Palestinians and the Arab Uprisings: political activism and narratives of home, homeland, and home-camp

ABSTRACT

This article examines the ways in which Palestinians have been affected by the Arab Uprisings and their aftermath, especially in light of their statelessness and protracted refugeedom. It does so by analysing the narratives of 49 Palestinians who were based in France, Sweden, and the UK at the time of interview between 2012 and 2014. We show that the forms of mobilisation and/or identifications that Palestinians in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and beyond engaged in with regard to the Arab Uprisings, transcended the link between the host state and the homeland. They extended to a plurality of in-between spaces such as Palestinian refugee camps, Arab host states, and Arab countries experiencing the uprisings. We argue that these in-between spaces became salient to broader conceptions of Palestinian identity and activism because Palestinian-ness is shaped not only through attachment to place, but also through particular experiences that are associated with Palestinian identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Palestinians
• identity
• political activism
• Arab Uprisings

Acknowledgements

This article draws on research conducted as part of a broader comparative project led by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, (Re)Conceptualising Stateless Diasporas, that examines the experiences of Palestinians and Kurds in France, Sweden and the UK, and forms part of the Oxford Diaspora Programme funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Paladia Ziss and Barzoo Eliassi provided invaluable research assistance in the completion of interviews with Palestinians in the UK and Sweden, respectively.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Libya and Syria were selected for analysis for two reasons: they are sites of prior research with Palestinian refugees conducted by the authors and they offer contrasting examples of almost total invisibility (Libya) versus hypervisibility (Syria) in accounts of Palestinians affected by the Arab Uprisings.

2 This article forms part of a broader comparative project funded by the Leverhulme Trust, which examines individual and collective meanings of diaspora and statelessness from the perspectives of Roma, Kurds, and Palestinians based in France, Italy, Sweden, and the UK.

3 Nakba is the Arabic term used to denote the Palestinian catastrophe arising from the mass exodus from Palestine in 1948.

4 Following the work of geographer Massey (2005), we see space and place as relational categories that are constitutive of each other. Thus, we think of place as the product of intersections within the wider realm of interrelations that constitute space.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Levehulme Trust [F/08 000/H]. The portion of the research involving interviews with Palestinians in France was also funded by a Council for International Programs grant from Iowa State University.