Download - Influence of the Middle-East Peace Process on the Hebrew language

Contributions to the Sociology o f Language

78

EditorJoshua A. Fishman

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin • New York

Undoing and Redoing Corpus Planning

Edited by Michael Clyne

M outon de Gruyter Berlin • New York 1997

Ran HaCohen

Influence of the Middle-East Peace Process on the Hebrewlanguage

1. A prelim inary remark

As Michael Clyne notes in his introduction to the present volume, language is the most important medium of human communication. War, on the other hand, is probably the most important medium of human non-communication. From the standpoint of a society in which these two extreme forms' of human interaction have existed side by side for many decades, I would like to open with a somewhat heretical observation concerning the relevance of the discussion of language in such a context.

The prolonged state of war, and the atrocities that form an inevitable part of it, seem to go together with some skepticism towards language. Terms and idioms expressing mistrust, suspicion and contempt toward words - talking, discussing, negotiations, contracts - are numerous and often heard in Israel. A fighting society, let alone a militaristic one, is very likely to maintain an ideology that gives precedence to deeds over words.

In the Israeli case, this ideology seems to manifest itself in two apparently contradictory, but in fact complementary ways. The first is a schism between the verbal and the operative levels, with an encouragement to an almost therapeutic verbalization (Ben-Eliezer 1995: 314-315). On the verbal level, humanism, morality, tolerance, moderation, empathy, can all be maintained, at least to some extent. One even encourages rituals of self-accusation, shame and remorse. All this neither hampers nor mitigates the calculated, efficient and effective implementation of the atrocities of war on the operative level. On the— contrary: the former may serve as a justification and affirmation of the latter. The Israelis call it “shooting and weeping”.

The second way is that of silence (Laor 1995: 115-170) - silence regarding things that should not be said, or cannot be said, or do not have to be said. This silence is as effective as language, maybe even more effective, as a medium of

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communication within society. For example, a global command ordering the mass deportation of Palestinians during the 1947-1949 war, was never issued. It was implied - by a militaristic ideology and a violent tradition, by hand-gestures of commanders and leaders, by silence before and during action, persisting for many decades thereafter (Ben-Eliezer 1995: 259).

In such a society, then, language and language change seem to be but a partial, broken, sometimes distorted mirror of ideological or social developments. Bearing this in mind, let us now attempt to describe it.

2. Historical and political background

The Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine, later to become the Arab-Israeli conflict, had accompanied the Jewish society in Palestine almost since the beginning of the political process that led to its constitution as a nation in the modem sense of the word - and eventually as a nation-state - in the last two decades of the 19th century. The efforts of the Zionist settlers to create an exclusive Jewish society rendered resistance among the non-Jewish population of the land. The conflict expanded both in character - from economic conflicts and local land disputes to a general political, economic and military conflict - and in scope - the Palestinians were joined by the Arab countries, and at a later stage world

powers entered into the conflict as well.The establishment of the State of Israel (1948) and the war that accompanied

(1947-1949) brought about the problem of Palestinian refugees. The 1967 war not only intensified this problem, but also added to the conflict the dimension of occupation, i.e., Israel’s control over the population of territories that were occupied by force: a wide Palestinian population (currently some 2 million people) in the West Bank of the Jordan river and in the Gaza Strip, and smaller populations in the (Syrian) Golan Heights and in (Egyptian) Sinai. In 1979, a peace treaty was signed between Israel and Egypt, and the occupation of Sinai ended; in 1982, South Lebanon became yet another de facto occupied land, though holding a different status.

2.1. The political situation on the eve of the “Peace Process”

The political situation in Israel on the eve of the “Peace Process” (see below) consisted, therefore, of an official state of war with all the neighboring countries except Egypt, and an Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with their large Palestinian population, as well as of Syrian and Lebanese territories with a smaller population. The Syrian Golan Heights joined in 1967 by the occupied (eastern) part of Jerusalem were unilaterally annexed by Israel. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a process best described as colonization has taken place: on the one hand, no less than 140 civilian (Jewish) Israeli settlements have been built on land confiscated by various legal and military argumentation. The inhabitants of these settlements live under Israeli law, unlike the Palestinian population, living under military regime. On the other hand, the Territories became Israel’s main source for cheap labor power, with a large portion of the Palestinian population employed as badly paid physical laborers within Israel. Thus Israel succeeded in preventing the development of an independent Palestinian economy.

