Book Review:Identity and Religion in Palestine

Loren D. Lybarger
Identity and Religion in Palestine: The Struggle between Islamism and secularism in the Occupied Territories.
Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2007.
246pp. $37.31
ISBN-13: 978-0-961-1279-3
Review by Donncha Cuttriss
At a time when there seems to be no movement towards a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians and no reconciliation between Palestinians themselves represented by the split between Hamas and Fatah this book provides a much needed insider’s account and analysis of the Ideological struggle within Palestinian society. Lybarger who is assistant professor of religions at Ohio state university worked in the West Bank as an English teacher during the outbreak of the first Intifada in December 1987 also carrying out research in Thawra refugee camp near Bethlehem and further research in Karama refugee camp in the Gaza Strip in 1999-2000. Lybarger who is fulent in Palestinian Arabic conducted more than eighty in-depth life history interviews from a diverse range within Palestinian society who had come of age politically during the first Intifada.
The book is broken down into five chapters which are easily followed including a chapter each on the general secular and Isalmist milieus and followed by both a chapter on the Thawra and Karama refugee camps. The first chapter begins with an explanation of the particularity of secular and Islamist dynamics within Palestinian society and the regional perspective. While pointing to the relationship between the secular milieu, nationalism and Fatah and the Islamist milieu, Hamas and Islamic Jihad Lybarger reveals a theme that is apparent throughout the book in that “Palestinian society does not fall neatly into two camps, Islamist or secular nationalist” (p. 7). The Islamist milieu is contextualized within a regional framework and compared with the Islamist Hizbullah in Lebanon and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The uniqness in the Palestinian setting, as Lybarger explains, is that the Palestinian struggle for a nation and P.L.O. Nationalism was Islamized resulting in a “new Palestinian Islamism” in which Islamists sought to represent the entire nation in its liberation.
In the second chapter “The Secular Natioanlist Milieu” Lybarger gives the readers a rare insight into how the identities of Muslim and Christian Palestinian’s were orientated concomitant with the rise of Fathawi nationalism and integration into P.L.O. structures. While many books have dealt with the collective Palestinian struggle, Palestinian nationalism and the P.L.O. Lybarger focuses in this and other chapters on the Palestinians themselves, how their identities were formed whether Muslim or Christian, what were their ideological and religious views in the struggle for a Palestinian state and how they responded individually with the struggle between Islamism and secular nationalism. Lybarger’s depiction on female Palestinians is particularly insightful “Female activists felt the strain of the struggle between Islamism and secular nationalism most acutely. Islamism had made women’s bodies a field of cultural-political contestation”. He concludes that the secular nationalist Fatah supporters in response to the Islamist challenge had adopted three different responses in what he calls neo Fathawism, Islam without Islamism and neo-pan-Arabism. Throughout the chapter where the interviewee’s are quoted at length the reader gains an appreciation of the divergent Palestinian viewpoints due to the individual’s family circumstances, education, customs and traditions and a new working professional class within the secularist P.L.O structure.
Lybarger’s third chapter switches to the Islamist Milieu and again after a historical account of Islamism in the Palestinian territories and the background of Hamas Lybarber gives an account as to why Palestinians chose the Islamist route. Again here, through the oral account of his interviewee’s the reader gets a sense of the many differing reasons and perspectives of Palestinians more supportive of the Islamist agenda. An insight into the ideological choices of Palestinian women is again particularly interesting as is the reasons to why there was a move from Fathawi nationalism toward a more Islamist Palestinian nationalism. “Fathawi structures increasingly proved incapable of integrating religiously orientated activists as the 1980’s progressed”.
In chapters four and five Lybarger explores in detail the forming of identities in Thawra refugee camp in the West Bank and Karama refugee camp in Gaza. Due to the contrasting cultural and political dynamics between the two camps the reader gains an appreciation and insight into how identities were formed in both camps. Lybarger argues that “milieu boundaries were shifting as activists selectively adapted the symbols and narratives of the competing orientations to produce new identities that creatively integrated religious and secularist-nationalist themes”. Lybarger gives convincing evidence through his analysis of his interviewee’s in that “what it meant to be secularist or Islamist appeared not to track evenly with milieu location or faction membership”. This is a theme that runs throughout the book. Lybarger again reaches conclusions in chapter four on conceptions of solidarity in which he categorizes his findings into the formation of four ideological groups – sheer secularism, Islamic secularism, Liberal Islamism and sheer Islamism. These categories which he explains and are easily understood form the explanation to his thesis of shifting and interwoven categorizations of the secular and Islamist milieus. The lives of the Palestinians living in both camps who represent these categories are described and quoted continuously by Lybarger in both chapter four and five. Their ideological positions are explained along with the reasons for their factional alliances. Through this the reader gains an easy understanding of Lybarger’s themes and arguments which again run consistently throughout the book.
Although Lybarger mentions the struggle with Israel intermittently as it influenced Palestinians ideological connections and transformations, an indebt chapter on the relationship between Israeli military actions and the shifts between the secular and Islamist milieu would be insightful. Undoubtedly, Israeli military incursions at different times into both Gaza and the West Bank had a significant impact on the daily lives of Palestinians. Also, the extent of the effect in assassinating Islamist leaders had on Palestinian Identity and Ideological shifts would add to Lybarger’s book.
Lybarger’s book is a necessity for any scholar, researcher or student interested in the Islamist and secular shifting ideological internal dynamics of Palestinian society.