but actually collude in the maintenance of the oppressive status quo.¹

‘Overlooking Nazareth’ is essentially an exploration of power relations, as any discussion concerning asymmetric access to resources (material and otherwise) must ultimately be. In investigating the exclusion and inclusion of Palestinians in various arenas of Israeli life Rabinowitz is clearly dealing with the issues of powerlessness, powerfulness, empowerment and disempowerment. In her review of ‘Overlooking Nazareth’ for The American Journal of Sociology Rebecca Torstick accuses Rabinowitz of glossing over divisions within Jewish Israeli society (Torstick, 1998:287), but this criticism does not go far enough. Although he discusses power relations in Israel, Rabinowitz completely ignores the question of stratification within Israeli society. He does not discuss in any detail the respective divisions of Jewish Israeli and Palestinian Israeli groups, yet he attempts to provide and account of the interaction between the two. His demographic information reveals that most of the Jews in Natzerat Illit are employed in semi-skilled and unskilled labour, whereas most Palestinian residents of Natzerat Illit are employed in skilled labour and professional positions. This must have some impact relations between the two, as well as on the types of strategies that are available to each for negotiating interaction.

The true irony of the sub-title ‘The ethnography of exclusion’ is buried in this omission. Rabinowitz, a self designated middle-class, native-born Ashkenazi Jew, reveals the outlook of his own social position in his over-simplification of the power dynamics at work in Natzerat Illit. He treats Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Israelis almost as two separate species, two discrete and cohesive entities encountering each other in an ideologically laden environment. He takes the Jewish and Palestinian residents of Natzerat Illit to be representative of their ethnicities as a whole. In doing this he ends up reducing his subjects to binary categories of Us (to whom he belongs) and Them (to whom he is sympathetic and benevolent). More significantly, he excludes Muslim Palestinian Israelis from his ethnography entirely. Although he comments on the precarious relation between Palestinian Israelis and Palestinian Palestinians, he does not explore the diversity of the Palestinian Israeli community itself. Despite Muslims making up about one quarter of the Palestinian population of Natzerat Illit (Rabinowitz, 1997:38) there is just a passing mention made of the relationship between Muslim Palestinians and Christian Palestinians, no discussion of any difference between the way Jewish residents of Natzerat Illit deal with Muslim Palestinians and Christian Palestinians respectively, and no discussion of any difference between the coping strategies of Muslim Palestinian citizens and Christian Palestinian citizens. Given that Israeli intolerance and persecution of Palestinians originates along two axes – ethnicity and religion – this is a staggering omission.

Drawing on the conceptual toolkit of Bourdieu we can say that the strategies that the Jewish and Palestinian residents of Natzerat Illit use for managing inter-group interaction are embedded in habitus and the arenas in which the interactions take place are fields. As Bourdieu himself indicates, any account of a field (and particularly of relationships between fields) is incomplete without some consideration of the position of the field with respect to the ‘field of power’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992:104). Despite referring to Bourdieu on the subjects of education, language and honour, Rabinowitz does not incorporate Bourdieu’s perspective on habitus, fields and power; in fact he refutes Bourdieu’s positions on both pedagogic authority and misrecognition. Had Rabinowitz looked closely at the structure of the field of power in Israel he could have produced a more complete and insightful analysis of the situation in Natzerat Illit, and would have discovered that Bourdieu’s perspectives on pedagogic authority and misrecognition are actually borne out by his description of relations in Natzerat Illit.

It is possible to sketch the field of power in Israel using details included in the ethnography. Rabinowitz included a surprising amount of important information that he did not develop further, and there is no shortage of supplementary information about Israeli politics in the media and on the internet. Firstly, Rabinowitz repeatedly makes the point that Israel identifies itself internationally as a liberal democracy. In the field of international politics, ideology can yield considerable symbolic capital. In order to be a powerful nation, especially having been founded through international intervention, one of the most effective strategies is to be actively and positively involved in the international community. In this field Jewish Israelis play the game as one entity - the Jewish nation.

