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The Grammar of the Intifada:
Stones and Watermelons
By Mohammad Ahmed Khatir
Amman
The Palestinian intifada is a prolific event, which reflects a creative talent and a spirited attachment to the land. It has not bred a narrow nationalist vision, but an aspiration to regain usurped rights, and to preserve the heritage of the past as a determinant of the present and future Palestinian sense of identity.
A more meaningful approach to the intifada than the monotonous monitoring of its daily developments is to invest its details with a humane significance in such a way as to extract an epistemological model. This is what Dr Abdel Wahhab Al-Messeiri does in his Encyclopedia of Jewish and Zionist Concepts and Terms.
The word intifada (literally “shaking up” in Arabic) suggests an interesting semantic and cultural paradigm in the context of the Arab Islamic world. The root of the word intifada is nafada which means “shook up” or “shook off” (the default in Arabic is the past tense of the verb), e.g. as of clothes to remove dust from them. The actual meaning of the word is “a creative movement that generates something new out of something old.” The implicit meaning is that the thing being shaken off – the Zionist occupation of Palestine – has not grown firm roots.
Another meaning of nafada is “scrutinized,” which is exactly what the young people of the intifada have been doing. Other meanings include “clearing a highway of bandits” and “dispatching a group of reconnoitering scouts.”
The word carries undertones of abundance and the ability to reproduce, e.g. as of ripening grapevines, and female fertility (a characteristic of Palestinian women).
The word is also used in idioms meaning to “shed off” laziness, “get rid of” depression or “stand up briskly.” The linking thread in all of these meanings is the presence of an inert, static power that has taken a dynamic from. The source of motion is internal, not external to the system in question. This makes intifada a more accurate label than thawra meaning revolution. A revolution implies some kind of discontinuity, such as the French or the Bolshevist revolutions. In the case of the intifada, what was implicit has become explicit. It is a state of continuity rather than discontinuity.
Stones in the intifada are more than an effective weapon. Rock and stone are recurrent motifs in the Arab Islamic literary and religious traditions. One of the most famous metaphors in Arabic literature involves the image of a rock. In Imru’ al-Qays’s Mu’allaqa (one of the seven long famous odes in classical Arabic poetry), a massive rock that is driven downhill by a large waterfall makes the vehicle, and the poet’s horse, the tenor. The Quran tells how the army of an elephant-mounted Abyssinian Emperor, who wanted to demolish the Ka`bah, was confounded by flights of birds sent by God, which pelted the invaders with “rocks” (missiles) from hellfire. In Islamic law, an adulterer or an adulteress must be stoned to death. Muslims also pray for God’s protection against the ‘Accursed Devil,’ who deserves to be stoned. In Hajj, one of the five main pillars of Islam, an important feature is the ritual stoning of a column representing Satan. Another rite of Muslim pilgrimage is to kiss or wave to the “Black Stone” situated by the Ka`bah in Makkah. The Ka`bah itself is a massive cuboid structure built of rock. In line with this tradition, the poetry of the Palestinian intifada is rich in references to land, mountains and rocks.
The impact of the model of the intifada has even shaped the local dress code. Palestinians tend to adopt the same dress styles. Hence, it becomes difficult for the enemy to differentiate between individuals, and almost impossible to track them down. (In the case of the Algerian revolution, there was a somewhat a similar situation. Males were often indiscriminately called Mohammads, and females Fatimas. To the enemy, this was an overwhelming tactic). Clothes shops have automatically become standard places to help stone-throwers change with the help of their willing shopkeepers. In a few minutes, the stone-thrower comes out in a different guise to join the human deluge once again.
The model of the intifada does not involve continuous growth, i.e. it does not move toward a climax where it burns itself out bringing an end to history. Instead, it glows and fades at intervals. It neither blazes violently, nor dies out completely. The people of the intifada have become highly conversant. They can do in a couple of hours what normally takes two days to be done by others. They have become more capable of staging innumerable protests without being crushed in the process.
The leaders of the intifada have wisely endorsed the idea of shops opening for a few hours a day to satisfy the daily needs of the people. In this short respite, people behave as they would under normal circumstances, and thus the entire community is continuously mobilized. The limited opening hours, however, preclude the monotony of the mundane aspects of everyday life. Once the stone-throwers have stocked their essential needs, they turn once again to their exulting acts of resistance.
Palestinians have managed to survive hard times, not by rejecting these times, but by dealing courageously with hardships. They have built more experience, togetherness, solidarity and compassion; something the enemy can do little to frustrate.
