Edward Said States Analysis

The west had been essential to the nation’s creation, and exerted its power in Israel. Israel’s leaders developed allegiances with western countries which had been essential in the formation of their country. Tension in the area grew, both inside and outside of the state, and violence was used against both sides. However, measures were not taken to undue the problems that had arisen from the unfair nature of the agreement. “Palestinians had been branded as ignorant, hostile, and violent” and non-Jewish groups found it difficult to practice their religion as they had before. Despite the obvious inequities that were growing, the west did little to alleviate the pain that it played a large part in creating. It seemed as if “People in the west seem so taken with material things, It’s as if they have nothing in their spirit, so they need to surround themselves

Within the span of a few years, the political, social, and cultural climate in Palestine was whiplashed from being under the control of the Ottoman Empire, to colonization and state building by Jewish immigrants from the diaspora, to British rule through mandate, and finally the establishment of the Israeli state. The rhetoric that was used in both Zionist and Arab Palestinian propaganda created a situation that was very complex under the surface, and needs to be approached with delicate care. Taking this into consideration, as historians it is important to remain as objective as possible when reading documents from both the Jewish and Arab side because they both will show a view of the conflict that will benefit them most. As situations change, so will these views and the tone of newspapers and consumerism will change along with it.

Edward Said's States is an excerpt from his book After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives. It's a story about Palestine, once a country, but now spread out into a million pieces of the people that once called it home. The pieces being more of memories of a time when Palestinians could be who they are, not a scattered and forgotten people. They all face a new struggle, a struggle to find their identity. "Identity- who we are, where we come from, what we are- is difficult to maintain in exile. Most other people take their identity for granted. Not the Palestinian, who is required to show proofs of identity more or less constantly." (Page 546) Said, being Palestinian himself, tells us this story in what was called a

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the one of the world’s oldest conflicts, and it is still an ongoing problem in the world. Zionists and Arabs: two groups with conflicting beliefs who both claim Israel as their own. In wake of the Holocaust the U.N decided to gift the Jews a homeland for the lives lost in the genocide. In 1947, the U.N Partition divided the land of Israel (Historic Palestine) into two separate states: Arab and Jewish. Since then, the state of Israel has been the center of conflict between the Arabs and the Zionists. As time passed the Zionists gained more land from winning the Six-Day War, and consequently the Palestinians had to live as refugees in other Arab countries. Additionally, more than 75% of the land belonged to

Any reference to conflict turns history into a reservoir of blame. In the presence of conflict, narratives differ and multiply to delegitimize the opponent and to justify one’s own action. Narratives shape social knowledge. The Israeli Palestinian conflict, both Jews and Muslims, view the importance of holding the territories through religious, ideological, and security lenses, based on belief that Palestine was given by divine providence and that the land belongs to either the Israelis or Palestinian’s ancestral home. Understanding these perspectives is required for understanding Palestinians’ and especially Israel’s strategy and role in entering the Oslo peace process. Despite

The essay States, by Edward Said, describes the trouble for Palestinians to find their identity due to the loss of their homeland. He also describes the situation of the Palestinians and the isolation that they feel through photographs that he had taken. Said has many different pictures throughout this essay and each of them play a part in supporting the main point of this essay. Said believes that, without a homeland, the Palestinians cannot have an identity and the Palestinians should not be content with being exiles forever. So the purpose of the pictures is to support and further strengthen this idea. The photographer wants the viewer to understand the struggle that the Palestinians are going through.

In addition, I will examine the current state of political and human rights in Israeli occupied West Bank and analyze how they are approaching a level of apartheid. Finally, I will summarize the effects of these social tensions between Israel and Palestinians in the terms of how potential open conflict could reignite.

However, attempting to understand my identity in postmodern Palestine, I felt the disconnect between the Palestinian’s

Ever since, Palestinians have had to adapt to new places and cultures in order to survive, which makes it more difficult for them to preserve their own. Said presents several examples of transculturation throughout the essay. For instance, the use of the Mercedes, even though Said describes it in negative terms, the use of the Mercedes has come in handy for Palestinians. Enduring one disaster after another, Palestinian identity is arduous to preserve in exile. It is a struggle of having no country. Our country is a big part of who we are. As we are born, we are destined to become a part of it. It becomes part of our identity. Things that we grew up with meant something to us. We usually treasure things that became part of our lives. Even unconsciously, we take hold of it. Home brings us memories, memories that we want to hold on up to our last breath.

Throughout Edward W. Said’s essay, “States”, he discusses the past of the Palestinians and expresses the struggles that arose and still occur. Palestinian nationalism was once an independent force in the Middle East. Yet, when the Palestinian’s homeland came to an end, destruction and dispossession began. Various wars emerged leaving the Palestinians to suffer. During this time period of violence, Palestine was being destroyed. In the process, Israel began to take over. Said tries to get readers to see what people don’t see about the hardships that came with being Palestinian. He writes about the destruction of their culture, land, value, homes, and their way of living due to violence.

Said starts his essay "States" off with an attention grabber and sets the scene. He is reeling his readers in, making the reader feel sympathetic towards the lifestyle of the people outside Arab City by using words and phrases such as "meager", "surprised", "sad", and "slightly uncomfortable". He lays out the setting in a refugee camp during a disastrous time. I feel he does this in hopes of readers wanting to find out more about the Palestinian people and the lives they have led. His test is not arranged in the general arrangement of essays. Instead, Said talks about the history of the Palestinians while putting some of his own past of him and his family in. He uses pictures to help the reader grasp how times were for them, which is a feature

To a Palestinian that has been displaced from his/her long time homeland, completely displaced by a foreign power. The tone of victimization is easily created. But to an Israeli, that has found security from, long term discrimination, in Israel’s own borders, it is easy for an Israeli perspective to claim the Jewish people had a legitimate claim to the land. Accounts from the Palestinian narrative will often, as Sylvain Ehrenfeld a writer for Ethical Culture, writes “[F]ocus on victimhood, their suffering and dispossession and their deep sense of injustice at being punished because of Europe’s treatment of Jews.”. Moreover, he goes on to elaborate that the Israeli have also created a tone of an unfailing connection to its land, and argues legitimacy for claim to the land that was found in former Palestine, present day Israel. He goes on to mention that both sides are guilty of creating their perspectives so single-mindedly. Both sides will often misrepresent the reality of the situation to gain the support of historians. This distortion of reality will in often cases skew accuracy, therefore creating a limitation to the recording of history.

He also uses descriptions of the images to add to their detail. Using these images and their descriptions can classify States as an autoethnographic text, as it was written to show the troubles faced by those who identify themselves as Palestinians. The

The Palestinians had a robust social, political, and class identity within Palestine; however, after the nakbah this life was systematically dismantled and reconstituted along national, radical, and traditionalist lines, the result of which is the new Palestinian-ness to which the national movement is oriented. Of course the Palestinian people existed before the nakbah, however, their consciousness was typical of agrarian peasants, based not in a national identity, but upon kinship ties, regional networks, and limited class solidarity (Sayigh, R., 13). This identity was perpetuated through many traditions and familial conditioning, which also formed the basis of extended kinship-solidarity networks (ibid.

The conflict between the nations of Palestine and Israel holds a lot of significance in today’s current events, and is a greatly debated and controversial topic. The conflict, commonly attributed to Jewish Zionism movements and forward settlement in the areas surrounding Jerusalem, is often seen as a two sided, illogical aggression between the neighbouring states. However; the conflict has roots that reach back to the age of imperialism, and to the conflict of World War I.