Secondly, Rabinowitz reveals that ethnicity plays a significant role in the Jewish field of power. European Jews are generally wealthier and better educated. They are ‘native’ Israelis.² They are represented by people like David Ben-Gurion - a polish born Jew, Israel’s first Prime Minister and ‘founding father’; a national hero. They are skilled workers and professionals. They tend to live in the central cities, claim liberal democratic values and express shock and disappointment at Jewish persecution of Palestinians.³ Asian, African and Russian Jews are referred to as immigrants, arrive in waves and are settled in block housing on peripheries.⁴ They are unskilled or semi-skilled and employed in the industries and in service.⁵ They live in relatively small communities and are sometimes presented as backward and bigoted because of their attitudes towards Palestinians.⁶ Palestinians are essentially an underclass – marginalized, ignored, discriminated against and persecuted. While the state apparatus ostensibly grants them the same rights as any other citizen of Israel loopholes and personal mediations make those rights unattainable to most. The tendency towards segregated towns means that within their own domain Palestinians can achieve a great deal – a good education, a profitable job, etc. – but vis-à-vis the field of power they are essentially still third class citizens.

I suggest that there is a dominant class in Israel, an educated group of the wealthy and middle class Jews, predominantly of Central European ancestry. The livelihood of this class is heavily bound up with the success and legitimacy of the nation of Israel. They have developed a particular habitus for Israel’s involvement in the field of international politics and instigated it through governmental foreign policy. Israel has therefore designated itself as a liberal democracy in line with the powerful nations of the world, aligned itself solidly with the United States. As we have seen, the United States has been extremely tolerant of Israel’s increasing aggression towards the Palestinian Authority and its own Palestinian citizens.

There is also a dominated class of Jews. This class is essentially a working class, consisting mainly of Central Asian and African Jews. They have been harnessed using Zionism and mobilized to the frontier to physically reclaim the homeland.⁷ Their job is to transmute the empty, tainted and previously Palestinian environment into a modern, progressive and distinctly Hebrew environment. Rabinowitz informs us that the Hebrew word for this process is ‘hityashvūt’ and emphasizes the importance it has to Jewish Israelis (Rabinowitz, 1997:79-81). This is the dirty work of nation-building, sold to its performers as the glorious work of Zionism, complete with romantic frontier imagery and pioneer status. For the occasion of Natzerat Illit’s thirtieth anniversary in 1987, a booklet was released containing various contributions including this from the then-deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres:

You, present day residents of Natzerat Illit, are like the ancient Galileans: enthusiastic, caring, industrious, creative. It is your duty to remember: Natzerat Illit is a key town, a key to the gates of action Zionism. (Rabinowitz, 1997:14)

Rabinowitz remarks that:

The hegemonic narrative in Israel regarding new towns and settlement in general, invokes hitherto ‘uninhabited’ and ‘empty’ tracts of land as miraculously ‘discovered’ by Zionist settlers laboriously redeeming territory from historical oblivion, reclaiming it from geographical, ecological and social void.

(ibid)

He is specifically referring to the way this process marginalizes Palestinians, but he gives us a vivid picture of the frontier mythology that has its origins in Canaan and is echoed in the settlement mythologies of Australia, New Zealand and, especially, America. As payment for fulfilling this vision, the nation-builders get poorly constructed housing blocks in the midst of the enemy and a state apparatus that doesn’t uphold the Zionist mandate they were given, leaving them exposed to perceived Palestinian infiltration.

The Palestinian Problem that has the residents of Natzerat Illit so concerned is not a serious problem to the dominant class. One way or another the Palestinian citizens of Israel will disappear. Whether they are driven out, murdered, marginalised or assimilated as an underclass they will eventually become invisible in the same way as many other ethnic and cultural minorities, as in the case of the American Indians. For the dominant class the details are insignificant – they will not get blood on their hands and they will maintain their position. There is little danger of Palestinian Israelis infiltrating their domain. For the dominant class it is the Palestinian Palestinians who represent the greatest threat, not simply because of their proximity and aggression, but because of their challenge to the legitimacy of the Jewish nation and the possibility that they could recruit the Palestinian Israelis to their cause.

