Salim Tamari Conference and Tawfiq Canaan

Dr. Tamari's paper was a difficult read mostly because of the obscurity of the subject matter. But he was able to make this doctor/ethnographer from the Mandate era interesting and relevant. When I was reading, I admit, I didn't quite see the relationship between lepers, lunatics, and saints but the video conference with Dr. Tamari helped explain the significance of this kind of work. When you think of history and culture as products of the elite class, the popular practices of the everyday working joe can reveal much more about reality in any historical context. The concept of nativism was way more intriguing when we heard/saw Dr. Tamari explain it in the conference as the search for roots. Or was it the search for the source of the roots? I have both in my notes.

I still take issue with some things in the text, and it's hard for me to tell if it's Tamari explaining himself or if it's Tamari explaining Canaan. The idea that identity is cumulative means there really is no one source or root to any present culture because it would mean that we all draw equally from the culture of 50 years ago, or 500 years ago, or 5000 years ago. It's nice to think that Palestinians revealed Biblical culture at the turn of the century but that is through the lens of 3000+ years of transformation since then. Am I stating the obvious here? I guess I just don't understand the thesis/point/jist of the whole article. It made me think though...

Especially interesting was this idea that the Palestinian culture experienced a great threat because of WWI. Outside factors like the war itself, the centralization of the political economy, and the emergence of this "cash-market nexus" all made 1914 a year of total transformation. I mean, they don't call it a World War for nothing; there was total transformation everywhere. What made the experience unique in Palestine? I wonder if Zionism was automatically associated with this greater threat of "modernity", thus dooming the entire enterprise from the get go. Is Jewish nationalism colonialist by nature? Or did the greater reshuffling of the international system affect the reception of Jewish immigrants to Palestine?

We briefly mentioned politics, and I was disappointed but not unsuprised to hear what Dr. Tamari thinks is the biggest obstacle to peace. Sorry if I'm reconstructing the dialogue here, I'll try to remember things accurately. The question was asked basically, "do you foresee any hope in the peace process right now/ in the near future?" And the answer was that unfortunately Israel still builds settlements. The outlook is especially bleak because US administrations have historically supported their construction, without pressuring the Israeli government to change its position. And then this was all related to how Israel is supposed to withdraw from the territories in the first place, according to Security Council Resolution 242.

Dr. Tamari mentioned something about how settlement construction represented the most extreme Israeli policy. This was frustrating because we never talked about how the Six Day War was started, we never talked about the Arab's rejection of the "land for peace" doctrine before 242 was even passed, we never talked about Israel's willingness to pull out of the territories in return for peace, security, and acceptance. Are we ever going to learn about the Suez War? The Straits of Tiran? The Khartoum Conference? I know I brought that one up. I just don't buy this argument and I've thought about this for too long now to discuss it with a level head.