Introduction

This article examines social cohesion and community stability by looking at collective efforts to obtain food in the Nablus area of the West Bank. Firstly, by explaining the historical and political background of the region, this demonstrates how imposed isolation of Palestinian communities during the second intifada (2000-2005) has impacted local production distribution and consumption of food. Secondly, by looking at examples of how some communities dealing with adverse conditions of isolation were resilient in coping, and others were not, this offers insight into the differences in social and logistical situations between various communities that contributed to their organisation in endurance. Finally, considering the current influence of the international community and free trade reforms made by the Palestinian Authority (PA) after the end of the second intifada, this paper raises questions in attempts to explain how Nablus area communities which were recently able to maintain a minimum level of relative self-sufficiency, are now facing increasing levels of debt and poverty.

The city of Nablus is situated in a valley between the slopes of Mt. Ebal and Mt. Jerzim in the northern West Bank, and is historically the commercial centre of Palestine. Nablus’s Old City has been inhabited by a diverse population since the Roman period, and contains several ancient mosques, churches, and a Samaritan synagogue. The city has also been historically famous for the production of olive oil soap and is home to several soap factories that continue to produce soap using the original methods. Due to the political situation of continued occupation, the city and its surrounding villages have been under military siege throughout the second intifada. Strict restrictions on the movement of people and products between different communities continue to cause various difficulties for residents in obtaining food in this area and have created situations in which the populations of Palestinian communities have been forced to create unique methods to ensure food security.

As stipulated in the World Food Summit of 1996, food security is defined as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life”. According to an FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations) survey, 36 percent of the Nablus population (119,279 people) was estimated to be food insecure and a further 56 percent (182,646 people) was under threat of being food insecure in 2003 (FAO 2003) due to denial of physical access to lands and markets and restrictions on the movement of people and goods caused by long curfews and many military incursion (ibid). During 1999-2003, the food security situation in Palestine had deteriorated in general. Food production in home gardens among Nablus residents and the establishment of their own networks for food distribution in the community became coping mechanisms to increase their food security situation for fundamental daily survival. In December 2008, the government of Israel relaxed various restrictions (such as the extension of the opening hours for checkpoints surrounding Nablus city, removal of requirements for special permit for Palestinian to leave Nablus city), and as a result the levels of food insecurity in the urban areas decreased by 14 percent (FAO 2009).

 

Historical Background
Relying on Ottoman era literature, Beshara Doumani has illustrated the unique social and power relations that have existed historically in the Nablus region. The poetry of Shaykh Yusuf emphasizes the “cohesiveness of the region’s social formation and the shared sense of identity among its inhabitants versus that factionalism of multiple territorially based centres of power” (1995: 16). This highlights the alternative framework to the political hegemony of the centralized Ottoman government through the local solidarity of rural clans and influential merchants that represented the autonomy of Nablus. Unlike other urban centres such as Jerusalem and Hebron, Nablus not only had a large manufacturing base and was a key point in the networks of regional trade, but the city also had a strong connection with its hinterland. The villages which surrounded the city contained some of the richest agricultural lands in Palestine and the notable families in many of the villages consisted of the most prominent figures in Nablus society (ibid: 21). Much of the standardised social structure in Palestine, particularly of that in terms of interactions between communities, were lingering results of the Tanzimat (reorganisation/reforms), Ottoman reforms issued between 1839 and 1876, aimed at modernising the empire and integrating different ethnic groups. Under the Tanzimat, the religious institution was marginalized and lost much of its centrality in government (Khalidi 1997: 60), and a sharecropping system known as musha’a tenure, in which land is allotted to all members of the community according to their ability to cultivate, was implemented in every village. In order to ensure that one family grouping was not given a better quality allotment than another, the musha’a system divided the land into various plots throughout the village so that each family would receive an equal variety of terrain to cultivate. This was implemented to avoid creating class differences in the community. Land was redistributed among families on a yearly basis, but the right of a family to cultivate a specific portion of the musha’a was handed down from father to son (Patai 1949: 438-9). Aside from a percentage of capital or produce that would be paid as tax to the Ottomans, the crops would be distributed within the community or in some cases taken to markets in urban centres such as Nablus and Jerusalem.

