Permanent Transitions: Collective Identity Formation in Israel,

While the Israel-Palestinian conflict proceeds unresolved, the sixty years since the triumph of Israeli independence also marks the painful legacy of a Palestinian population dispersed in a seemingly permanent diaspora. Our present study inquires to what extent the Palestinian status as refugee shapes the circumstances in which they live and the types of identification that follow. In analyzing the ethnic Palestinian identity we examine three distinct regional (two of which are also national) sectors—Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories. A constructivist view would drive the expectation that under different political, economic and cultural circumstances, there will be observable changes to the ethnic identity repertoire. Three hypotheses follow: First, reconstructions of Palestinian identity will take place in states undergoing substantive efforts to integrate or assimilate the population, forming observable culture and loyalty shifts from ethnic to national identities. Second, states where Palestinians experience greater economic integration and upward social mobility will be more successful in producing a national civic identity. Our third hypothesis takes an opposing position, asserting that in the absence of sustained and substantive efforts to integrate the Palestinian population a more ethnically driven and primordially-defined identity will emerge through groups, such as Hamas and the early PLO movement. Ultimately, the research concludes that the tools for integration exist, but national leaders must be willing to integrate Palestinian minorities, otherwise over a prolonged period of repressive economic and political realities, alienation may lead again to ethnic violence as it has so many times in the past