Power in numbers: a call for a census of the Palestinian people.

A common concern throughout studies on the Palestinian people is the lack of reliable and comprehensive aggregate data.(1) Methodologically, this problems stems from the fact that the last census of the Palestinians was conducted in 1931 during the British Mandate. Since, scattered sample surveys, each with their own sampling frame, biases and objectives such as those conducted by the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics, the Israeli Bureau of Statistics or the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) - provide an uneven and incomplete data base for understanding this complex, fragmented and mobile population. Except in impressionistic writings, as in the fiction and poetry that emerged after 1967 which primarily draws upon personal experiences in order to explore the depths of the Palestinian plight,(2) this point has to be addressed as an inherent limitation to making and testing causal claims, generalizations and predictions about the entire population.

These rather straightforward observations raise several tangled questions: Why has no census been conducted since 1931? Whose interests does this serve? How has it hurt the Palestinian struggle toward self-determination and statehood? How has it helped? How have scholars compensated for and worked around this apparent limitation? And most importantly, What can be done?

This last question is particularly relevant because a census has the potential to unify this physically fragmented people, as they dangle in precarious positions in exile - under Palestinian Authority (but still under Israeli control) in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel, Arab countries and abroad. The process would begin with an explicit recognition that there is something real that congeals Palestinians wherever they are actually located. Unlike most nations, however, it is not a geographically bounded entity recognized as a modern state. Rather, it is the idea of Palestine, ironically the absence of a physical place, that coheres a Palestinian national identity. Exile, the experience of being removed from one's native place, either physically or quasi-legally, is common to all Palestinians. Thus, until there is a state with an inclusive law of return, any person descended from pre-1948 Palestine is a Palestinian. Such a bond, however basic and important, does not automatically secure unity or personal identification with being Palestinian.(3) To begin to fully access the multiple sociological permutations of the Palestinian national identity, a census, which gives numerical and substantive definition to the entire population, needs to be conducted.

In order to elaborate this position, this article is organized into four sections. First, it theoretically explores the meanings and uses of the census, to the Palestinians and in the modern state. Second, it presents a demographic overview of the Palestinians: Who are they, where are they and how many of them are there? Moving from the observation that this picture is probably incomplete, I suggest that there are at least three sub-populations within the nation that could miss being counted but which need to be included. Next, this article journeys into the political-economic terrain on which Palestinians are located. This entails a discussion of the enduring ties of Palestinians to Palestine, and how these ties and the population have been politicized. Finally, after building a model of who the Palestinians are, I analytically level some of the major obstacles and assume that the political-economic conditions invite a census. I do this in order to address the question, If a census of Palestinians were to be conducted in the near future, how could it be done? Answering this question means drawing upon a sociological understanding of the binding institutions, migration patterns and process of cultural assimilation of a people in exile.

NUMBERS: POWER AND EMPOWERMENT

The necessity of a census has become politically imperative as Palestinians enter into a pivotal phase in their historical development. On 13 September 1993, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Israeli government signed a document in which the PLO explicitly relinquished the Palestinians' claims to the territory of what is now Israel; in effect dissolving the internationally recognized right of compensation and/or repatriation for property and territory acquired by war (codified in 1948 United Nations Resolution 194).(4) Remarkably, Yasser Arafat, acting in the name of the PLO, among many other significant concessions, severed these ties to the land and people. Contrary to the spirit of the Palestinian resistance movement, he entered this agreement and subsequent others without consulting the 450-member Palestine National Council which represents the interests of diaspora communities. Nevertheless, if the process of building a democratic state is to proceed - the expressed goal of the Declaration of Palestinian Independence (15 November 1988) - the PLO, supposedly the legitimate representative of all Palestinians, has to strengthen institutions that are accountable and responsive to its entire constituency. In the words of the Declaration of Independence, "The State of Palestine is the state of Palestinians wherever they may be".