In contemporary times, military restrictions have transformed the West Bank, dividing the landscape both physically and socially, and leaving Palestinian communities isolated from one another. Settlements and networks of Israeli only roads that connected them have geographically fragmented the West Bank, as have restrictions on water resources and the economic infrastructures inside of these Palestinian communities (Weizman 2007). Many rural communities in the West Bank have had increases in population but have not been allowed to expand or utilise their resources in order to properly maintain their populations, thus imposing new levels of poverty. Land regulations implemented since the early 1970s have in part frozen the agricultural resources of Arab farmers including water for irrigating land (Graham-Brown 1989: 58-59). Pollution of land caused by contamination to soil from arms munitions and toxic chemicals have left large portions of the once agriculturally rich land infertile. Through restrictions on land usage and confiscation of large areas for security zones surrounding settlements, Israeli control over resources has halted agricultural production in many Arab villages and caused dramatic shifts in rural life. Difficulties in accessing farmland have forced much of the rural population to migrate to Israel and other Arab countries to work as cheap labour, increased restrictions on travel following the second intifada have limited the ability of the rural population to find work leading to widespread unemployment. Other economic antagonisms implemented by isolation, such as strategically positioning checkpoints around agriculturally productive villages during the harvest season- rendering it impossible for farmers to take their produce to market- have also had devastating impacts on existing micro-economies throughout the West Bank.

According to the Palestinian Red Crescent (2005) Nablus municipality was placed under complete curfew, meaning that residents were unable to leave their homes, for 20 percent of the time over the three-year span between 2002 and 2005. A continuing result of the siege and isolation of different communities in the city was that individuals have been forced to create logistical networks within their communities to trade basic goods and services in order to cope with the conditions imposed upon them. As members of communities with pre-existing social networks based on family relations, as well as the networks formed through political organisation and economic necessity, individuals share distinct features of memory and identity through their communities. The Old City is the historical centre of Nablus. With streets and building foundations dating to the pre-Roman era, the Old City is the most impoverished neighbourhood in Nablus and suffered the most devastation by Israeli attacks during the second intifada. The Old City was perpetually placed under curfew during the intifada and both Roman era sewage tunnels and holes made through walls, either by the Israeli military or the residents themselves, were used to smuggle food and supplies from one home to another. Such smuggling tunnels were the lifelines of the Old City, sustaining entire neighbourhoods during this period.

 

Eating Under Occupation

During the 1980s and into the period of the first intifada (1987-1993) Palestinian political movements formed agricultural committees aimed at helping communities to become selfsufficient in terms of food production. The ability of Palestinians as politically and economically isolated populations in the midst of a globalised world to adapt and cope with change is paramount to the continuation of life itself. Resilience in the forms of developing local agricultural and social systems has in times of the most intense isolation made survival possible. Doumani has expressed how historically in Nablus communities “solidarity and social networks, especially at the family and neighbourhood levels, have combined with well-organized popular committees at the grassroots level to provide the minimum necessary degree of social cohesion” (2005: 153). Declined cooperation between Nablus area communities have been the result of both imposed and manifested forms of physical, political and social divisions between communities, which have been in part created by Israeli military pressure which as Doumani points out, has a “paradoxically unifying effect on the population” (ibid). Maintaining communication within communities in spite of being divided from one another was important in re-solidifying social cohesion because residents needed to work together in order to feed themselves during such periods of adversity.

Prior to 1967, the Palestinian agricultural sector was roughly equal to the Israeli agricultural sector, and Palestinians exported approximately 80 percent of the produce grown in the West Bank (ARIJ: 2007). Tamari notes that in 1968, half of the total Palestinian labour force worked in the agriculture sector; by 1978, this was greatly reduced as nearly one third of the labour force worked inside Israel (1981: 33-37). Despite mass labour migration of agricultural workers to Israel during the 1970s and 1980s, rural Palestinian communities with the assistance of agricultural relief committees and volunteer student movements brought different Palestinian communities together in maintaining agricultural production. During the 1990s an increased dependency on the Israeli economy as well as the appropriation of rural land for settlement and military use has greatly inhibited agricultural efforts in rural areas. Throughout the second intifada agriculture in both rural and urban settings has suffered greatly; however, in the Nablus area there have been cases of organised home gardening initiatives in the face of some of the most adverse political and economic circumstances. Gardening in Palestinian communities is significant in understanding how the community functions in that cultivation, production, distribution and consumption have all had to take place within the boundaries of the community, often discreetly. In Nablus neighborhoods, home and community gardens became important to community survival during invasions and military siege which took place during the second intifada, and social networks were formed in order to produce food and distribute food material in the community. Due to restrictions which prevented residents from leaving their homes and accessing farmlands, gardens were often hidden inside of or between people’s homes and obscured from public view. Buchmann, in her study on home gardening in Cuba, stresses “the importance of home gardens in strengthening community resilience in the politically and economically isolated country” (2009: 705). On a community level, increased solidarity can be observed in home garden management and related community networking through the sharing of plant material and cultivation knowledge within and between the communities (ibid: 718).