Since December 1987, Palestinian political resistance and violent protests against the occupation have severely escalated, a process known as the “Intifada”. As a result, Israeli violence intensified considerably. Far more than a thousand Palestinians were killed, thousands injured and tens of thousands imprisoned. Lengthy curfews were imposed, alongside economic oppression, collective punishments, demolition of houses, massive and long incarcerations without trial, deportation, systematic and institutionalized use of torture, rigid verdicts and transfer of authorities formerly in Palestinian hands to the military

regime.

2.2. The “Peace Process”

Mediation attempts - “contacts”, “dialogues”, “process” - have accompanied the Arab-Israeli conflict during most of its years of existence. The term “Peace Process” (henceforth: the Process), chosen by the editor of this book as the title

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for this article, refers to a framework of negotiations under international (mainly American) auspices, that opened formally with the Madrid Conference in October 1991.1 Initially, a “hawkish” Israeli government (led by Yitzhak Shamir) conducted the negotiations; the general elections in June 1992 brought a “dovish” government to power (led by Yitzhak Rabin). The Palestinian side was represented by a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation that included no official PLO members. An essential breakthrough was reached with the mutual recognition and the signing of the “Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements” between Israel and the PLO (led by Yasser Arafat) in September 1993 (“Oslo accord”). Since then, a number of agreements have been reached, the most recent being the “Interim Agreement” of September 1995 (“Oslo II”). The realization of these agreements has led thus far to the construction of a “Palestinian National Authority” (PNA) that enjoys a certain amount of autonomy in most parts of the Gaza Strip and in the town of Jericho (in the West Bank). The “interim stage” extends this autonomy to the cities of the West Bank, and to a lesser extent, to the Palestinian villages. The complex “Interim Agreement” is designed to regulate the presence of Israelis and Palestinians in the Occupied Territories by increasing the separation of the two populations from one another by way of giving the PNA extensive authorities over cities (less than 3% of the land; not including annexed East Jerusalem and the Jewish settlement within Hebron) and a more limited authority over villages presently inhabited by Palestinians, while leaving the rest of the land (some 70%) in Israeli hands. The Palestinian Police is to impose law and order on Palestinians and to collaborate with Israeli forces in order to ensure security of Israelis. The Israeli settlements - none of which are to be evacuated at this stage - are accessible through a dense network of roads exclusively for Israelis, that bypass the Palestinian townships. The separate facilities and the separate legal status of the Israeli settlers will be maintained.

Parallel to the Process, Israel has drastically limited the entrance of Palestinian inhabitants from the Territories into Israel, resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of Palestinian jobs and deterioration of the economic

situation of the Palestinian society. In addition, red tape and barriers limit movement of Palestinians inside the Territories.

The negotiations over the so-called “permanent solution” for the Occupied

Territories are due to start in 1996.In 1994, a peace treaty was signed between Israel and Jordan. Negotiations

between Israel and Syria continue on and off.The core of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has not

yet been solved, and despite the prevailing changes, it is difficult to determine whether the parties are now closer to solution than they were before. So far, the Palestinians have witnessed the return of their exiled leadership, as well as several administrative and symbolic changes, not all for the better; they have attained many responsibilities, but almost no authority. The occupation

continues, as Israel remains the ultimate sovereign backing the PNA. Whereas the Palestinians, as well as parts of the Israeli left, support an independent Palestinian state and believe that its birth is inevitable, the two main Israeli political parties officially reject the ideas of a Palestinian state, a return to the 1967 borders, the right of return to Palestinian refugees, and the evacuation of settlements. The Palestinians are economically and politically weak and their position in the negotiations with Israel is extremely inferior. I shall not risk a prognosis as to whether the Process will lead to resolving the conflict or to its perpetuation, for example by ratifying the present situation by means of assigning the PLO the role of a militia which ensures relative peace and quiet for Israel at the cost of suppression of the Palestinian population.

