Anthropological Notes on Gush Katif
Prof. Gerald F. Murray
Essay #5
Anthropology of expulsion: flawed causal models..
Note: As stated in the introductory essay, the author is an anthropologist who arrived
in Ganei Tal on June 2, 2005. These are preliminary field notes posted at the request of
Moti Sender, webmaster of Katif.net. This is a slightly revised version of the essay that
was originally posted as essay #5.
Research objectives and strategy. As stated in early submissions, these essays are
organized versions of preliminary anthropological field notes and are subject to change
on the basis of more detailed information. They are being shared in this preliminary form
at the request of Moti Sender, the webmaster of Katif.Net.
My questioning of people in Ganei Tal (and in other communities in Gush Katif) has
been guided by three general questions: (A) Origins -- where people came from, what
their original pre-farming occupations were, why they chose to come to Gaza.
(B)
Contemporary ethnography: The multiple cultural subsystems that have evolved:
economy, kinship and family, raising and schooling of children, community organization,
religious beliefs and practices. (C) The reaction to threat of expulsion. This essay willl
focus on the latter.
I have tried to focus on the first two questions – origins and current lifeways. I
wanted to avoid gawking like a prime-time journalist into people’s sufferings, ("Tell us,
Madam, now that the army in which your husband and your sons have served is going to
round you up, kick you out, and demolish your home, and as you prepare to see the
Palestinians, who are currently lobbing mortars and rockets at you, dancing with glee on
the rubble of your home, tell our viewers what your emotions are…" ), catching tears on
camera, the whole cheap sensationalist prime-time shtick. Common decency would
dictate that a visitor not pry into or gawk at personal dilemmas. Life histories of the past
and ethnographic insights into the present organization of life – economy, social
organization, education, religion, and other ethnographic categories -- seemed to be
much more decent anthropological roles.
But in the final days of my stay there people talked to me freely and honestly about
their feelings. I suspect that in the beginning some saw my tape recorder and camera
and feared that I might be a shaliach of either shabak (the Israeli F.B.I.) or the U.S.
government. A month later I think that was behind us, if it was ever there, but how can
we know what others think of us? At any rate, I had the anthropologically humbling
experience, as the time for my departure drew near, of people approaching me and
reminding me that I still haven’t interviewed them or their spouse, and when would I like
to do it?. At this terrible time in their personal history, as plans are made by their own
authorities to uproot and expel them, many people did want to talk and tell their life
histories when they knew that that was what I was eliciting.
.To avoid imposing on people’s time, I try to keep interviews to 45 minutes (one side
of a cassette) or a maximum of 90 minutes (both sides of the cassette). But I recall one
impassioned interview with an eloquent farmer that filled three cassettes. How to
process this information rapidly is a still unanswered question. An Israeli colleague
warned me that the tape recorder is an inefficient tool because of the time it takes to
relisten to the interview. True. But at least, as I relisten and partially transcribe, I will be
reporting their words, not presenting my words as their words. And since most of the
interviews are in Hebrew (I am now undersanding about 70% of what is said to me), the
tape recordings will allow me (I hope) to catch the other 30% as well. ( In the first week
or two, when I understood virtually nothing, I felt a bit like a charlatan, shaking my
interviewer-head in agreement at impassioned statements about whose meaning I had
not a clue. I hoped that the person interviewed wasn’t asking me a question that I was
supposed to answer. Or telling a joke that I was supposed to laugh at….)
"Disengagement" a euphemism for expulsion. In the meantime, pending re-listening, I
do want to distill here and in the following essay some of the major themes that have
come up. I have identified about a dozen frequently reoccurring statements or attitudinal
propositions in some way related to the forthcoming expulsion. (“Disengagement” is a
shallow euphemism. You heard the one about the landlord whose tenant was behind in
his rent. The landlord tossed the guy out of the fifth floor window.. The police come in
and ask what happened. “Oh, nothing, officer. I just disengaged from a lease.”) An
expulsion is an expulsion. I will try to organize the propositions concerning the
forthcoming expulsion in some reasonably logical order. But this is not a scientific
taxonomy. It is simply a heuristic listing of themes that have surfaced in Ganei Tal
during informal conversations and formal interviews in the weeks preceding the date of
the planned expulsion. . In this essay, for space and time reasons, I will deal with only
one of them.