Locally grown foods such as olives, za’tar (thyme mix) and figs, are not only traditionally consumed in everyday life, but are also highly symbolic in terms of cultural and family heritage. Olive trees in particular are often passed through families over many generations. The term baladi, literary meaning [of] my home or country, is used to describe indigenous plants (e.g. baladi vegetables, baladi fruits, baladi seeds). Foods that are considered baladi are seen as preferable for planting and consumption to imported seeds or foods. Za’tar in the Palestinian context it is generally used as the name for a herbal mix consisting mostly of thyme. In Palestinian villages it had been common that every family would have their own specific mixtures for herbs such as za’tar and other ingredients. Traditionally foods such as wild cauliflower, sage and thyme used for za’tar would be gathered from mountaintops by villagers and brought to towns and markets, but due to the harsh restrictions on movement, markets are now mostly dominated by imported species.

During the curfew in Nablus, a small seed shop inside of the Old City became very important in terms of providing easy to grow food for families trapped inside their homes. The owner of the shop also sells his own mixtures of herbal oils, herbs, spices and teas and makes tinctures and extracts for treating different ailments. The majority of his seeds are baladi although he has some less popular ones that are imported from the Netherlands through Israel for more industrial farming. Most Palestinians consider baladi plants to have a stronger and richer flavour more appropriate for Arabic cooking. During curfews imposed throughout much of the second intifada, residents of the Old City were unable to leave their homes and begun growing food where they could. The shop owner recalled that during this time the demand for seeds was as much as ten times what it had been and that people planted easy to grow foods such as radishes and beans in any place that they were able. As his shop was also closed, he provided seeds, often for free to families who could not pay, by distributing them from his own home in the Old City and then passing them one neighbour to another when a request had been communicated to him. This shop has been the main supplier of seeds in Nablus city, however the owner noted that in the villages families kept their own seed for generations. It was not until the 1990s that villagers came to him to buy their seeds. This was because after years of working in the labour markets outside of the village as oppose to sustaining themselves on their own production, many villagers had minimised their agricultural efforts and bought much of their produce in markets in the urban centres such as Nablus. Having money, villagers with family members working in Israel or in the Gulf States would travel to markets not to bring their own produce to sell but to buy imported goods. This caused many village families that had formerly sustained themselves on agriculture to stop keeping their own seeds as they had previously done for generations. With restrictions on access to the Israeli labour market following the Oslo accords, and the loss of steadfast fundsi in the early 1990s, many villagers experienced difficulties in resuming largescale agricultural production. Further military restrictions on land and water use following the second intifada, and land confiscation for settlements in rural areas of the West Bank have also contributed to difficulties in sustainability among many communities.

 

Nablus’s Urban Bustan and Feeding the Old City

A large lot of land known locally as the bustan (garden used for cultivating fruits and vegetables) is situated in the centre of Nablus just west of the Old City. The centre of the bustan was flattened and easily used for the cultivation of fruits, small vegetables and beans while either side consisted of steep slopes filled with trees, dense shrubbery and garbage. This was not by design but rather neglect by the owner; the result, however, was that even though the garden existed between major roads in the centre of Nablus city, it was not possible to see in from the streets and appeared more from the outside like a neglected landfill than anything resembling a garden. Despite an unspoken prohibition on alcohol in Nablus, the bustan being somewhat invisible had the rumoured reputation among those who knew about it as a place where men would drink arak (an anise flavoured alcoholic spirit) among the plants and trees. The caretaker of the bustan also constructed and maintained an irrigation system with a reservoir that was open to rain water.