3. The Hebrew language and the conflict

It is well known that although Hebrew enjoys a written history of some three thousand years, its renativization - making it the living language of a Jewish society - is a recent process, “the Revival of Hebrew”, that has been taking place in Palestine since the last two decades of the 19th century; that is, simultaneously with the emergence of the modem Jewish nation and the

Jewish-Arab conflict.


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On the one hand, Hebrew played a central role in the Jewish national movements: the newly emerging Jewish nation often called itself “the Hebrew Nation” (Even-Zohar 1990). On the other hand, the Jewish national movement was shaped by the Jewish-Arab conflict, so that this became a central element of Israeli identity (Ehrlich 1987). It would not be difficult therefore to demonstrate the inherent link between the Jewish-Arab conflict and modem Hebrew, even if historical, social and linguistic research tend to ignore it.

As early as the beginning of the 1880s, when the Revival of Hebrew was a mere dream and the Jewish immigration to Palestine had just begun, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, associated more than any other individual with the Revival of Hebrew, wrote:

The nation in whose midst we dwell.. .is not an enlightened nation.. .Here too this country is better for us than any other ...because we want to revive our nation...and how can we succeed in this in a country where... there is an enlightened nation? In such a country, when the Jews come, they begin to speak the language of the country...This is not the case with a non-enlightened nation. In such a nation we can be in the course of time a bona-fide nation, because in our hands rests the teaching of our language to our sons and daughters... (quoted from Fellman 1973: 43.)

As this early text clearly demonstrates, the revival of the nation and of the national language were based on labeling the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine “a non-enlightened nation”. The requirements of nation-building, together with some typically colonialist arrogance, have shaped both the status and the corpus of the Hebrew language ever since.

3.1. Language of “us” and “them ”

Ideal-type nationalism strives towards a congruence between the borders of the nation and those of its state, and Zionism is no exception. The Zionist ideology considers Palestine the Land of the Jewish people. Non-Jews are, at best,

tolerated. Emphasizing claims of (emigrating) Jews on the land, and at the same time obscuring and denying (existing and continual) non-Jewish presence in it, are manifested linguistically in the Hebraization of the map of Palestine: almost all non-Hebrew geographical names - from street names to settlements to valleys and mountains - have been officially replaced by Hebrew names, sometimes ancient, sometimes presumably ancient, sometimes merely invented. These names are propagated by all official and semi-official means - signposts,

maps, schoolbooks, and also the public media (see 4.2.).Of more concern to us here is the fact that the inseparable processes of

nation building, conflict management and language planning have, in some cases, given birth to two separate, nationality-dependent sets of terms within Hebrew: the same referent is given different names depending on whether or

not it refers to Jews.These two sets are both part of standard Hebrew, as it is used formally and

officially in both spoken and written language; in the media and in literature. It is the language of the mainstream of the political map, with only a few (negligible) exceptions on either side; moreover, it is the way Hebrew is

spoken in Israel by Jews and non-Jews alike.

Immigration of a Jew to Israel is called aliyya2 ‘ascent’3; the ‘ascendent’ can make an appeal on the Law of shevut ‘return’, granting Jews the Israeli nationality automatically upon arrival. Non-Jews cannot make aliyya; return of Palestinian refugees will be discussed under the term shiva ‘return’. A Jew entering (mandatory) Palestine illegally was called m a ’apil ‘striver upwards’; a Palestinian entering Israel illegally is a mistannen ‘infiltrator’. The adjective ‘nationalist’ has two Hebrew

translations (Laor 1995: 119, 209): le ’ummi, usually for ‘us’ (positive; e.g., the Israeli national anthem), le'ummani mostly for ‘them’ (negative; e.g., the Palestinian national anthem).

