The Role of Collective Memory in Constructing National Identities

Ghassan Kanafani’s novella, Returning to Haifa, narrates the story of a Palestinian couple, Said and Safiyya, who fled their home Haifa during the catastrophe of 1948 - the Nakba. Amidst the violence and destruction of the Palestinian terrestrial, they left their five-month old son Khaldun behind. While leaving their son in the middle of the Israeli intervention may strike many readers as an unforgiving act of neglect and selfishness, Kanafani uses the plot twist as a deliberate literary device for it captures the definition of Palestinian resistance and the formation of their national identity after 1948. The core unifying aspect of the Palestinian identity since the nakba has centered on the idea of return. While the insinuation of return has differentiated over the years, from hopeful to hopeless or from the impossible to the possible, there has been one binding force that has insisted on the idea of return as a core aspect of Palestinian resistance identity: memory. Palestinians, under occupation or  living in exile overseas, have been committed to their collective memory of their homeland. Nonetheless, the Palestinian memory of the origins of the conflict as a form of resistance to the wide held belief that “Palestine was a land without a people for a people without a land” is simultaneously being resisted by a counter narrative. However, the nature and conditions of which both contesting memories emerged from are imperative in understanding why the occupation has lasted over 60 years despite the obvious military might and defeat of the Israeli state.

Memory, as Edward Said writes, has been a focal point of academic disciplines, for it is directly useful in constructing various notions of identity: national and individual. These two forms of identity are not mutually exclusive. Memory as many scholars argue is a project of nationalism; it is “far from being a neutral exercise in facts and basic truths...it is to some considerable extent a nationalist effort premised on the need to construct a desirable loyalty to an insider’s understanding of one’s country, tradition, and faith” (Said, 176). Therefore, when assessing political and historical narratives, memory - individual and collective - is not an adequate measure of the truth. Memory serves as the most dominant pillar of history. However, while history may be thought of as an indisputable discipline of past events and facts, it remains in constant contestation with itself for it is simultaneously a constructed narrative served to rationalize and justify the politicization of a nation state’s individual and collective people. 

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict represents a fascinating example of a people who are committed to two contesting collective memories that both reinforce the continuation of the occupation and transcend the geopolitics of the conflict. Many questions arise from the mere theory of collective memory: if collective memory is useful in constructing national identity, how do you deny a people’s memory of their experiences? Is it possible to objectively analyze the authenticity of collective memory? Is it possible for both the Israeli and Palestinian collective memories to co-exist as true historical narratives? If not, is one more legitimate than the other? 

Returning to Haifa serves as the perfect example of how two contesting narratives co-exist and yet do not solve the practical solutions of co-existence. Kanafani takes us through the journey of Said and Safiya’s return to Haifa twenty years after the creation of Israel. As established earlier, they left their son behind believing that when they return to their land he will be there - the belief in temporal exile. At first, the narration of the journey identifies a certain nervous excitement of returning to Haifa. As they begin to approach the land, a strange silence overcomes them. Kanafani describes that “the steering wheel felt heavy between his palms, which had begun to sweat profusely than they ever had before.” It occurred to him to say to his wife, “I know this is Haifa, but it refuses to acknowledge me.” His wife couldn’t believe that she was going to see Haifa again but as Said says, “You’re not seeing it. They’re showing it to you.”