For many years farmland within the city was common, but with rapid urban development it has slowly disappeared. Many of the more common vegetables sold in Nablus’ markets had until the 1990s originated from within the city as well as the surrounding villages. As a result of urban development as well as growing dependency on Israeli and settlement produce, this bustan and similar gardens were used less in Nablus. During the second intifada and the severe siege and curfew that accompanied the invasions of Nablus beginning in 2002 the bustan became extremely important in feeding the population of the Old City. The Old City more than any other community in Nablus remained cut off and isolated from the rest of the city during the second intifada, the densely populated low income area suffered regular airstrikes and during the longterm invasions soldiers would occupy houses imposing curfews on the area. In total the Old City of Nablus spent 240 days under official curfew, the longest period lasting 151 days straight (OCHA: 2005). With no availability to import food and other products and unable to open shops and markets, Nablus’ populations were forced to rely on one another for survival. In many cases those who owned shops would move as much of their stock as possible into their homes and many of them would set up small supply rooms near a back window from which they would be able to sell small items to people in the neighbourhood. When someone needed something, this would generally be communicated from house to house and items could be passed through windows or in the case of the Old City, holes made in the walls between homes. Many homes in the Old City had terraces and courtyards on which the residents were able to build small home gardens using wire mesh and grapevines to conceal them. Even flowerpots became useful for growing simple and easy foods such as beans. Items grown by different residents would be traded between neighbours and when one family was in need of a particular item the message would be passed throughout the city until the proper ingredients could be passed from one home to another until they reached the home where they were needed.

During the days young men from the Old City would sneak into the bustan in order to harvest vegetables and herbs for cooking, often hiding between the trees for entire days until it was safe for them to return the food to nearby homes. Families living near the bustan would cook what they had harvested together making different dishes in each other’s homes and packaging meals in what they could, to be transported to other families in the Old City. During the curfews Red Crescent paramedics would use an ambulance to smuggle food and medicine into the Old City and from one neighbourhood to another. During the invasion of the Old City between 2002 and 2003 An-Nasr Mosque was converted into a makeshift clinic by local volunteers in order to provide medical aid to the almost constant flow of wounded. Many storeowners would distribute leftover food from their shops often giving expired food away by leaving the keys of their shops to local paramedics who were allowed limited movement during the curfew.

Several families residing on the eastern edge of the Old City, with gardens confined in the walls of their homes, were able to grow citrus, olives and apples as well as many different herbs, fruits and vegetables. While they were unable to leave their property, the high walls surrounding the house and thick trees and vines which obscured much of the garden from the sky made it possible for them to cultivate food in greater safety than much of the community.

Knowing that the majority of families in the city had limited access to food, they were known to distribute fruits and vegetables by passing packages over their walls to his neighbours and so on. These gardens also produced an abundance of cauliflower and figs which were distributed freely to the community.

Throughout the second intifada hidden gardens were spread over the Old City of Nablus. The style and size of the garden varied from a few pots of vegetables growing on the balcony or terrace of individual households to communal court yards of apartment buildings that were converted into gardens. On the edge of the Old City food was grown in larger community gardens which were masked by trees and vines so that people working in the gardens were obscured but just enough sunlight could enter for plants to grow. Due to the severely limited water supply, Nablus residents grew less water-demanding plants such as thyme, tomatoes and eggplants. In smaller gardens inside of resident’s homes, beans and smaller vegetables were popular to grow in pots. In the urban bustan, tomato, cucumber, pumpkins, watermelon, coriander, and thyme were cultivated. Pumpkins from the bustan were especially popular and well known in Nablus.

Home gardens are among a community’s most important resources for reducing vulnerability and ensuring food security (Buchmann 2005). Those with access to home gardens became very important in their neighbourhoods in providing for the community during difficult times. Despite the curfew, through different families coordinating with one another concerning who grew what and how much, people within the community were brought together through trading food and collectively cooking in each other’s homes. By smuggling food ingredients between homes, often using tunnels, residents of the tightly-knit community of the Old City were able to develop systems enabling the population to discreetly maintain social cohesion.

As of 2012 the bustan in the centre of Nablus continues to be a place where a few farmers cultivate vegetables and drink arak, although the land itself is now a fraction of the size that it once was as much land has been sold to develop parking areas and buildings. The fruits and vegetables produced in the bustan are sold in the Old City’s markets along with limited produce from villages. For a variety of reasons ranging from continued Israeli restrictions on agricultural production in rural areas to international aid projects that encourage growth in non-agricultural sectors, the local demand for foodstuffs exceeds that which is locally produced and available to Nablus residents. In Nablus and other centres with open markets (hisbeh), farmers typically bring their produce to the hisbeh generally around dawn. Trucks bring in settlement produce which can be sold at cheaper prices. The result of the disparity between demand and availability of local products is that much of the produce sold by Palestinian merchants in Nablus’s markets are grown on Israeli settlements and many of the products on Palestinian shelves are of Israeli origin although they are often relabelled by the manufacturer (Mansour 2012). International agribusinesses have also decreased self-sufficiency by offering Palestinian farmers a higher price for baladi produce than available in the local markets. This has created a situation benefiting a few Palestinian businesspeople by exporting baladi products to the global market while the majority of the population relies on low quality imported food (ibid: 38).

