The Palestinian Expatriates
Amira Halperin
The paper explores the political role of the Palestinian community in Europe and their links with the Palestinian community at 'home' – Gaza and the West bank. The research provides an insight as for the Palestinians daily life, political activism, links with the hosting states and the increasing role of the new technologies in the life of the Palestinians in the Diaspora. The new media has changed the media consumption practices of the Palestinians, as well as their global visibility – whereas in the past, the Palestinians' state aspirations were a local story, today this story is being told to wide audiences worldwide by professional media outlets, and most importantly by the Palestinians themselves, using thousands of chats, social networks, blogs and more, for this purpose.
The central argument of this research is that digital media has changed dramatically the Palestinian public and private spaces – Palestine issue is no longer a problem of a minority in a remote area, but rather, a problem that lies at the heart of the global community. According to my new theory, new technologies use for media content,empowers the Palestinian people, enables their global visibility, and strengthensdemocratic values in this society.
In the 1990's the Internet marked a new era. In the last few years, a new phase began the phase of mobile phone applications, which enables instant Multimedia Messaging. The main application being used by millionsworldwide is the smartphone application 'WhatsApp'. I stress that it's uniquefeatures, symbolises a revolution. 'WhatsApp' application has promoted the democratsation process one-step further.
My aim of is to provide the readers with an insight into the Palestinians perceptions and aspirations relating to the main themes influence the Palestinian society.The research explores the new media revolution in the Arab world in general, and in the Palestinian society in particular.
The Palestinian Diasporic community is from conflict areaand do not have a state. The Palestinian Territories control is divided between Hamas, Fatah and Israel.Deriving from this fact, are the prominent role of Diasporas in conflict, as. Transnational links and global networks constitute a major part in the daily life of the Palestinians.
The new power thatnew technologies provide to the young Palestinians – the ability to speak in their ownwords and to create news websites, does not leave them merely in the online arena but, rather, their voice is also being heard in the offline arena. The links between Palestinians worldwide and their links with the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are very strong. The political struggle of the Palestinian people is a dominant issue not only among the Palestinians themselves, but rather it influences the Arab world as a whole.Another aim is to discuss the issue of integration of Muslim communities in Western countries,following recent wave of immigrants to Europe.
Western research has tended to focus on thePalestinian population that is more accessible - those who live in Gaza and the WestBank, and not on those outside the Palestinian territories (Smith, 1986: 90). Following thefirst Intifada (1987-1991), however, conditions have changed and today access toPalestine is limited.
This is the first research on the Palestinian community in theDiaspora that has been conducted by an 'outsider'researcher. One can learn on the benefits from Matar's argument:
"This process (fieldwork) becomes complex particularly in situations when the
distinction between researcher and informant – I and the informants describe
ourselves as Palestinian – is not clearly defined and where boundaries between the
two roles are fluid. What added to the complexity of the interviewing process in
this case was that, given the nature of the political climate at the time of the
research, respondents were worried about the purpose of the research and had to
be repeatedly reminded that it had no political agenda (Matar, 2005: 168)."
Local researchers face problems of major concerns, unstable political climate and personal engagement with local political and tribal forces.
"There is a shortage of studies on the Palestinian Diaspora, despite the large
number of important works written mainly on the political context and on specific
Palestinian refugee situations. In fact, Palestinian refugees were often looked
upon through the prism of a political perspective. Their existence as a
transnational community, their civic status in host societies and their personal
narratives were rarely examined (Shiblak in Shiblak, 2005:7)".
Since Shiblak wrote his account of Palestinian Diaspora studies, two major works havebeen published. The first is Matar’s research on the Palestinian people – What it Means to be Palestinian – Stories of Palestinian Peoplehood (2011).The book brings personal stories of the Palestinian people, from both in andoutside Palestine, as Matar refers, chronologically, to the main historical events of the‘Palestinian national struggle’. The research was conducted in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. The strengths of the book derive from the fact that it is a document, a testimony of the Palestinian people for a long period. Having said that the interviewing is limited to the place of origin and to Arab countries, the research do not include interviews with Palestinians who live in Western countries. Therefore, there is a lack in the dimensions that link to life in Western countries, such as, integration challenges, identity formation, media consumption, feelings towards Western values, and so on and so forth.
The second work is Aouragh’s research.The author discusses the ways Palestinians and pro-Palestinian solidarity activists try toachieve political demands via the internet: Palestinian politics of resistance (Aouragh,2011). In this context, Aouragh investigates Palestinians in the diaspora, in Jordan andLebanon and in Palestine.