The Palestinian community resorts to various tactics to raise the effectiveness of the intifada. As people began to realize that enemy troops could identify stone-throwers by their dusty hands, they instructed their children and youths to carry damp towels to remove any identification marks after their heroic acts. Instead of rocks, they began to use iron weights for heavier artillery. Strategically, this is a form of escalation in the use of available resources. Logistically, an iron weight is easier to carry and hide than a collection of rocks.
One may imagine children returning home with their own stories of daring acts against Israelis. The pride, the self-confidence and the hatred of the enemy those children bring home consolidate the sense of togetherness in the Palestinian community. Stone-throwers who earlier hid in girls’ schools to escape their Jewish pursuers used to create panic. But now the reaction is one of self-possession and pretended spontaneity to hide the stone-throwers in the throng.
The intifada is the longest civil disobedience in history. It made Israeli strategists believe that it could not be directly confronted, which led to the maneuvering circumventions in Madrid and Oslo. After six years, the enemy felt greatly exhausted, while the intifada was able to proceed indefinitely. Throughout the six years, alternative social management institutions have been created in a successful realization of the NGO community versus the centralized state. The resurgence of the intifada means that it is a potentially renewable model.
Folklore ballads hailing protests and struggle have been given special attention as they are derived from the traditionalism of the intifada community. But the most innovative form of disobedience based on traditionalist motifs is the so-called “watermelon gesture.” It resulted from the fact that raising the Palestinian flag was prohibited and incriminated by the occupation forces. So, instead of direct confrontation, Palestinians who encounter Israeli troops passing by, wave a halved watermelon at them. The gesture means the following:
- Palestine’s flag has the same color palette of a halved watermelon, i.e., red, green, white and black.
- Slicing a watermelon (a concrete object) is more significant than raising a flag (an abstract symbol).
- It is an entirely innovative weapon available at any greengrocer’s at any time.
- The Israeli enemy cannot possibly confiscate “watermelons,” or else it will be the laughing stock of the world.
- It is a perfectly economical and recyclable tool, i.e., it will be eaten after the individual has made his point.
- It may be universally used by people of all age groups.
- It provokes the enemy without giving it the opportunity to react directly and brutally.
- In the final analysis, the watermelon gesture reasserts the question of identity as the real arena of conflict.
- It is a perfectly popular weapon. Advocates of hamburger and disco culture can hardly think of a sliced watermelon as a substitute flag, consider songs as having a revolutionary value or using rocks as a weapon.
Such is the “grammar and rules” of the intifada. Other forms of protest in the context of intifada are variations on the main theme. No imported weapons are needed. No high organizational skills are required. Palestinians are stealing pigeons from Jewish farms to tie flaming pieces of cloth to their legs, and send them flying. The birds, which instinctively find their way back, cause various fires to start.
The intifada has deeply affected the parties to the conflict. Arabs and Palestinians have been redeemed of their fear. Their enemy, which once seemed unconquerable, can be defeated if they give up cognitive subordination, and deal with reality in terms of their own specific models.
On the international level, the intifada has removed Israel’s democratic mask. It is hardly acceptable now to boast of the Judaic-Christian and liberal traditions or other mottos that previously gained currency in the Western world.
The most important implication of the intifada, apart from practical results, is that it has undermined the Jewish Zionist dream at the roots. Settlers had entertained a sense of security based on the illusion that Arabs would ultimately give up and accept the situation as a fait accompli. But suddenly the oppressed revolted in a universal intifada. Illusions of luxurious housing and cheap Arab labor at hand have been replaced by nightmarish visions of children carrying rocks.
Rather than ask what has gone wrong and how to find a remedy, settlers – for the first time - are questioning the legitimacy of their own existence. The intifada has thus put the Arab-Israeli conflict back in the right perspective. In spite of current attempts to reduce the issue to a procedural dispute over passes, fire brigades and a tiny part of the occupied territories, the intifada has shown the issue to be much more comprehensive and far-reaching.
The intifada is not only a civil disobedience intended to liberate Palestine. It is also an integrated model, a vision of the universe that may be used to manage the Arab society in such a way as to mobilize its potential revolutionary and creative resources. The intifada has succeeded where all other Arab revolutionaries and ruling elites failed. Its achievement belongs to the Arab and Muslim peoples at large. It is a highly effective model of struggle, and its resurgence indicates its ability to survive that model. The intifada may abate occasionally, but only to rise again triumphantly, to become a bright star in a sky bedecked with very few glittering stars.
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