These and similar doublets express the alleged illegitimacy of Palestinian national feelings and a denial or rejection of their claim on the land. Some of the terms have a long history, others are more recent. Some of them reflect the


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(usually discriminative) difference in legal status between Jews and non-Jews, as in the case of immigration laws; it is hard to tell whether the legal difference preceded the linguistic or succeeded it. These linguistic aspects do not account, of course, for the actual discrimination in its entirety; part of the discrimination is not reflected in language, and part is caused by more subtle means, such as granting financial advantages to citizens who served in the army (all Jews, but no Arabs, are recruited).

Another set of doublets reflects the common Israeli stereotypes concerning the Palestinian society, especially those living in the Occupied Territories. The

Palestinians are portrayed as “rural”, “traditional”, “oriental”, “primitive”, in contrast to the Jews, who are “urban”, “modem”, “western”, “sophisticated”- direct offsprings of the “enlightened” from Ben-Yehuda’s text. Again, the following examples reflect standard Hebrew; however, unlike the above mentioned terms, in recent years the awareness to the “political incorrectness” of the following terms has increased, and consequently they are less heard in certain circles.

Palestinians - or ‘natives’ (mekomiyyim), as they are sometimes called (but see Rubinstein 1992) - are usually ‘villagers’ (kafriyyim), whereas Jews who live in rural communities are kibbuzniks, moshavniks etc. Palestinians are led by their ‘notables’ (nikhbadim), Jews have political leaders. Jews have intellectuals and professors; Palestinians have ‘learned men’ (maskilim). Palestinians are po'alim ‘workers’, Jews are ovdim ‘employees’. Palestinians are soharim ‘merchants’, Jews are anshe asakim ‘businessmen’. A Palestinian university used to be called mikhlala ‘college’, unlike the Israeli universita (a differentiation dropped in recent years, when American-modeled colleges entered the Israeli higher education system).

I have chosen not to refer here to informal, non-standard language, where plenty of terms and expressions deliberately offensive toward Arabs can be heard. To give just one moderate example, “Arab work” in informal Hebrewis synonymous to “lousy work”.

The many decades of armed conflict, and the already more than a quarter of a century long occupation, have considerably enriched the Hebrew vocabulary of war and weapons. Grossman (1993) found that ten columns in a well known Hebrew dictionary are dedicated to the entry “war”, whereas only two columns

to “peace”.Moreover, Hebrew has absorbed a whole set of terms and has developed an

arsenal of syntactic methods that reflect, maintain and reinforce the ideological

basis of the Middle East conflict as viewed by Israel.The organizing principles of Hebrew terminology for the conflict seem to

repeat, or maybe enhance, the classical motives of war propaganda (e.g., Lasswel 1971): the enemy is the aggressor, rejects peace, is immoral, inhuman, unjust in his actions and not legitimate; whereas we are benevolent victims who defend4 themselves, we yearn for peace, we are moral and fair, act legitimately and justly. The terms applied to “us” must justify, legitimize and reassure, the terms applied to “them” must blame, de-legitimize and discredit.

Israeli military actions are often termed ‘retaliation’ (tagmul)\ Arabs do not seek ‘retaliation’, but ‘revenge’ (nekama). When it is difficult to point out what precisely is being “retaliated”, one can speak of “our” operations

as ‘preventive’ {pe'ilut m ona’at).The term mehabbel ‘saboteur’ refers to hostile armed Arabs (except

soldiers in regular armies), usually Palestinians. This term and its derivatives have acquired a very wide field of applicability: not only to actual terrorists, attacks and explosions, but also to organizations (notably the PLO before the Oslo accord), their members, leaders, policies, political activities etc. As the military threat to Israel by neighbouring armies largely diminished, the “saboteurs” became the main enemy to be targeted, and their dehumanization is most acute:5 tihur kinnei mehabblim - ‘purification of saboteurs’ nests’ was used during the Lebanese war (1982). The term mehabbel is applied exclusively to Arabs: terrorists outside the Middle East are named teroristim (or ‘freedom fighters’,


3.2. Language of an armed conflict

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depending on the case), whereas Jewish illegal militias - during the Second World War in Europe, under the British Mandate in Palestine but also in the Occupied Territories nowadays - are called ‘underground’,

mahteret.