A census does not guarantee democratic representation, but is an essential pre-condition. Once implemented, a census becomes a civil institution which formally links members of the population to the state. At the risk of over-simplifying this concept in its varied historical forms, it is in this civic space where a population constitutes a citizenry. Counting people could lead to accountability to people because the whole population's interests are defined, legitimized and recognized. Ideally, the United States Census, conducted every decade as mandated by the U.S. Constitution, provides a rational basis from which to apportion federal funds and determine the number of states' seats in Congress. Kauffman speculates that the growing trends of high non-response rates (37 percent in the 1990 census) and low voter turn-out in elections indicate a form of protest against an unresponsive political process.(5) Put bluntly, it indicates a breakdown of the American democratic system.

The census is also characteristic of a strong state, but not necessarily a democratic one. For example, the People's Republic of China has conducted a sophisticated census since 1952, shortly after its revolution. It uses these data, combined with other techniques, to authoritatively control its population, both numerically and ideologically.(6) The Ottomans, especially during their expansionist phase, developed a semi-comprehensive population registration system for two reasons: tax collection and conscription into its military.(7) Justin McCarthy, a population historian, makes an apt assertion about the uses of a census, in regard to the Ottomans and more generally. He states:

Registration of population, as well as of land and taxes, is both a cause and a result of governmental power. The greater the degree of government control, the greater the effectiveness of registration. Conversely, accurate registration increases government power, because it allows the government to know whom it can tax and whom it can conscript.(8)

As an instrument of extending and consolidating state control, a census is an effective means. Worldwide, it is a common state practice, a hallmark of modernity.

On this point, it is useful to draw on the ideas of Michel Foucault in order to examine the dual functions of the census as a mechanism for organizing and perpetuating state power. He asserts that the intersection of power/knowledge, or the process of individualizing, categorizing and disciplining corporal bodies became a modern instrument of domination and liberation.(9) State rule is extended through abstracted forms of personal identity - the bureaucrat, the prisoner, the tax-payer - which marks the parameters of interaction and permit certain modes of behavior within a wide array of institutional settings. Timothy Mitchell and Roger Owen apply this image of state/societal relations in defining Arab states historically. They write:

Whereas in the premodern period such identities [in the national political field] were multiple and contextual (that is, dependent on the particular situation), the colonial state sought to reconstitute them as fixed and singular categories by means of its control over certain means of enumeration, such as the holding of a census.(10)

The post-colonial state had to reconstruct its national community upon and against the normalized categories constructed through colonialism. Resistant groups, according to Mitchell and Owen, were automatically considered 'anti-national' or 'primordial' and targeted demographically to be brought in line with state interests.(11)

With these potentially negative outcomes in mind, I nevertheless argue for the initiation of a Palestinian census. As Edward Said recognizes, at this present juncture a census would serve as more than a bureaucratic exercise or tool of state domination. It would be a powerful reminder of the Palestinians in the diaspora, compressed into a faceless mass of refugees or wrongly projected as a gang of terrorists. In his words, "It would comprise an act of historical and political self-realization outside the limitations imposed on them by the absence of democratic participation, now ostensibly curtailed by Israel and the PLO in a premature alliance."(12) A census opens the possibility of building international civil institutions in which to coordinate efforts among and for the Palestinians in the diaspora. It is a first step toward realizing a Palestinian state and government that is for and of all its people.

ATTEMPTING DEFINITION

Beyond the real and meaningful difficulties to subjectively defining Palestinians, there are logistical and methodological obstacles to enumerating a population scattered throughout the world. This problem is not exclusive to the Palestinians. Data on many groups - even as large as women in many developing countries - are unavailable, unreliable or spotty.(13) Until about thirty years ago, all Arab countries lacked an adequate demographic data base or a sufficiently comprehensive civil registration system.(14) This is a major problem given that by 1991, an estimated 58 percent of all Palestinians were located in the Arab World.

Janet Abu-Lughod produced the most authoritative demographic work on the Palestinians after their diaspora, but recognizes these difficulties.(15) She compensated for apparent limitations by employing sophisticated statistical techniques in order to derive working estimates of the population. Yet, in her words:

It is virtually impossible to determine exactly how many persons of Palestinian birth or ancestry who exist today. Our best estimate, based upon some fairly complex demographic studies conducted in 1980 and projected from that point, is that at least 5.2 million people now count their descent from the 1.4 million Arabs who resided in Palestine in 1948, when Israel was established.(16)

Based on several independent data sources (starting with the 1931 British Mandate Census and its partial up-dates until 1946) and factoring for a relatively high, but consistent birth rate of 3-3.5%, she compiled a numerical profile of the Palestinians after their diaspora. In defining the population, however, Abu-Lughod "ignores" Palestinians who voluntarily migrated before the 1948 war because, as she states, "they are, strictly speaking, neither refugees nor exiles."(17) In other words, Abu-Lughod is concerned with politicized Palestinians rather than defining a population in a traditional sense: by blood-linage, linguistic heritage or self-reporting.