The Palestinian Israeli position in the field of power is essentially that of a colonized people. They are invited to join, then prevented from succeeding. They are the subject of persecution and discrimination. They are isolated and disenfranchised. The method of their domination turns on the idea of collectivity. As a collective Palestinians are acted against. Their collectivity is a threat to the Jewish nation and the dominant class. As a collective they are extremely visible and in possession of a competing ideology, mythology and habitus not endorsed by the dominant class. But, as a collective they can be acted upon through Zionist ideology as expressed through the aggression and oppression by Jewish citizens.

On the other hand, as individuals they are invisible and easily absorbed. The pragmatic disposition that Rabinowitz sees as undermining Zionism in Jews, he applauds in Palestinians. He sees it as a site of resistance, challenging views that Palestinians are irrational and emotional. I suggest that this disposition steeped in pragmatism, meritocracy, professionalism and self interest is merely the values of liberal democracy as they appear at an individual level in the habitus of particular fields – for example in real estate. When this habitus governs relations between Palestinians Israelis and Jewish Israelis it results in the de-collectivising of the Palestinian person in preparation for assimilation. These Palestinians become what Rabinowitz labels ‘good Arabs’ – clean, submissive, faithful, rational, hard working, polite realists.⁸ They accept Jewish domination and take advantage of the opportunities it offers. This kind of de-ethnicisation makes the Palestinian Israeli individual exempt from the treatment prescribed for the Palestinian collective – and so Palestinian Israelis buy houses in Natzerat Illit and Jewish Israelis go to a Palestinian physician in Nazareth. The outcome for Palestinian Israelis is what Bourdieu calls “the somatization of social relations of domination” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992:24), the assumption of a habitus that collaborates in their own oppression.

Having extrapolated an outline of the field of power we can now look at the fields in which Rabinowitz finds evidence of dissonance and/or resistance. These fields are education, local politics, real estate, sports and medicine.

The Palestinian residents of Natzerat Illit send their children to Palestinian schools in Nazareth. They are not wanted in Jewish schools and the schools in Nazareth have exceptional academic records. Daycare, though, is a different story. After a mixed nursery school resulted in complaints from Jewish parents a Palestinian nursery school was set up in Natzerat Illit by the Natzerat Illit council. Because the school is state funded it has a Jewish ‘language assistant’ to teach the children Hebrew and the children are expected to attend all (Jewish) national holiday celebrations along with the Jewish schools. As the Palestinian teacher and most of the children are Christians they are permitted to celebrate Christian holidays at the school. Clearly part of the nursery schools agenda is the production of a cohort of ‘good Arabs’ and the socialisation of the Palestinian children into the Jewish social order. Rabinowitz argues that the overwhelming tendency of Palestinian parents to send their children to schools in Nazareth even after sending them to the Natzerat Illit nursery demonstrates a lack of misrecognition on their part. He cites Bourdieu’s claim that when the arbitrary power behind pedagogic authority is revealed the authority must collapse, and points out that this does not happen.

The problem is that Rabinowitz takes a narrow view. Extrapolating again from his ethnography we find that at the Palestinian schools in Nazareth teach their students Hebrew, and that some students will go on to Jewish universities in order to gain tertiary qualifications. Once again, the Palestinian pragmatism that Rabinowitz salutes leads to their ultimate assimilation. What is at stake in this field is the reproduction of the dominant system, and in this the Jewish state succeeds. The students may be educated in a Palestinian environment but they will learn Hebrew and they aspire to join the Jewish education system eventually. The development of a state-run nursery for Palestinian children in Natzerat Illit indicates a willingness by the state to absorb Palestinian Israelis in certain, controlled ways, but also a reluctance to embrace them completely. Education of Palestinians within the Jewish system is one way of achieving the de-ethnicisation of a Palestinian collective, especially when the Palestinian teacher is just the kind of ‘good Arab’ it is attempting to produce.⁹ The misrecognition here is embedded in two assumptions – that the Jewish nursery is harmless, and that the pursuit of achievement at Jewish universities does not serve the dominant Jewish class.¹⁰