According to the perception of a few research projects, there is a problem with the
definition of Aouragh’s research, as a study of the Palestinian Diasporic community. There are scholars who accept the use of the term Diaspora forPalestinian communities living outside the Arab region. However, they argue against
using it in the case of Palestinians who live in Arab host states. For example, Harik (1986), accept theuse of the term Diaspora for the Palestinian communities living outside the Arab region. He argues, though, against using it in the case of the Palestinians who live in Arab hoststates. Harik asserts that their similarity in language, religion and cultural background andtheir being a majority, as in the case of Jordan, made it difficult to look upon thePalestinian communities in Arab countries as Diasporic communities (Harik in Sheffer,1986: 315).
"Little research has been done on the Arab Diaspora and its media consumption. There are only three publications, all of which concentrate on the Arab Diaspora in the United Kingdom (Rinnawi, 2010: 267). The first is Noureddin Miladi’s study (2006), which investigated how the Arab Diaspora in Britain uses and interprets Arab satellite television broadcasts in comparison with their response to the BBC and CNN. The second is the study of Zahera Harb and Ehab Bessaiso (2006) on the Arab Muslim Diaspora audiences in the U.K., concerning television after September 11th. The third is Dina Matar’s (2006) study on the Palestinian Diaspora in the United Kingdom and their reactions to the September 11th attacks and media reports on the event. The main conclusion of the three studies is that the Diaspora’s members have heavily consumed Arabic satellite television since its inception, particularly since they mistrust the local British and Western television programmes, because they perceive them to be biased and one-sided against Arab and Islam (Rinnawi, 2010: 267)".
"There is no research that investigates the impact of the Internet on the Palestinians in the diaspora and that explores trends in media usage. No study has yet been conducted on Palestinian representation on the Internet (Hammer, 2005: 7)". This is an audience research, with a new focus of investigation, which fills an existing gap in knowledge. There is no research that compares the use of traditional and new media. In putting it to the test, I interviewed Palestinians who reside in the UK.
Conclusion
The use of media from their country of origin is one of the important practices of immigrant groups. The media prevents the immigrants'detachment from their country of origin. The immigrants’ feelings that they belong and are not strangers can be attributed to their media use. Integration processes are varied, but the feelings of belonging to their group of origin leads to less difficulty in the integration process, the immigrants still belong to the country they left, in terms of preserving their language, reading news from home, and so on. For immigrants who see their immigration processes as temporary, the media also enable them to integrate easily, once they return home, as the media have helped the immigrants to overcome geographical distance during the immigration period. In other words, even though they were not physically in the country they left, they know in detail about news events and, in some cases, about cultural and entertainment news also.
•Major technological development, in recent years, is mobile phone applications which enable instant multimedia messaging. The main application being used by millions worldwide is the Smartphone application 'WhatsApp'. Smartphone applications became vital tool for the refugees.The refugees use messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Viber and Line to communicate with loved ones back home. They navigate border crossings via Google Maps and Facebook Messenger.The main advantages of Mobile Phone Applications: lack of censorship, encouragement of democratic values, doesn't oblige any knowledge or effort, selectivity, and news services provision, have led to significant political and Social changes.
The need to consume news from their country of origin applies to new and old immigrant groups equally. The reasons for news consumption are different among different immigrant groups, but this need exists in both groups: the new and the established ones. One reason, for example, could be the need of the immigrants who belong to established groups to feel that they have not lost contact with their homes, even though they have lived in the Diaspora for many years. For the younger immigrants, the media might ease the integration processes and preserve their links to their roots.
In this research I investigated a group of immigrants whose emigration entailed personal difficulties relating to questions of identity and belonging. For the Palestinians in the Diaspora, Palestinian identity comes first and foremost. The links in the Palestinian community are strong, as a result of the nakba and of their second deportation in 1967. Contact with the Palestinians in Palestine and in other countries in the diaspora is therefore vital. This contact is being enabled by new technologies. The internet serves as a tool through which the Palestinian in the diaspora can keep up to date with news events in Palestine. What is more, it is important to remember that travel to Palestine entails restrictions, a fact that empowers the role of the media in general, and the new media in particular, in the daily lives of Palestinian expatriates.
Another thing that characterized the Palestinians in the Diaspora is the importance of politics and news in their lives. The Palestinians in the Diaspora actively support the Palestinian people in Palestine. The enormous number of online social networks online Palestinians have created for this purpose is a testimony to a politically active community. To put it differently, the Palestinian expatriates not only consume local media from their place of origin, but also create media products for global audiences. The Palestinians do not use the Palestinian media as their main media. Instead, they use multiple media channels. One of the interesting findings of this research, in this context, is that the Israeli media are the main media that Palestinians use habitually and at times of crisis. It is the media of the ‘Other’ in a language which is not their first language (Israeli media in English) that in most cases help the Palestinians to keep the link with the Palestinian people and to preserve their Palestinian identity.