 

Impacts of Israeli Settlements on Nablus Area Agriculture

Throughout the second intifada the villages surrounding Nablus were cut off from the city by a network of checkpoints, barriers and Israeli settlements. The villages of Awarta and Burin to the south of Nablus remain somewhat physically isolated due to nearby settlements, which have also resulted in land loss and significant drops in agricultural production. In Burin land appropriation and attacks have all but halted agricultural production and the only remaining agricultural activities are small home gardens in the immediate vicinity of people’s homes. Due to siege on the village and destruction of the agricultural foundations, the entire village remains in poverty and completely dependant on external aid.

Throughout the second intifada, education as well as food security in Awarta was severely interrupted, particularly during periods of invasions and curfews. In order to compensate for lack of infrastructure, the people of the village organized neighbourhood committees which managed facilitating a minimal degree of cohesion in the community such as providing general education during times when military restrictions prohibited children from attending local schools and distribution food. Children in each area of the village would meet at specific homes at various times of the day depending on their age groups and take lessons from volunteers in the community, some of whom were teachers. During times when particularly intense curfews were placed on the village, the classes were also used for food distribution as various families would grow or collect specific ingredients in their homes which would be traded between different children in various areas of the village.

Between 2004 and 2005, the prolonged siege and military incursions into Awarta had taken such a devastating toll on the population that the community had ceased to function. Nearly the entire village had become unemployed throughout the second intifada as most people were unable to leave their homes for work or school. While many families had created space for small gardens within their homes, farmers were unable to access their lands and the village was cut off from external markets. In other nearby villages which were in similar situations, it was often possible for residents to smuggle food between communities by going over mountains at night. By 2004 smuggling food became very difficult in Awarta due to regular military patrols in the village streets. By the end of the second intifada the community not only experienced new levels of poverty but as residents recount, the character of the village itself had been changed. Awarta, until midway through the second intifada, had been well known throughout the Nablus region as an enclave of resistance and a community that took care of itself despite experiencing some of the most intense repercussions of the intifada.

Both the physical isolation of the communities as well as the different social, political and economic challenges that they faced throughout the years of the second intifada have had a tremendous impact on shaping their current situations and the attitudes of the people who lived through them. Different treatment of different communities in terms of the severity of the intifada and the ability of residents to access food and other resources has contributed to the social divisions between Nablus area communities. In the case of Burin, the village remains under curfew at night and attempts at agricultural activities are met with potentially violent encounters. Policies towards agriculture in Palestinian villages are intended not simply to impose poverty on certain communities but to create dependency in certain markets. For example, during the first intifada the Israeli military engaged in a programme of capturing cows in Beit Sahour. The aim of this and similar activities was not only to punish the population but was to prevent local milk production, creating a dependency on Israeli milk (Abdelnour et al 2012b: 3). Food production is severely limited in many Palestinian communities and the results of the populations not being able to produce their own food or access certain markets is often that they resort to buying Israeli or Israeli settlement produce. Since the late 1990s the rate of food insecurity among the Palestinian population has risen dramatically despite the vast amount of international aid entering the country (Mansour 2012). In the West Bank, the average household spends 49 percent of their income on food (WFP/FAO, 2009: 6). Many aid interventions focus on food assistance, and 52 percent of Palestinians received food assistance from the World Food Program (WFP) or the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in 2009 (MAS, 2009: 5).

International aid projects that have focused on Palestinian agriculture have largely been aimed at encouraging economic growth through the production of cash crops for export such as flowers and strawberries. At the same time border closures and Israeli taxes on exports make such agricultural business ventures more costly to the Palestinian farmers that they are intended to help (Abdelnour et al 2012b: 6). Furthermore, residue from phosphorous and artillery shells contaminate the soil and have adverse health implications for the consumers (ibid: 2). International agribusinesses and aid interventions in the agricultural sector have largely focused on enterprise development by determining how food is produced for the global market. This has dramatically altered the traditional peasant modes of production by forcing farmers to use industrialised methods to produce food for export. Aid interventions have caused changes in Palestinian communities by altering traditional farming practices, and with them local knowledge and heritage while also creating a dependency on the agro-industry (Kearney 2006: 127-9). Abdelnour, Tartir and Zurayk (2012b: 8) stress the need for reforms in the ways that farming is viewed in Palestine and suggest that donors should subsidise low-intensity agricultural projects in rural areas directly as oppose to funding the importing of food aid. On a community level, resilience and social cohesion can be formed through home gardening projects and the sharing of plant material and cultivation knowledge within and between communities (Buchmann 2005: 718).