She divides the total population into five sociological categories based on distinctive geographical, economic and political characteristics. Table 1 on the following page summarizes this useful conceptual scheme, with updated 1990/1 figures.

Abu-Lughod's analytical framework is solid and comprehensive. The data, however, are problematic because of unaccounted sociological permutations of the exile experience. More concretely, there are particular segments of the Palestinian population which could escape being counted as Palestinian. For instance, Christians, by the end of 1946, comprised about 10 percent of the total 1.45 million Palestinians (n=145,063).(18) The historical record shows that they were absorbed more frequently than the Sunni Muslim majority (65 percent) into the British Mandate administrative apparatus. Christians also had significant presence in the slim professional class (around 8 percent) mainly concentrated in urban areas, embedded in a predominately agrarian-peasant class structure. According to the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Middle East and North Africa, an exodus in 1947 of "middle-class urban Palestinians anxious to avoid the sporadic fighting," pre-dated the 1948 nakba (catastrophe) that made nearly one million Palestinians refugees.(19) In Abu-Lughod's study, Christians are located in each category she examined. Yet, this particular group of Christians and some Muslims, who could be considered early-exiles (pre-1948 Palestinians with no option of return), is excluded from her target population.

[TABULAR DATA FOR TABLE 1 OMITTED]

A second group who could get lost in the count is assimilated Palestinians in the diaspora. This is particularly characteristic of Palestinians who immigrated abroad, to Europe or the United States, where the pressure to assimilate, to minimize being Palestinian is high.(20) This can be said with some certainty because Arabs, but particularly Palestinian-Arabs (after the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi-Arabs could also be added), are feared and misunderstood by Western people, governments and media. Often immigrants respond to open hostility by retreating into ethnic enclaves where their identity is preserved and affirmed by the group. These individuals can be accessed through family networks, organizations or residential areas. An alternative strategy, however, is to try to assimilate into the dominant culture by denying or minimizing their Palestinian identity.(21) These individuals may not be as easily accessed.

Enumerating assimilated Palestinians has been attempted in the United States, where the largest group of Palestinians reside outside of the Middle East. The method employed is to estimate the actual number of Palestinian immigrants (at least 150,000), subtract the number of individuals who are identified by organizational affiliations and derive a remaining sum. With such a crude method, the working estimate for the number of assimilated Palestinians living in America is 30,000-50,000.(22) The wide estimate range for such a small population is statistically unacceptable. What explains the imprecision cannot be attributed to the earnest work of the researcher. Rather, internal and external factors pressing against the Palestinians to assimilate or hide their presence by registration as a foreign national - not as Palestinian but by country of immigration (e.g., Jordan, Israel, Libya) - render these figures unreliable.

A third group of Palestinians, dispersed throughout the world but probably concentrated in states belonging to the Arab League, are underground political and militant activists. It is virtually impossible to fully quantify the demographic characteristics of this group. A main part of their survival strategy is to remain unknown, hidden, mobile, elusive. Getting counted would mean getting caught, and suffering severe consequences as "terrorists". Although their actual number is probably minuscule relative to the entire population, in certain political discourses they have come to (mis)represent the majority of Palestinians.

MAKING PALESTINIANS, PALESTINIAN

This section addresses the issue of whose interests it serves to keep the Palestinians a politically defined population. The exile experience is real, but does not have to be reified into a permanent state of existence, an inevitable, fixed feature of being Palestinian. The problem is socially constructed and comprehensible through sociological lenses. What makes it seem immutable is that the relatively powerless position of Palestinians acts back on itself, reinforces itself and makes it seem insurmountable. The absence of a census creates problems and it is an outcome of the greater problem of statelessness. To avoid the trap of a tautological argument, however, the question of how Palestinians are defined is best framed within specified and dynamic political-economic interests of major actors, but limited by structural constraints.