“There were no Arabs on the land we are farming and living on. We conquered the
sand dunes, not Arabs. ” I have dealt with this theme in earlier essays. It is an
important reoccurring theme, and the statements are absolutely true. The little bit of
fruit-orchard agriculture that was done by Arabs (in a littoral community called Muassi,
the only Palestinian enclave in Gush Katif) was allowed to continue, and has now
expanded, including not only traditional open field farming, but also numerous hothouses
with drip irrigation learned from the Israeli farmers. I have talked to a Palestinian from
Khan Yunis who owns some of these hothouses. There are both technological and
market barriers (all solvable by policy changes) that reduce the productivity and
profitability of local Arab agriculture. The Arab hothouse owners lack access to the
computerized water measurement technology of the Jews. They thus draw more water
than is necessary. Since the fresh water comes from wells, less than a kilometer from
the Mediterranean, pumping excessive amounts of water from the wells increases the
salinity of the water to agriculturally dangerous levels. Furthermore Arab producers
have to sell most of their products on the West Bank, though there is some sale in
Jewish markets as well.. (The great success of local Jewish agriculture in contrast
resides, not only in technology, but also in access to overseas markets.)
But despite
these drawbacks, Arab agriculture in this region has increased as a result of the Jewish
agrarian presence. Of equal or greater economic importance, some 3,000 Arab workers
continue to get daily employment in the Jewish hothouses as well.
In short, what can be stated confidently is that the presence of the Jewish farmers in
Gush Katif has not undercut local Palestinian agriculture or the Palestinian economy, but
enhanced it.
The recent catastrophic down turn in employment and economic well-
being of local Palestinians is a product of the security measures and barriers to
movement erected after the outbreak of the second Intifada. This economic stress is not
the product of the arrival of Jewish farmers in the 1970s.
Humans vs. the sand. The battle here was not between Jew and Arab. It was
between farmer and sand dune. And though it took them several decades, the farmers
of Gush Katif have finally won on two major fronts: field and home. Through dripirrigation and hothouse technology, and through access to European and American
markets, they have established a productive niche – in terms both of biomass output and
cash flows. 20 dunams of hothouses (ca. 5 acres) would be an above-average holding
size. In a good year, with proper hydraulic and market conditions, that amount of land
could net an annual U.S. dollar income in the upper five figures and in exceptional cases
even in six figures. These would be (I am told) above-average yields. I'm open to
contrary evidence; but I provisionally doubt that an American or European farmer could
generate that revenue on five acres of open-field farming.
On the second battle-front – the home front – the war was against constant sand
storms and the constant blowing of sand into the earliest small starter homes that the
new arrivals built. Today in Ganei Tal the invasion of sand has been stopped by lawns,
flowers, and tree canopies that now surround the improved homes of the earlier Jewish
immigrants. The weekly tending of this esthetically beautiful greenery by home owners
is not an ostentatious manifestation of middle class suburbia. Though planted in an
esthetically beautiful manner and tended with loving care, this residential greenery has
been an essential utilitarian weapon against the heat of the Gaza sun and the incessant
sand storms that continually invaded homes in the early years of the establishment of
farming. Farmers now report that the transformation of local ecology has even
produced changes in local weather.. Rains are more abundant, sand storms less
frequent. I cannot assess the accuracy of that claim. But what can and must be said is
that the story of Gush Katif is not a victory of Jew over Arab. It was a victory of farmers
over barren, uninhabited, invasive sand dunes.