By creating scarcities through prolonged siege on communities and restrictions on agricultural usage during the second intifada, the Israeli military was able to control the Palestinian population. Following trade reforms and continued control over the land in more recent years, scarcities have been engineered in certain communities while allowing the import of subsided products in others. As such the Israeli government has not only gained an economic advantage, profiting from the limited Palestinian markets, but has enhanced social divisions between Palestinian communities.

 

Conclusion

Due to the scarcity of basic supplies such as water, cooking oil, and other ingredients, families living in close proximity to one another would frequently cook meals together as well as distribute extra ingredients to the elderly and more vulnerable residents of Nablus. Despite the difficulties and dangers presented by the situation of curfew and incursion, the act of communal cooking and eating reinforced social cohesion within the community. Residents of the Old City of Nablus recollect the second intifada as being a time not only of many deaths, destruction and great hardship but also as a time of community solidarity. In many rural villages the situation of food scarcity and restrictions on movement and agricultural cultivation have increased the situation of food insecurity since the second intifada, and many rural families continue to engage in communal preparation and cooking of food.

It was through the physical isolation of communities imposed by siege and curfews that neighbourhoods and villages went to extreme measures in order to secretly produce their own food and smuggle goods from home to home during the second intifada. It is a result of social fragmentation and larger mentality shifts among the populations of these communities that they no longer actively seek functioning systems of self-sustainability within their own communities. The long-term siege, loss of land to Israeli settlements, absence of opportunities in the community and loss of life have all contributed to the trauma experienced by rural communities and their sustained poverty has negatively impacted the local character of villages which were once rich in resources and enterprise efficient.

Agriculture is closely linked with Palestinian cultural identity as well as making up the majority income for rural communities. As lands, homes and olive groves have been passed from one generation to another, villages, agriculture and the idea of community constitute an important place in local identity. The notion of fellah or peasant is deeply rooted in the Palestinian narrative as an agricultural pastoral society (Aken 2003: 88). The image of the peasant way of life has been politicised as an idealisation of what Palestinian life uninterrupted should be and once was (Swedenburg 1990). Tamari (1981) notes that one of the fundamental shifts in village life occurred during the 1970s and 1980s when the majority of Palestinian agricultural workers took jobs as unskilled labour in Israel, resulting in many cases in women in villages carrying on the peasant traditions in the absence of men. The destruction of land and olive trees and the denial of agricultural production to rural Palestinians not only prevents communities from achieving basic levels of sustainability but is destructive to the very locus of their identity. The Palestinian village, having its own traditional arrangements, history and forms of collective identity, is instilled in each resident to a degree that to separate oneself from it produces an overwhelming sense of anomie (Bowman 2003: 39). As communities have been divided, their conceptions of identity and belonging have been severed from the larger community. Individuals reappropriate inherited memories in order to make sense of the present (Lybarger 2007: 16). The constructed imagery of the Palestinian peasant and the village as the territorial manifestation of cultural identity produced a unifying effect among Palestinians in different situations. The longterm division of different Palestinian communities has caused individuals to reformulate their senses of collective identity based on their isolated circumstances. The isolation of Palestinian communities from other segments of society and disruptions in such basic processes as acquiring, sharing and preparing food has altered the ways in which different communities work for survival, and the ways that their residents articulate their own senses of collective identity.

Notes

i Donations from diaspora Palestinians collected by the PLO and distributed to communities in the occupied territories. Steadfast funds were particularly aimed at rural peasant communities although they were no longer distributed after the signing of the Oslo accords and the creation of the PA.

Joshua Rickard’s research has explored the social implications of the division of Palestinian communities through long-term imposed isolation, as well as community sustainability and resilience. He holds a PhD is social anthropology from the University of Kent at Canterbury where he carried out research on social cohesion in communities in the Nablus region of West Bank, Palestine . His research at MEI critically examines the roles of foreign aid and international NGOs in Palestinian communities, and their relationships to external as well as local actors.

 

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