To ground this position, it is necessary to examine the historical dimensions of the problem. A study, conducted by Beshara B. Doumani, into mid-1800's Ottoman population registration records reveals a gross undercount of the actual population of Nablus, a major interior city of Palestine.(23) Doumani unravels the frequently cited figure of 8,000-9,000 people (for 1849) from its historical context and finds that the actual population has to be no less than 20,000 persons. The explanation he offers for this glaring discrepancy is that local and regional authorities had vested political and economic interests in undercounting productive males and completely excluding women, children and the elderly from the annual survey. In his words, "the very act of counting constituted an infringement on the notables' control over the local population: it reaffirmed Ottoman authority during an aggressive period of centralization, and provided the government with valuable knowledge that could be used to manipulate the local population directly."(24) The significance of his finding is two-fold. First, it specifically calls into question the validity of other Ottoman data and the policies and theoretical propositions derived from them. Secondly, it generally raises the issue of the social construction of knowledge. That is, the importance of defining the historical, social, political and economic context in which knowledge - even that which is assumed to be as objective as a statistic - is produced and disseminated. Moreover, Doumani carefully ties this piece of evidence to current demographic studies on Palestinians, recognizing that they, too, are "politically sensitive".(25)

A recent example of the intersection of political-economic interests which effect Palestinians is the case of the Gulf states. For them, Palestinians remain "Guest Workers" on their soil. Oil producing Gulf states, especially during the oil boom of the 1980s, built their economies largely with expatriate, temporary labor. According to Gurushi Swamy, ". . . foreign workers from the neighboring Arab States and Asian countries constituted 44 percent (Saudi Arabia) to about 89 percent (United Arab Emirates) of the work force in the early 1980s."(26) Saskia Sassen reports higher and more complete figures: "Of the total workforces, foreign workers represent 70 percent in Kuwait, 42 percent in Libya, 81 percent in Qatar, 40 percent in Bahrain, 85 percent in the United Arab Emirates and 75 percent in Saudi Arabia."(27)

Expectations of higher wages and economic opportunities are identified as key prompters of (im)migration patterns internationally.(28) Like millions of immigrant workers who flowed in and out of the Gulf, Palestinians sought better employment opportunities and expected higher wages. During the oil price and production boom (1973-1982), the emigration rate of mostly skilled young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip averaged 17 per 1,000. After 1985, the Bank of Israel reported that the emigration rate fell to 3 per 1,000. This drop meant a serious decline in the standard of living afforded by the extra revenue generated in the Gulf: ". . . remittances into Jordan, much of which were destined for the Occupied Territories, dropped from $1.5 billion in 1982 to $887 million in 1988."(29) Samih K. Farsoun and Jean Landis recognized an important political dimension to Palestinian migration patterns. They point to this rapid fall in income, accompanied by higher rates of unemployment, as one of the key structural factors which lead to the Intifada, the 1987 Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

The larger point here is that Palestinians are integrated into the regional oil economy, but differently than virtually all other groups. Granted, most foreigners hold "Guest Worker" status on Gulf soil; and the policies which rotate laborers, designed to minimize the possibility for permanent residency, apply to Palestinians as well as to all casual laborers.(30) What differentiates Palestinians from Egyptians, Yemanis, Sri Lankans and others is that they have no state to return to, no central 'Bank of Palestine' in which to deposit their remittances, once their work in the Gulf is done. The gatekeepers of their migrations are scattered throughout the globe. This fragmentation provides an opportunity, therefore, to undercount or inflate the numerical, economic and political weight of any particular Palestinian population, according to temporary or more stable political-economic conditions of a given country in which they are located.

Even in scholarship that understands the complexity of the Palestinian case, as Salim Tamari recognizes, institutional and political factors inhibit and promote certain types of research.(31) He focuses on the West Bank and Gaza Strip where weak professional associations, an inability to attend or convene regular conferences, burdens of heavy teaching loads and frequent closures of universities create an environment that is not conducive to long-term studies or the cross-fertilization of ideas. He argues that the relative isolation of local academics promotes a tendency to treat the Palestinian case as unique. Consequently, this "Palestinian Exceptionalism" draws the field of study into unwarranted specificity and ungeneralizability of its scholarship.