Playing with words: "villas" and "hovels" Hostile journalists, of course, can and do
have a field day with the tile-roofed homes and the trees, flowers, and lawns that have
replaced the lunar landscape of a quarter of a century ago. ("The Jews are living in
luxurious villas next to Palestinian hovels." ). The fact is that right across from where I
lived in Ganei Tal there was still a Jewish "hovel" – a yet-standing tiny home that was
built 25 years ago and left unimproved, used occasionally as a kindergarten, and some
of the younger Jewish families are also living in tiny "hovels" that Sharon himself had
built a few years ago when he was still singing, as part of his political campaign, the
mizmor shir of eternal Jewish presence in Gush Katif. I am anthropologically fascinated
by the use of the loaded words "villas" and "hovels" If the Jews of Gush Katif are living
in "villas", as you will often read, so are most of the Euro-American home-owners who
do the reading. The operational definition of “villa” appears to be: a middle-class home
built and occupied by somebody you are trying to criticize as excessively wealthy. And
in nearby Palestinian Muassi, small structures that were described to me as temporary
Bedouin shelters (the "hovels") have been built next to sheep pens alongside the main
roads, and much garbage is visibly dumped along the road, creating the contrast
between "rich Jews" and "Palestinian slum dwellers". Is this intentional? Some local
Jewish residents say yes. I do not speak Palestinian Arabic and have not interviewed
people from Muassi, so I do not know why the Bedouin hovels" and garbage intermingle
along the main road.
But for a different view I would recommend something. If you visit the region, please
do the following (if the Israeli army lets you). Leave the main road of Gush Katif at the
junction that takes you to the famous seaside hotel that was just emptied of antidisengagement visiting outsider teenagers. Head toward the sea and turn left onto the
small but paved coast road that goes by the hotel.. Continue south in the direction of
Egypt (just a few kilometers away) with the Mediterranean to your right. Look to the left,
to this part of Palestinian Muassi that is the off the main road "display case" of Arab /
Jewish wealth differences. On the left notice the well organized Palestinian fields and
hothouses, and some of the esthetically beautiful two and three story houses that some
Palestinians have built and are living in. (Nomadic sheep-herding Bedouins these
people are not. I should own such a three-story "hovel" myself. ) This you do not see
from the main road, with its strategically located garbage piles and Bedouin "hovels".
My point is not that Jews and Palestinians in the region are statistically
indistinguishable in terms of wealth.
They are not. My point is the following: Israeli
hothouses and the Israeli residential greenery in Southwestern Gaza are the product of
a quarter-of-a-century struggle against barren, uninhabited, invasive sand dunes.
Writers are free to choose their paradigms. Many journalists, and many social scientists,
will exercise their right to continue depicting this as a struggle of “rich Jew” against “poor
Arab”.
I'll insist on my own anthropological right to begin by seeing the saga first and
foremost as a struggle of a human agrarian population against a coastal desert.
It's a beginning. Not the whole story. Tragically only a fraction of the million-or-so
Arabic speakers in the region have participated in or benefited from this human struggle
against the desert. The militant sectors of this population with access to artillery would
rather be bombing West Jerusalem or Tel-Aviv. But their technology and weaponry are
(for the moment) limited to a few kilometers. (Local security measures and barriers to
movement make it difficult for suicide bombers to carry our longer ranging operations
from a base in Gaza.) So the Hebrew-speaking farmers who happen to be within
shooting range of home-made artillery devices are momentarily serving as temporary
target practice for terrorists who would rather be targeting much more important remote
civilian population centers. .
"But Jewish farmers should never have been there in the first place……" Perhaps. If
so the Pilgrims should never have been in Massachusetts, nor the Texans at the
Mexican Alamo. And what if a new government in Israel decides that the bringing in the
Ethiopian Falasha was a mistake? Could a Prime Minister now browbeat the Knesset
(as was done with the expulsion vote) into authorizing the Israeli army to expel the
Falasha now decades later? Even with compensation? The thought would be
ridiculous. Something equivalent, however, is being planned with the Jewish farmers of
Ganei Tal and other communities in the region.
And another mistake was made; some residents of Gush Katif told me that they
regretted, for security reasons, having permitted the population of the Palestinian
seaside enclave of Mouassi to grow astronomically in the past 25 years. It was a
mistake. Could the Israeli government now force them to relocate? There would be a
world outcry, the strongest voices coming from certain Israeli sectors. If a plan was
made to forcibly expel five Palestinian families, a special session of the UN would be
convoked. Yet 1,500 Jewish families are slated for expulsion to the applause of the
world, including much of the Israeli and American Jewish world.
