Abstract
In conditions of intense ethnic conflict, intercultural cooperation of individuals and groups might find itself beholden to the logic of identity: ethnic heads are counted, distributed and managed as the building blocks of cooperation. We are already familiar with the dyads: Jewish–Arab, Hindu–Muslim, Catholic–Protestant and so on. Accordingly, we face the choice of claiming identity either as opponents or as partners in conflict – other ways are ruled out. From a Deleuzian perspective, this means abandoning new lifestyles by resurrecting strata based on dominant identities. Such, I submit, is the case with Galilee – the Arab–Jewish Bilingual School established in 1998 as a radical form of cooperation in Israel/Palestine. By applying Deleuzian tools – in particular, the role Deleuze bestows upon infinitive verbs – I examine unrealised potentials for continuing transformation.
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Notes
1 As Azoulay and Ophir have pointed out, there is no longer any discrete political entity or object of research called the ‘State of Israel’ strictly within the international Green-Line (Azoulay and Ophir, 2008). Rather, they contend, the formal democracy within ‘Israel proper’ and the patently undemocratic regime of Israeli occupation (of the West Bank and Gaza) have merged over time into a single body of domination, in spite of their dissimilarities. The regime has thus doubled, through a peculiar form of separation and fusion of its parts. Even taking into account the Palestinian Authority, this approach urges to conceive the region extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan as one complex body politic. For this reason, I use the term Israel/Palestine.
2 The study was supported by ZeitStiftung, and planned and conducted together with Dr Aura Mor-Sommerfeld (University of Haifa) to whom I am grateful for her always supportive and instructive leadership.
3 All members in the research team have a strong affinity with the school, as professionals, parents or supporters.
4 Since 1948, Israel has been engaged in a systematic process of colonising the cultural and physical space, such that cultural life, land and demography are dominated by the Jewish majority (Lustick, 1980). This policy stems from an ethno-nationalist logic that produces ‘patterns of segregation between the Jewish dominant majority and the Arab subordinate minority’ (Yacobi, 2002, p. 171). For others, Israeli society already has the hallmarks of an ethnocratic apartheid with token, toothless formal democratic procedures, rather than a true liberal democracy (Davis, 2003; Yiftachel, 2006).
5 This separation is reinforced through stark differences in modernisation of infrastructures of all kinds and inequalities in all spheres of life, orchestrated by the state since the infamous Judaisation of the Galilee, a national programme of colonisation launched in the late 1960s involving the expropriation of Arab lands to build new communities, towns and cities catering solely to Jewish citizens.
6 The non-profit organization ‘Hand in Hand’ was established in 1997 with the aim of promoting bilingual schools for Jewish and Arab children. Galilee is the first such school, out of four currently in operation. See www.handinhandk12.org/. These schools are recognised by, and partly financed by, the Ministry of Education. It should also be noted that in 1984 a bilingual/bi-national school was established at Neveh Shalom/Wahat al-Salaam(Oasis of Peace), a village founded jointly by Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens.
7 Two separate incidents by way of illustration: in October 2000 (the first days of the second Intifadah) a crisis broke out between Misgav Regional Council and the school, when the school was accused of not hoisting the Israeli flag. On another occasion, relations between the school and the Ministry of Education became tense following the Ministry's refusal to approve and support the extension of the school to include senior high-school.
8 Although the school is within ‘Israel proper’, and the populations attending the school are citizens of Israel, I am using ‘Arab-Palestinians’ instead of ‘Arab-Israelis’. What I respect here is the community's own sense of identity as expressed by it.
9 See for example the Jewish-Arab network for coexistence; dozens of different organizations work in different areas: www.coexnet.org.il/site/common/index.php?where=about/en/index.php.
Each interview was audio-recorded and lasted between 2 and 3 hours. All interviews were conducted away from the school, in places decided upon in cooperation with the teachers.
Aura Mor-Sommerfeld was the leading academic at the school during its early stages, and I personally became part of this community years ago when my son studied there, and I have been ever since supportive of the school.
I am leaning here on the way Arun Saldanha has defined viscosity in his book Psychedelic White, 2008.
As Williams explains, without the bodily aspect of events (things, actions and passions), ‘the infinitives would be abstract and lacking determined relations to one another’ (Williams, 2008, p. 33).
I am grateful to James Williams for his valuable and constructive comments on this point.
In the Tournier text, Deleuze takes us on a journey to rediscover the pre-personal world of individuating factors and forces, in order to expose the power of the Other-structure and its limited habitual possibilities.
For this first part of the analysis I lean on the way Arnott explains Deleuze's exercise on Tournier's Robinson (Arnott, 2001).
This line of analysis follows Buchanan's call to build on the notions of Deleuze and Guattari's ‘passive syntheses’ for an efficient means ‘of mapping social and political attitudes’ to ‘reach an understanding of contemporary culture’ (Buchanan, 2008, pp. 73–74).
Al-Nakbah – Arabic for ‘The Calamity’ or ‘The Catastrophe’ – is the Arab name for the Israeli War of Independence of 1948–1949, when nearly 800 000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes by forces of the nascent Israeli state and their lands seized, leading to a devastation of Palestinian society.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that I was personally involved in the initiative.
A tactic of not linking the texts quoted to AL1 or HL1 (to diminish the weight of essentialist naming) was almost totally foreclosed by the heavy ‘identitarian’ character of the speech.
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The writing of this article was supported by a Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship within the 7th European Community Framework Programme.
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Svirsky, M. Captives of identity: The betrayal of intercultural cooperation. Subjectivity 4, 121–146 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2011.1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2011.1