Once enclosed, theoretically and logistically, researchers must rely on data generated locally. This is a serious problem because the Israeli military restricts access to official records and archives, including disaggregate data compiled since 1967 by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. These restrictions, according to Tamari, "make it almost impossible to find population frames for purposes of sampling and stratification using conventional methods."(32) Obstacles to conducting limited surveys are compounded by reluctant respondents who tend to be suspicious about openly divulging information or expressing opinions during the occupation. Mohammed Shadid and Rick Seltzer note these difficulties for their 1986 survey of West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians:

The occupation authorities essentially ban field research and surveys on political topics [as well as most others, according to Tamari]. If we had applied for and received a permit - a slim possibility at best - we would have been suspected by the local population of collaboration, and the refusal rate would have been much higher [than about 15 percent]. We decided not to request a permit, and thus our field staff was subject to imprisonment and the materials were subject to confiscation.(33)

The relative success of their research endeavor was rare. (In fact, after the findings were published in a local newspaper, Shadid was questioned by the military authorities three times, his work permit was revoked and he was prohibited from teaching at al-Najah National University.) To circumvent these obstacles, Tamari suggests that an appropriate research design should combine "a few selected cases using intensive structured interviews, systematic observation and critical use of existing secondary aggregate data."(34) Valuable and insightful research in Palestine, in other words, is built on familiarity with and acceptance by the people.

Such closeness to the community probably yields better in-depth or carefully constructed comparative studies, rather than sweeping generalizations about all Palestinians. Yet, throughout the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the dominant tendency is to reduce the entire population into a set of essential characteristics, thereby ignoring diversity and change within the population. Moreover, they are like a phantom entity in the American and Israeli governments' discourses. In some historical moments Palestinians exist as a threatening force, while in others they simply do not exist. Even what is hailed as serious scholarship feeds off the 1930s through 1960s propagandist justification of the Zionist claim to Palestine, as "a land without a people for a people without a land". From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine, by Joan Peters, represents such biased scholarship? With barely a reference to original sources, she relies on propaganda to essentially argue that the bulk of the non-Jewish people of Palestine immigrated recently before 1948 because they were drawn to the expanding economic opportunities generated by Zionist settlement.

Among the few scholars in the United States, Edward W. Said and Norman G. Finkelstein thoroughly discredited this thesis.(36) As Finkelstein later remarked:

That [this] scholarly work meets with critical acclaim would hardly be news, were it not for the fact that From Time Immemorial is among the most spectacular frauds ever published on the Arab-Israeli conflict. In a field littered with crass propaganda, forgeries and fakes, this is no mean distinction. But Peters' book thoroughly earned it.(37)

There is one element that is not so easily dismissed: that is the power-relations which produce and maintain the denial of the Palestinians as a people. In one of the first wide-read statements sympathetic to the Palestinian side of the conflict, Edward W. Said wrote, "Israel itself, as well as its supporters, has tried to efface the Palestinians in words and actions because the Jewish state in many (but not all) ways is built on the negation of Palestine and the Palestinians."(38) Not until the dramatic outbreak of the Intifada, did Palestinians on the ground begin to define themselves as political actors with not only the right to exist but the right to resist subordination, domination and misrepresentation.

The Oslo Accords rearranged, critics would say concertized, the unequal power relationship between the PLO, Israel and the United States.(39) The PLO and Israel agreed to recognition and "cooperation" in exchange for part of what was Palestine, or "Judea and Samaria" in the Israeli lexicon. Not even a vague reference to the events or the people dispossessed and dispelled in 1948 is made in the text.(40) It purposely severs the past, and defines the future (to be negotiated after the "interim period", now with the hardline Likud Party) of only those Palestinians who were dispossessed in the June 1967 war.(41) As a result, over 3.5 million Palestinians are suspended in a stateless limbo - left in refugee camps, in hostile Arab countries, disenfranchised with non-citizen status or are becoming by default "Jordanians" or "Americans" - by their "sole representative".