It was in the field of local politics that Rabinowitz found the most significant example of resistance. It came in the form of a Palestinian Israeli independent candidate who was confident, eloquent and confrontational. Traditionally, the involvement of Palestinian Israelis in local politics amounts to client-patron relationships where votes are bought using benefits such as improved access to utilities. In this way the Palestinian Israelis literally sell out in order to improve their access to the rights guaranteed to them by the declaration of the independence of the state of Israel. The other option is to vote for the Palestinian-Jewish joint-venture communist party (The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, or DFP). In 1975 Nazareth became the first urban municipality to be controlled by a DFP-led coalition, and the coalition rules still (Rabinowitz, 1997:28). In Natzerat Illit, however, the DFP is not in such a powerful position. During the period of Rabinowitz’ ethnography (1988-89) there was increased frustration at the municipal neglect of al-Kūrūm, the Palestinian settlement area that was re-zoned into the Natzerat Illit municipality. This led to the development of an independent candidate list. Initially the instigators sought Israeli support and Israeli candidates for the list, but none were forthcoming so the project became distinctly Palestinian and distinctly political. Rather than promising to achieve anything, the campaign was waged on ideological statements, on Palestinian Israeli unity and identity. One candidate was successfully elected to the council.

Rabinowitz draws a distinction between political doing and political being. He describes ‘political doing’ as a results-focused political strategy, exemplified by the vote-selling tactic. ‘Political being’ on the other hand is representation-focused – observable benefits are less important than the integrous representation of a Palestinian Israeli collective. Once again I must take a more pessimistic view. Either way, Palestinian Israelis affirm the legitimacy of the system that prescribes their domination by working within it. The Palestinian candidate is isolated and powerless to achieve anything, but his involvement diffuses Palestinian dissatisfaction, verifies Israel’s commitment to liberal democracy and forces him to play the game by the rules. What is at stake is the ability to affect a range of fields, the ability to change the rules. The ultimate result is a trade off – on the one hand the Palestinian Israelis become an integral part of their own oppression, but on the other hand it is possible that they will eventually be able to impact on the source of the oppression. The cases of Black Civil Rights in America and South Africa highlight just how long this process might take, and just how much it might cost.

The fields of real estate, sport and medicine can be summarised in similar ways. They all have as part of their habitus the basic tenets of liberal democracy at an individual level – pragmatism, professionalism and meritocracy. It is in these fields that the dissonance between opinion and action is most obvious. The examples that highlight this are the selling of property by Jewish Israelis to Palestinian Israelis, the hiring of a Palestinian Israeli coach to a Jewish basketball team, and the patronization of a Palestinian Israeli paediatrician based in Nazareth by many Jewish families of Natzerat Illit. In all three cases pragmatic concerns appear to undermine Zionism, yet the goodwill, trust or respect shown towards individual Palestinians in these cases are never extended to The Palestinians (that is - the collective), nor do the positive characteristics attributed to individual Palestinians in these field alter the Jewish stereotype of The Palestinians. Rabinowitz argues that at an individual level Jews are willing to make pragmatic exceptions for Palestinians they consider to be acting rationally and with recourse to the values of pragmatism, professionalism and meritocracy. As Torstick points out “This is not a new insight -- a number of scholars have noted that positive encounters between individuals do not translate into improved inter-group relations” (Torstick, 1998:287).