Causal models: Effective models and flawed models. Let us not argue about what
should or should not have been done 30 years ago. Let us examine causal models for
dealing with current problems. A “causal model” is a cause-and-effect proposition that
X caused Y or X in some way influenced Y. There are good cause-effect propositions
and there are faulty questionable cause-effect propositions. The agrarian struggle
against the sand has been carried out with the help of scientifically incisive causal
models. (If you do such and such, then such and such will happen as a result.) These
were technical variables. In terms of behavioral variables, the organizational model of
the moshav was chosen over that of the kibbutz on the model that privatized ownership
of productive assets produces economically superior results. The hypothesis, based on
an implicit causal model, was correct.
In contrast, the planned extirpation and expulsion of the Jews from the region, the
confiscation of their agrarian installations and the planned conversion of their homes to
rubble, is being justified on the basis of questionable cause-effect assumptions that few
of those planning the destruction probably believe.
“Jewish wealth caused Arab poverty”. One flawed cause-effect assumption is
that the poverty of the Arabic speakers is somehow a result of the prosperity of
the Hebrew-speakers. This "image of limited good" construct that "my poverty is
a result of your prosperity", a pattern that anthropologists have documented in
peasant villages, is apparently not restricted to peasant villages. It is the
dominant theme in much international discourse about the Israeli farms in Gaza.
Israeli prosperity and agrarian success in the region are somehow the causes of
Palestinian poverty.
“Expulsion of Jews from Gaza will bring an end to local Islamic terrorism.” There
is a second implicit cause-effect proposition that is equally flawed. The notion
that destroying Jewish farms and homes, and expelling Jewish families, will lead
to a decrease in Palestinian hostility and a cessation of suicide bombings. Given
the continually stated intentions of Hamas vis-à-vis the elimination of the Jewish
presence in the mideast, and the current inability (or disinclination) of Palestinian
authorities to disarm terrorists, there is absolutely no empirical basis for viewing a
Gaza pullout as a possible "cause" that will have as its "effect" the lowering of
inter-group hostility or terrorism. On the contrary, those who predict wind-in-thesails of terrorism as a more likely outcome are on stronger empirical ground.
Expulsion of Jewish farmers by Jewish authorities themselves will tilt world
opinion in favor of Israel. There is also a third causal proposition – equally
questionable – that I have heard lurking somewhere in the discourse of at least
some Israelis. "True. Terrorism will continue. But when we have given them
Gaza and a Palestinian State, if they continue to bomb us, then we can really go
after them and the world will be on Israel's side. Finally."
There is here an implicit cause-effect prediction that if Israel just gives up Gaza,
then the UN, Europe, and world opinion will, as a result of this concession, finally
tilt toward Israel's side, even when it takes lethal retaliatory measures against
subsequent terrorism. The prediction lacks credibility
In international fora
whose theme-song mantras are "Palestine-Good" "Israel-Evil", it is unlikely that
the expulsion of Jews from Gaza will create enduring sympathy for Israel. Will
the world suddenly cheer Israel on, or at least look the other way, as it
subsequently obliterates terrorists cells in a newly created Palestine?
It is very
unlikely.
On the part of college professors and their seminar students, such defective causal
models would be an exercise in simple academic silliness. In this case, however, such
untenable cause-effect propositions are used to justify the behavior of those in power. It
may be that the true cause-effect calculus was different – that the public justifications for
the decision to ethnically cleanse the region of Jews are post-hoc rationales to justify
decisions that may have been made for political or personal causes.
Hypothetically the
cause-effect calculus was perhaps: “If I offer up Gaza, it will enhance my popularity in
the world at large and get certain sectors of Israeli society off my back…”
That cause-
effect model appears, at least temporarily, to be working well. But the impact of these
decisions on the lives of those targeted for expulsion is catastrophic.
In future essays I will deal with the manner in which the local population of Ganei Tal
is trying to cope with the impending economic, social, and psychic consequences of this
flawed public policy in the weeks before the planned expulsion, destruction of their
homes, and confiscation of their farms.