The situation is explosive. This is evidenced by the waves of violence throughout the Occupied Territories and Israel, perpetrated by activists on both sides who oppose the recent reformulation of the conflict. Moreover, Palestinians, especially those living in the Occupied Territories, since the signing of the Accords, are being re-defined in the media and by the Israeli leadership. In the current discourse, "Palestinians" are supporters of the Oslo Accords, the ones who will negotiate and work toward assuring Israel's broad demands for "security", despite the decades of deep mistrust built into the relationship. Counterposing the "Palestinians" and the "peace process" are "Muslim Fundamentalists". It is emphasized that their financial and ideological support is from the outside, namely the pariah states of Iran, Syria and Sudan, thereby de-legitimizing an indigenous response to the current situation that has direct impact on their present and future.(41)

SEEING THE FOREST AND THE TREES

A census unifies and segments a whole population. Its primary purpose is to collect aggregate data about individuals in a targeted population. The first step in this process is to generate a complete list of the units in the population. From this list, a survey schedule is devised which contains questions about demographic characteristics and more substantive issues. Pre-tests of the survey are administered on randomly selected cluster-samples in order to clean the survey of systemic biases, before finally conducting the census within a relatively speedy time-table.

This process is well established and much more detailed than described in this overview. Moreover, it is the first step, compiling a list of all the possible elements in the population, that poses the main difficulty in institutionalizing an international census. Methodologically, the implementation of a Palestinian census will have its unique obstacles. New and creative strategies will need to be developed to surmount them. Fortunately, as a survival strategy in exile, Palestinian families place a premium on education, and consequently have the highest education rates in the Arab World. It is from this pool of capable scholars, most probably connected to and familiar with the Palestinian struggle, who can do the initial planning for this task.

There is also a wide array of sample data sources from which to begin to numerically define the target population. For example, Meron Benivenisti, of the West Bank Data Base Project in Jerusalem, has published informative annual reports since 1982. These reports focus on the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel. For refugees, in several Arab countries surrounding Palestine and within the Occupied Territories, UNRWA has compiled data on demographic and migration patterns. Mosque and church records could provide useful time-series data about birth and death rates, age of marriages and family names of their members. Political and charitable organizations, although their samples are skewed, present valuable sources as well.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) conducts an on-going informal survey of self-selected participants drawn primarily from its organization's members. The approach to the survey questions is insightful because it is built around the recognition of the importance of personal networks and family ties within the Arab-American community. The same approach could be applied in generating a list of Palestinians throughout the world. This process would entail contacting all the presently known elements in the population by family name, through mail or field work. A full-probability random sample of households, over-sampling for smaller segments of the population (e.g., Palestinians in Australia), starts the process. In order to increase the efficiency of screening interviews, respondents can be probed in-depth about the demographic characteristics of their relatives, neighbors, co-workers and other Palestinians living inside and outside their households.(42) This more complete list could then be cross-referenced with existing data sources and cleaned for repetitions. Another smaller survey can be conducted on the additional references. The process continues until no new names appear on the list. The point is, an international census is possible.

CONCLUSION

Some may say that the call for a census of the Palestinian people is overly optimistic, overtly native, politically unfeasible and could only be entertained by an enthusiast for an idyllic sense of justice. I understand and share these reservations. Yet, I am also encouraged by Edward Said's call for "pessimism of the intellect first, then optimism of the will".(43) That is why, throughout this article, I carefully acknowledge the difficult and unfavorable political terrain in which the question of Palestine is situated. There is ample evidence to assert that since the Ottoman period to the present, Palestinians have been defined according to someone else's political and economic interests. Moreover, it seems that with each tick of historical time, their subaltern status is thickened, hardened and deepened; like a small stone submerged in drying concrete.

This subaltern position transcends the macro-structure framing the conflict and has seeped into the personal identities of Palestinians. For example, The Washington Post reported that "a 28 year-old Israeli was stabbed to death in Israel," in a series of attacks and counter-attacked sparked by the Hebron Mosque massacre. No mention was made about the fate of the Palestinian assailant, typically he or she is killed immediately by an armed bystander or arrested. What makes this episode different, however, is a letter written in Arabic left at the scene already pronouncing it was "a terrorist attack."(44) Like gay and lesbian activists who wear badges with the words 'faggot' and 'dyke', this unnamed Palestinian made a powerful about being Palestinian - it is defined for you and not of you.