The Israeli-sponsored-and-controlled militia in Lebanon is called ‘South Lebanon Army’, zeva derom levanon; other non-stately armed forces in Lebanon are named milizia ‘militia’ if they serve Israeli interests, otherwise simply mehabblim ‘saboteurs’. Note the obvious ideological meaning implied by the official name “Security Zone” for Israeli-occupied South Lebanon, and the quiet annexation of land under the euphemism ‘border corrections’ (tikkunei gevul).

During the Intifada (from 1987), the ideological need to justify the Israeli presence in the Territories had to face the challenge of the actual revolt of the population and its violent oppression, well documented on television and broadcasted all over the world. The reaction, as reflected in language, did not change radically, but intensified considerably. Israel was presented as a victim of the Palestinians.6 An inventory of phrases and syntactical methods was devised to euphemize Israeli violence and overstate Palestinian violence.

Public forms of Palestinian resistance are termed ‘riots’ (hitpar’uyyot) or ‘violations of order’ (hafarot seder), whereas the Israeli forces “reestab

lish order”: the occupation is thus equated to “law and order” . Demonstrating Palestinians are an ‘agitated crowd’ (hamon mussat) led by ‘agitators’ (mesitim). When Jewish civilians are involved in violent actions against Palestinians (from vandalism to murder), they are said to have “taken the law into their own hands”.

The passive form is used to avoid making Israelis the grammatical subjects of killing: a Palestinian “was killed”, “was shot and later died”, or simply “found his/her death”. Israeli soldiers are frequently referred to as “our children”, whereas Palestinians are consistently “upgraded” to a

higher age group: children are referred to as “youth”, adolescents become “young men” etc.7 Such linguistic manipulations may be best illustrated by the following news item (taken from: Gilat 1989): “A young man from Kalkilia found his death last night in a clash with an Israeli military force. The force was compelled to open fire, having identified a young man who intended to throw a heavy rock at the soldiers, thus endangering their lives.”

The Israeli occupation employs Palestinian collaborators. In the eighties, when collaborators were few, their informal name was “stinkers”. They later gained a formal name: ‘collaborator’ meshattef p e ’ulla, abbreviated: mashtap. When this “title” acquired a negative connotation during the eighties, ‘assistant’ sayy’an was proposed, but could not entirely eliminate the previous denomination.

The language of torture requires a separate chapter. Public awareness of the fact that Israeli forces use torture within (and without) interrogations grew towards the end of the eighties, when the Landau Committee, appointed by the government published part of its report and recommendations on the subject, in 1987.

It was this committee that coined the term ‘moderate physical pressure’(ilahazfizi matun), used ever since to avoid the word “torture”. Torturing methods seem to have “advanced” a great deal during the nineties. A whole inventory of instruments and methods entered into the language.8 Some of them conceal their actual meaning altogether, such as ‘chair’, ‘cupboard’ or ‘refrigerator’ (kisse, aron, mekarer) for specific torture devices. Other are euphemisms, like ‘sleep deprivation’ (meni'at shena). When a prisoner dies as a result of torture, the death is described as an ‘exception’ (harig) or ‘mishap’ (takkala).


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3.3. Language of occupation: the political discussion

The 1967 war changed the nature of the Arab-Israeli relations by adding the dimension of occupation to the inter-state conflict. The Israeli presence in the Territories gave rise to a political struggle within the Israeli society concerning the “true” definition and the desired status of these lands, a struggle that has been going on ever since. When the Israelis “talk politics” they usually talk about the Territories. “Right” and “Left” in Israel refer mainly to one’s standpoint on the Territories and the Conflict as a whole, and have little or nothing to do with progressive versus conservative views or socio-economical background, traditionally associated with these terms elsewhere. “Right” means, roughly, supporting some manifestation of Israeli sovereignty in the Occupied Territories and further colonization (the extreme Right supports the annexation of the Territories and “getting rid” of their Palestinian inhabitants). “Left” means, roughly, acknowledging some manifestation of Palestinian national rights and supporting some kind of territorial compromise (parts of the Left traditionally support the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel). In the “center” we can find various suggestions for a Palestinian “entity” - a favorite term - in parts of the Occupied Territories.

