Brothers Apart

The Introduction opens with a recounting of the reaction that poet and journalist Rashid Husayn encountered from Arab delegates at the 1959 World Youth Festival. The encounter highlights the fraught relationship between Palestinian intellectuals in Israel and their Arab counterparts during a time in which the latter knew very little (and were extremely suspicious of) the former. It then provides an overview of how the Palestinian citizens of Israel came to be isolated in the aftermath of the 1948 war and the strategies they developed to try to overcome this isolation. The last sections discuss the role that textual production and circulation play in these strategies of resistance; define who is an organic intellectual in the context of this study; and lay out the concept of decolonizing citizens.

This chapter lays out the major contours of Palestinian cultural and intellectual history before 1948 by examining the lives of Hanna Naqqara, Emile Habibi, and Hanna Abu Hanna, all of whom became important figures in the Palestinian intellectual and cultural scene in Israel. They were part of a newly mobilized group of nationalist- and leftist-minded Palestinian Arab intellectuals who disseminated an anticolonial discourse rooted in calls for social justice, sovereignty, and pan-Arab cultural pride. During the interwar period, as British rule became entrenched and as Zionist immigration increased, these intellectuals developed strategies of resistance that included the dissemination of anticolonial discourses through schools, books, the press, poetry, social clubs, and radio programs. Examining these dynamics challenges the notion that 1948 was solely a moment of rupture since many of the strategies laid out here would continue to be used in the post-1948 period.

This chapter discusses cultural and intellectual developments during the first few years after the establishment of Israel. By 1955 two competing narratives came to dominate the local Arab public sphere. One narrative, propagated by the Israeli government and establishment figures on the pages of al-Yawm, demanded that Palestinian citizens be loyal to the state that was undertaking the modernization of their society. The second narrative, disseminated primarily by intellectuals affiliated with the Communist Party of Israel (CPI) through al-Ittihad and al-Jadid, drew on the legacy of Arab leftist discourses to adopt a more confrontationist stance that pushed back against these Israeli demands. Drawing on tropes popularized in the interwar period, they stressed that Palestinians in Israel were part of a global struggle for social justice, decolonization, and national pride. Once these goals were achieved, they argued, Arabs and Jews in Israel could live together in harmony.

This chapter shows how regional debates between pan-Arab nationalists and communists about the best means to achieve decolonization reverberated among Palestinian intellectuals in Israel. After an initial spirit of cooperation following the tragedy of the Kafr Qasim massacre, subsequent rivalries between communists and pan-Arab nationalists in the region also reverberated back home. This led to the rise of Arab nationalist voices on the pages of the MAPAM-sponsored al-Fajr journal and the short-lived paper of the al-Ard movement, both of which challenged the CPI's position as the primary champion of the Palestinians in Israel. This chapter also demonstrates the role that poetry festivals played in facilitating expressions of belonging and solidarity with global decolonization movements. This was especially true for a younger generation of poets, including Mahmoud Darwish and Samih al-Qasim, who would soon become leading spokesmen of the Palestinians.

This chapter discusses how Palestinian intellectuals in Israel drew on global decolonization movements to challenge Israel more forthrightly than before. Darwish in particular pushed a line of argument that tied Israel to other settler-colonial regimes, notably France in Algeria. As a result of such challenges, Darwish, Qasim, and other poets found themselves under house arrest or in prison. In addition, the Ard group issued a memorandum to international bodies in 1964 laying out the systems of oppression the Palestinian community faced under Israeli rule, leading to greater international awareness of their circumstances. Meanwhile, Palestinians in exile began drawing attention to the ways in which Palestinians inside the Green Line were resisting their ongoing physical and political isolation both politically and culturally. Novelist and critic Ghassan Kanafani was especially emphatic in situating the Palestinian "resistance poets" within a larger temporal and spatial context of the Palestinian struggle for justice.

This chapter discusses the impact of the June 1967 War and the Israeli occupation of the remaining Palestinian lands on the dynamics laid out earlier. The occupation allowed Palestinians on either side of the Green Line to reconnect with friends and family members after spending nearly two decades apart. The war also led Arab intellectuals to look anew at the Palestinian resistance poets, whose defiant verses inspired those still reeling from the shock of the defeat. As a result, Darwish and Qasim were celebrated by Arab delegates at the 1968 World Youth Festival in Sofia. But their heroic image as resistance poets was complicated because they differed from many Arab intellectuals concerning what Palestinian resistance was and how it was to be achieved. Meanwhile, Israeli restrictions on the ability of cultural producers to travel and meet with one another led Darwish to self-imposed exile in Cairo.

In addition to summarizing the main arguments of the book, the Conclusion carries forward the story of the relationship between Palestinian intellectuals in Israel and their Arab counterparts to the present day. The 1976 Land Day protests in the Galilee marked the first such protest to feature solidarity actions by Palestinians and Arabs in the region. But as Palestinians in Israel were identifying more closely with the Palestinian national movement, Palestinian leaders in the late 1980s and 1990s largely excised this group from the national agenda. This began to change in the twenty-first century as Palestinians in Israel became more integrated into the Palestinian national agenda, even as there continued to be misunderstandings about them in the Arab world and as they continued to face sanctions from the Israeli authorities at home.