Yet, in this historical instant there is an opportunity and necessity for a massive re-claiming of a Palestinian identity which could closely resemble an identity individuals would chose for themselves. There are cracks in the concrete-like casing surrounding the Palestinian question. Opening these cracks further means pressuring for a significant restructuring of the PLO to include Palestinians in the diaspora in its decision-making process. It means building a democratic state for all Palestinians, despite the Oslo Accords and subsequent agreements. A census is an important initial step in this process. Furthermore, the act of agitating for a census, and mobilizing around its implementation, is an opening in the political arena where voices of the diaspora could make themselves widely heard.

NOTES

1. See Edward W. Said, Peace and its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East (New York: Vintage Books, 1995); Salim Tamari, "Problems of Social Science Research in Palestine: An Overview," Current Sociology 94 (Summer 1994): 67-86; The World Bank, Developing the Occupied Territories: An Investment in Peace (Washington: The World Bank, September 1993); Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens, eds., Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (New York: Verso 1988); Janet Abu-Lughod, "A Rift in Their Souls: Palestinians in Exile," in Palestinians Under Occupation: Prospects for the Future, Peter F. Krogh and Mary C. McDavid, eds. (Washington: The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, 1989), "Palestinians: Exile at Home and Abroad," Current Sociology 36 (Summer 1988): 61-69 and "Demographic Characteristics of the Palestinian Population," Palestine Open University Feasibility Study (Paris: UNESCO, June 30 1980); and Allen G. Hill, "The Palestinian Population of the Middle East," Population and Development Review 9 (June 1983): 293-315.

2. For insightful analytical overviews see Barbara McKean Parmenter, Giving Voice to Stones: Place and Identity in Palestinian Literature (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995) and Salma Khadra Jayyusi, ed., Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature (New York: University of Columbia Press, 1992).

3. This definition of the Palestinian people is similar to the PLO's, except that it includes women. Traditionally, the PLO recognizes anyone born or living in Palestine under the British Mandate before 1948 or descended from the paternal line of a Palestinian.

4. The United Nations General Assembly unanimously passed Resolution 194 on 11 December 1948. The key passage is stated as follows:

Having considered further the situation in Palestine. . . .

Article Eleven: Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practical date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for the loss of or damage to property which, under the principles of international law or in equity should be made by the Governments or authorities responsible. . . .

Resolution 194 has been affirmed no less than twenty-eight times by the General Assembly. All of which Israel ignores. From Naseer Aruri, "Facts and Figures about the Palestinians," Information Paper 1 (Washington: The Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, 1992): 23.

5. Kauffman L.A., "Census Blues," The Nation (28 May 1990): 729-730.

6. Ashawani Saith, "China's New Population Policies: Rationale and Some Implications," Development & Change 15 (1984): 321-358.

7. See Beshara B. Doumani, "The Political Economy of Population Counts in Ottoman Palestine: Nablus, Circa 1850," International Journal of Middle East Studies 26 (1994): 1-17; Justin McCarthy, The Population of Palestine: Population History and Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1991); and David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Avon Books, 1989).

8. Justin McCarthy, ibid.: 2.

9. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings, 1972-1977, Colin Gordon, ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980).

10. Timothy Mitchell and Roger Owen, "Defining the State in the Middle East (A Report on the First of the Three Workshops Organized by the Social Science Research Council's Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East)," Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 24 (December 1990): 183.

11. Ibid.: 183.

12. Edward W. Said, Peace and Its Discontents, 18.

13. Vidyamali Samarasinghe, "How Do You Count and Whom Do You Ask? Use of Statistical Data in Gender Research in the Global South," paper presented at the "Fifth International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women," San Jose, Costa Rica (23-27 February 1993).

14. United Nations Economic Commission for Western Asia, "Statistical Abstract of the Study on the Economic and Social Situation and Potential of the Palestinian Arab People in the Region of West Asia" (New York: United Nations, 1983): 2-3.