Exiting the moshav through the back door. On June 30, I was scheduled to leave the
mosav after four weeks of residence. The Israeli army on that day was about to clear
out a hotel where outside protesters had poured into the region. During the operation
we were prevented from leaving the moshav by military barriers set up at the entrance to
each moshav. My vehicle was the first to be stopped – I tried exiting apparently some
ten minutes after the soldiers arrived at the entrance to the community. I tried some
gentle arguments with the young soldier in charge of the platoon (he looked about 21) as
to why a foreign visitor maybe should please be let out. I put on the thickest American
accent in Hebrew which I could muster. No dice. The young soldier was sincerely
apologetic about not being able to let me out, a gentle looking young man with thin
spectacles. He seemed so distraught at his rudeness in blocking me I almost felt like
consoling him. His own commander eventually showed up (he was much older, at
least 23) Same results.
A very religious moshav woman at whose house I had been for two Shabbats
suddenly drove up, expecting to exit. She was also prevented. This tiny woman was
furious and argued in much more eloquent Hebrew than mine why they should get out of
her way. Useless. She got back in her car and got on her cell phone. She may have
been trying to call Sharon himself to give him a piece of her mind. That didn't work
either. She calls me over and tells me softly: follow me in your car. I know another way
out that these idiots don't know about. My brain told me, no way, Murray, don't do this,
don't do this.
But I unplugged my brain, put myself on automatic pilot, and followed
her. We drove up the hill where the moshav's agricultural hothouses are located and
made several turns through different alleys of the complex. (She was furious and taking
corners on two wheels. Those who assume religious Jewish women to be paragons of
passive submission to authority should meet this furious eshet chayil and rethink their
stance. I was terrified.) At one point I see ahead of us the Palestinian city of Khan
Yunis and I thought – What? Her secret exit is through the Palestinian town lobbing
mortars at us each day? Please, no no….
But she cut a fast right and suddenly we're on a runway. This was the small airport
that I had noticed on a map but had never seen. Some soldiers were sitting and chatting
at the gate but apparently had not gotten the order to close egress from the airport. Only
the residential communities. My furious guide drove past the casually lounging soldiers
without stopping, as though she owned the place. The soldiers apparently thought she
did as they didn't react.
I followed her example, hoping they'd think I was co-owner or
something, and hoping there'd be no burst of machine gun fire. There wasn't. We pass
the local cemetery on our left and before I know it we're on the main road of Gush Katif.
Cars on the main road inside the region were allowed to travel to and from their
destination. Only exit from the residential communities were blocked.
She stopped on
the road, I pulled up alongside, we lowered our windows, and we said goodbye to each
other. (She was relaxed and triumphantly smiling. I was a sweaty-palmed nervous
wreck.)
I pass the crossroads to the entrance to the soon-to-be-evacuated hotel. Busloads of
soldiers were arriving to evacuate the teenagers camping out there. The army was
coming in, I was going out. No problem. I had an anthropological twinge of conscience:
Shouldn’t I stay and observe the expulsion from the hotel? But nobody, not even the
sacred caste of journalists never mind an outcast anthropologist, was being admitted to
the scene of the expulsion by some serious looking soldiers blocking the road. Should I
not interpret the assistance of my guardian-angel guide as a message from on high to
get out? And besides, the insurance on my rented vehicle would expire in two hours
unless I turned the car in. I decided to leave. On the way out I again passed the
entrance to Ganei Tal again, the same moshav where the soldiers had blocked my exit.
Now I was on the other side, on the main road. I thought, as I drove out, of waving at
the friendly young soldier who had blocked me, but thought better of it. (The woman
who led me out would probably have waved at them or otherwise gesticulated. I lowered
my head sheepishly, looked away, and drove past.) I wasn't sure of the way out of the
Gush. I had been there a month without leaving, to avoid re-entry problems. I picked up
three hitchhikers also trying to get out. They of course knew the way. As we passed the
Kissufim military roadblock at the main entrance to Gush Katif, dozens of vehicles trying
to get in were lined up and stopped. But we were waved out without being stopped.
I hope to return for at least another week, but I may not be able to reenter as a nonresident. Things are in a state of flux, but as the date for the expulsion approaches, the
likelihood of military closure of the area increases.
Gerald Murray
murray@ufl.edu .