Clearly it comes back down to the distinction between the Palestinian Israeli collective and the Palestinian Israelis individual: the Palestinian Israeli collective is the subject of Zionist rhetoric and is thus dealt with according to the Zionist perspective; the individual Palestinian Israeli is a member of the liberal democracy that is Israel and when behaving as such is entitled to be treated at least as a third grade citizen. The Palestinians Israelis as a collective are associated with the Palestinian Palestinians and with threats to the Jewish nation. The individual Palestinian Israeli, on the other hand, is perceived as a rational actor within a meritocratic system. The dissonance is not as critical as it appears; it is simply a case of different fields of action, complete with different stakes and dispositions. In some fields the Palestinian Israelis are treated as a collective, in some fields they are treated as individuals.

What is critical is the misrecognition. Other than denying its existence in the Palestinian Israeli negotiation of the split education system Rabinowitz does not discuss misrecognition in any detail. The misrecognition evident in all of the vignettes that Rabinowitz represents, on the part of both Palestinian and Jewish Israelis, is essentially misrecognition of what is at stake in a given field. In the field of education, for example, the Palestinian residents act as if it is the educational of their child that is at stake. Since the nursery school is not providing real education it is not considered of concern that it is run by the state. On the other hand, education at a Palestinian school is very important because it provides a better education and a better educational experience. But this is clearly another example of the “the somatization of social relations of domination” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992:24). What is really at stake in education is the reproduction of the social order and the re-affirmation of the position of the dominant group, and in this respect the nursery school is a socialising agent of the state, and the Palestinian schools unintentionally lay some of the groundwork for the process that the state will continue in other ways. On a broader level, Jewish Israelis believe that in the field of nation building what is at stake is the creation of an exclusively Jewish homeland as portrayed by Zionism, but actually what is at stake is the creation of a strong, legitimate and liberal democratic nation which will continue to privilege the dominant class.

Obviously this cannot be a complete praxeological rendering of ethnic relations in Natzerat Illit because not all of the information is available from the text and extrapolating from it is not entirely reliable. However, based on this re-interpretation of Rabinowitz’s findings it seems that application of Bourdieu’s joint concepts of field, habitus and capital could resolve some of the issues Rabinowitz identifies in his ethnography, particularly his questioning of anthropological discourse regarding resistance. Rabinowitz describes the resistance strategies of Palestinian Israelis as ad hoc strategies that subvert the desire for revolution but do not produce lasting change. He describes resistance as “a paradoxic vehicle of cooptation” (Rabinowitz, 1997:180 and questions the romantic view that resistance is the precursor to revolution. That much of the resistance employed by dominated groups is ultimately futile is not a new concept, but Bourdieu really captures the paradox that Rabinowitz identifies in his statement “Resistance can be alienating and submission can be liberating. Such is the paradox of the dominated and there is no way out of it” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992:24). Rabinowitz’s exploration of Palestinian Israeli resistance in Natzerat Illit demonstrates that the seeds of misrecognition are to be found in the habitus. The resistance strategies that Rabinowitz presents all involve the assumption of liberal democratic values and the misrecognition of what is at stake, and result in the de-ethnicising of the Palestinian residents. Rabinowitz alludes to the occurrence of more violent Jewish-Palestinian interaction in Natzerat Illit but does not expand on it.¹¹ I can’t help but wonder whether these other strategies employed by Jewish and Palestinian Israelis to negotiate their relations have been omitted because they are not sanctioned by the liberal democratic values of the dominant class.

References

Bourdieu, Pierre and Wacquant, Loic J. D. 1992 An invitation to Reflexive

Sociology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press

Emmett, Chad F 1998 Review of ‘Overlooking Nazareth: The Ethnography of

Exclusion’ in Middle East Journal vol. 52, no. 4, autumn 1998: pp621-2

Rabinowitz, Dan 1997 Overlooking Nazareth: The Ethnography of Exclusion in

Galilee. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Torstick, Rebecca 1998 Review of ‘Overlooking Nazareth: The Ethnography of

Exclusion’ in American Journal of Sociology vol. 104, no. 1, pp287-8

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