15. Janet Abu-Lughod, "Demographic Characteristics of the Palestinian Population".

16. Janet Abu-Lughod, "A Rift in Their Souls": [emphasis added] 3.

17. Janet Abu-Lughod, "Palestinians: Exiles at Home and Abroad": 63.

18. The statistic for the Christian population is from the British Mandate census projection. From Justin McCarthy, The Population of Palestine, 65.

19. Trevor Mostyn, Executive Editor, and Albert Hourani, Advisory Editor, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Middle East and North Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 468.

20. H. Tuma, "The Palestinians in America," The Link 14 (July/August 1981): 2.

21. See ibid.

22. Ibid.: 2.

23. Beshara B. Doumani, "The Political Economy of Population Counts in Ottoman Palestine".

24. Ibid.: 5.

25. Ibid.: 3.

26. Gurushri Swamy, "Population Growth and International Migration," in World Population Trends and Their Impact on Economic Development, Dominick Salvatore, ed. (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988).

27. Saskia Sassen, The Mobility of Labor and Capital (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 52.

28. Michael Humphrey, "Migrants, Workers and Refugees: The Political Economy of Population Movements in the Middle East," The Middle East Report 181 (March/April, 1993): 1-12.

29. Samih K. Farsoun and Jean Landis, "The Sociology of an Uprising: Roots of the Intifada," in Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads, Jamal R. Nassar and Roger Heacock, ed. (New York: Praeger, 1990), 4.

30. See Michael Humphrey, "Migrants, Workers and Refugees: The Political Economy of Population Movements in the Middle East". Also Robert E. B. Lucas adds depth to this statement by pointing out that "In the Middle East recruitment has also been selective with respect to country of origin, with a preference for foreign Arab workers (though with reservations about admitting too many Palestinians), or at least for fellow Muslims". In "Guest Worker and Emigration and Remittances," in World Population Trends and Their Impact on Economic Development, Dominick Salvatore, ed., 129 [emphasis added].

31. Salim Tamari, "Problems of Social Science Research in Palestine".

32. Ibid.: 75.

33. Mohammed Shadid and Rick Seltzer, "Political Attitudes of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip," The Middle East Journal 42 (Winter 1988): 19.

34. Salim Tamari, "Problems of Social Science Research in Palestine": 78.

35. Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine (New York: Harper & Row, 1984).

36. Edward W. Said, "Conspiracy of Praise," and Norman G. Finkelstein, "Disinformation and The Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial," in Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens, eds.

37. Norman G. Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (New York: Verso, 1995), 22.

38. Edward W. Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), xvi.

39. For a powerful critique see Naseer Aruri, The Obstruction of Peace: The US, Israel and the Palestinians (Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995).

40. The full text of the Oslo Accords was printed by The New York Times on one newspaper page (1 September 1993). The Cairo Agreement, signed 4 May 1994, on the other hand, with all its annexes and appendices is considered one of the most complex documents in diplomatic history. For an analysis of the 13 September 1993 accords see Laura Drake, "Between the Lines: A Textual Analysis of the Gaza-Jericho Agreement," Arab Studies Quarterly 16 (Fall 1994): 1-36.

41. Noam Chomsky makes a similar point: "The projected arrangements represent 'the triumph of realism over fanaticism and political courage over political cowardice.' 'Realists' understand that in this world, you follow U.S. orders. Those who are not convinced of the justice of traditional U.S.-Israeli rejectionism are not only wrong, but are 'fanatics' and 'cowards', thus excluded from respectable society". In "The Israel-Arafat Agreement: A just and lasting peace, or rejectionism," Z Magazine (October 1993): 23.

42. Seymour Sudman, Monroe G. Sirken and Charles D. Cowan, "Sampling Rare and Elusive Populations," Science 240 (20 May 1988): 991-995.

43. Edward Said, Peace and Its Discontents, 16.

44. David Hoffman, "Israel, PLO Agree on International Force of 160 Observers for Hebron," The Washington Post, 1 April 1994.

Christina Zacharia is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the American University of Washington, D.C. She is currently a Fellow at the Center for Palestine Research and Studies in Nablus researching her dissertation topic, Representations of Palestinians: Empirical Controversies and Theoretical Dilemmas.