All this has introduced into the Hebrew language a series of politically-dependent near-synonyms for occupation-related terms. Different names are used for the same entity, according the speaker’s political views. The Left tends to promote terms that reflect the temporary and undesired character of the occupation as well as the national character of the Palestinians. The Right wing terminology emphasizes Israel’s claim over the Territories and at times, the “Arab” character of their inhabitants as well, thus denying their separate Palestinian identity and implying not only that they actually “do not belong here”, but that “they have already got 21 other Arab countries”.9

It is important to observe that it is only this political discussion within Israeli society that gave rise to a linguistic differentiation on a political basis. All the double-registers and euphemisms listed above are, as already mentioned, common to (almost) the entire political map. It is therefore plausible to argue that the political discussion is merely a distracting by-product of the occupa

tion, enabling Israeli society to ignore, and thus maintain and even justify the actual occupation with its daily oppression, manipulations and suffering. “As opposed to Israel, there is no political discussion in Arab countries” or “there is no Palestinian ‘Peace Now’ movement” are examples of popular arguments demonstrating how the very existence of a political discussion can be used to

legitimize the occupation.

During a short period immediately after the 1967-war, the official term employed was ‘the Occupied Territories’ (ha-shetahim ha-kevushim). It was soon replaced by ‘the Administered Territories’ (ha-shetahim ha-muhzakim) and then by the (biblical) Hebrew geographical terms “Judea and Samaria”. The latter were officially adopted and successfully promoted by the right wing governments (since 1977) and are still the official terms in use. More than reflecting the already mentioned “Hebraization of the map”, they relate to the disputed lands by mere geographical terminology, denying political borders. This wishful “rubbing out” of the border between the Territories and Israel is apparent in yet another right wing favorite: the traditional Jewish term erezyisra’el ‘the Land of Israel’ (“Israel” here means “the Children of Israel”, i.e., the Jews), which makes no distinction between Israel and the Occupied Territories. In between left and right fall terms like “the [West] Bank” and the neutral “Territories” (ha-shetahim). The terms ‘the occupation’(,ha-kibbush) and ‘the Occupied Territories’ were taboo for many years; presently they are in use, of course only on the left wing of the political map. Even there, many would refer to the occupation of East Jerusalem as ‘liberation’ (shihrur), which is the common right wing term for the Israeli march into the Territories as a whole (the long term occupation is then referred to as ‘control’ shelita, or even ‘rule’ shilton). The occupation and later annexation of Arab East Jerusalem is called ‘unification’ ihud by almost everybody.

The Palestinian inhabitants of the Occupied Territories are referred to by the left as “Palestinians”, “the Palestinian nation”; the right prefers terms


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such as “Arabs” or “the Arabs of the Land of Israel” (arwiyyei erez yisra’el, also referring to Palestinians citizens within Israel10), thus denying their national character.

The Jewish settlers in the Occupied Territories are usually termed mitnahalim and their colonies.hitnahaluyyot - roughly ‘settlers’, ‘settlements’ or ‘colonists’, ‘colonies’ - by those who believe they should not be there. Here, the referent varies: the centre/left uses this term only for the more ideologically-colored settlements, not for those in the Jordan

Valley and on the Golan Heights; the more radical leftists may also include the Jews in the latter regions; but practically no one applies it to the Jews in East Jerusalem. The rightists prefer the terms mityashvim, yishuvim yehudiyyim - roughly ‘inhabitants’, ‘Jewish townships’ (applicable also inside Israel).

Political views also have some effect on how the speaker calls the public: the nationalistic use of “the Land of Israel” is more suitable with “the Jews” or ‘The People of Israel’ (am yisra 'el, meaning Jews), the stately “State of Israel” tends to go with “the Israelis” or “the citizens of Israel”.

