Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 15:343–368, 2008
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1070-289X print / 1547-3384 online
DOI: 10.1080/10702890802073274
343
Land of Symbols: Cactus, Poppies, Orange and Olive
Trees in Palestine
Nasser Abufarha
Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin–Madison,
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
This article examines the ways in which Palestinians experience belonging to a
place and how these experiences and their related ideas and symbols inform social
organization through their representation, performance, and manipulations over
time. In particular, I explore the articulation of symbols and symbolic representa-
tions in relation to the Palestinian encounter with the Zionist project in Palestine
starting from the early twentieth century to the present. I demonstrate how domi-
nant symbols change according to changes in the political realities and shifts in
the dominant agencies. The most prominent aspect of Palestinians’ representa-
tions of nationhood and peoplehood through these different symbols across time
has been the articulation of their rootedness in the land of Palestine. Hence, the
Palestinian “narration” of nationness has been a narration of communities and
peoplehood in relation to the land, a narration of formation and reformation in the
Palestinian cultural imaginary in the face of its reconfiguration by the Jewish
nationalist project in Palestine.
Key Words: Palestine, symbolism, landscape, Palestinian-Israeli conflict, identity
Land lies at the center of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict both in its
materiality and in ideas about the land. However, had the materiality
of the land been the primary subject of contention, the mediation of
the conflict would have been easier to conduct because material things
can be substituted through compensation or replacement of materials
with similar properties. It is the ideas about the land and places that
are key to understanding the conflict. These ideas encompass the
space which land occupies in Palestinian cultural life: the way Pales-
tinians relate to the land and places and how they embody belonging
to their environment. This complex and intimate relationship between
embodiment and emplacement makes the place a primary source for
understanding local knowledge (Feld and Basso 1996). This article
examines the ways in which Palestinians’ experience, memory, and
images of place are evoked amongst individuals and communities and

344 N. Abufarha
how these experiences formulate ideas and symbols that inform action
and social organization through their representation, performance,
and manipulations over time.
The most prominent aspect of Palestinians’ representations of
nationhood and peoplehood across time since their encounter with the
Zionist project in Palestine around the turn of the twentieth century
has been the articulation of their rootedness in the land of Palestine.
Hence, the Palestinian “narration” of nationness (Bhabha 1990) has
been a narration of the relationship of communities and peoplehood to
the land, a narration of the place and its formation and reformation in
the Palestinian cultural imaginary in the face of the Jewish nationalist
project in Palestine. As Israel reconfigures Palestine as a Jewish
national homeland (Abu el Haj 2001), Palestinians rely on the recon-
struction of Palestine in the Palestinian cultural imaginary through
cultural representations and performances to maintain the relation-
ship to the land and a sense of hominess in the face of the Israeli phys-
ical isolation of Palestinians. These cultural representations and
performances on the one hand culturally compensate for the increased
Palestinian physical isolation on the land; on the other hand, they con-
stitute processes of nation-making.
This article maps out the multiple dimensions land has in Palestin-
ian culture and how it persists as a constant dominant feature of Pales-
tinian identity construction and transformation. Other scholars have
demonstrated the prominence of belonging to place in Palestinian iden-
tity constructions. Examples include Paramenter (1994) on Palestinian
identity and place in Palestinian literature. Swedenburg (1990)
illustrates how Palestinians identify with the fellahin.1 Swedenburg
(1995), on the history of the Palestinian 1936 revolt and its historical
consciousness among Palestinians, demonstrates that Palestinians in
general identify with the culture of the fellahin in their cultural repre-
sentation of Palestine whereby the attachment of their identity to the
land is exemplified in the fellahin life that is intertwined with their
land. In this article I explore Palestinian representation of peoplehood
and nationness in their environment across time by exploring dominant
Palestinian symbols. I focus on the prominent role cultural perfor-
mances and representations play in unifying the narrative and the for-
mulation of collective cultural conceptions in the cultural imaginary
across space and time. As symbols are articulated they become a
medium of experiencing through melding these symbols back into expe-
riences by their performance (Low and Lawrence-Zuniga 2003). Thus,
symbols play a dominant role in unifying Palestinian identity by unify-
ing the Palestinian experience across conditions of exile, fragmentation,
and isolation. In fact, popular culture, broadly defined, has constituted