4. The question of institutions

State ideology and its language are propagated by a wide range of institutions: the educational system, human and social sciences (Ram 1994), literature (Gertz 1995; Laor 1995), media etc. Before we move on to the impact of the Peace Process on the Hebrew language, I would like to make a few brief remarks concerning the role of some institutions involved in language planning in the narrower sense, institutions directly controlled by the state. The educational system will not be dealt with, inter alia because of the relative slow pace of change compared to the rather recent Process.

4.1. The Academy of the Hebrew Language

The best known Israeli institution concerned with language planning is the Academy of the Hebrew Language. It not only coins new words and propagates them in leaflets and periodicals, but is also legally in charge of the use of language in the public broadcasting system. This makes the Academy a main “suspect” in our discussion. This impression is, however, misleading. The Academy is mainly concerned with coining new terminology where there is a noticeable lack of terms. Many names for new weaponry - such as the various instruments developed during the Intifada in order to maximize pain and

minimize casualties among demonstrators - originated from the Academy, or have been approved by it. But the Academy is concerned with the grammatical correctness of Hebrew, not with its “political correctness”, so that, the linguistic phenomena mentioned above are of no concern to the Academy.

4.2. The public media

The strongest influence on language is probably the media, both printed and electronic. Since this seems to be the case in all (post-)modern societies, I find it unnecessary to expand on the subject here. I shall confine myself to the more specific Israeli aspects of this broad subject.

Israel’s public media - the public television and most radio stations - are very important agents of language planning. For example, exercising its legal authority, the Academy of the Hebrew Language uses the public media to successfully introduce and promote neologisms. The use of Hebrew geographical names (see 3.1.) in the public media is compulsory (Rogel—Schejter 1995: 29). Until the early nineties, the Evening News of the only television channel attracted 70% of the population: a national daily ritual of absorbing the official selection and interpretation of current events, related in the official language

(Katz— Haas 1995)."The language used in the public media has been the subject of continuous

attacks - mostly from the right, that ritually accuses the media of “being ruled


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by a leftist Mafia”. The fact however is that the body in charge of the (language of the) public media is a plenum elected on a political basis, reflecting the power relations in Parliament. Being constitutionally public, the language of the media is by definition generally that of the mainstream; being practically political, it complies - at times with some delay - with the trends of the ruling coalition. Accordingly, under the right wing governments of the eighties, the

language of the public media shifted to the right.The 1985 version of the “Guidelines for Broadcasting News and Current

Affairs”12 mentions the following under “the Limits of Objectivity” (Rogel

1985: 6-7):

- The territories in the west of the Land of Israel that have been under Israeli control since June 1967" are to be called Judea and Samaria. The terms “The Bank” and “The West Bank” are prohibited.- The “Heads of the PLO” should not be referred to as “prominent persons” (ishitn), “since this term has the connotation of honor and

importance”.- The term “the flag of Palestine” (degel palestin) is prohibited and should be replaced by “the PLO-flag” (degel ashaf).- It is recommended not to apply the term “collaborator” (meshattef p e ’ulla) to “persons who helped Israel in its wars and in its combat against terrorism.” (No alternative is proposed.)- The General Director of the Broadcasting Authority must check every interview from “Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip” in order to allow only broadcasting of interviews that include no propaganda of “bodies that are

explicitly hostile towards the State of Israel and fight against it”, “the

PLO being such a body.

If the language actually heard in the public media was never as monolithic as this might suggest, it is not because the Guidelines are never complete and never fully observed, but mainly because they allow the “forbidden” terms when quoting. This is why most of the parallel terms listed above (3.3.) can be heard, though not in editorial texts. However, language that transgresses the

prevailing “mainstream” - language of extremists, of the enemy etc. - is likely not to be quoted but rather adapted (as implied by Roeh—Nir 1990). To some extent, the language depends on the specific reporter: reporters on Jewish settlements are more likely to use terms preferred by the settlers themselves, either negligently or in order to maintain good working relations with their informants.

4.3. The military

One can hardly overestimate the role played by the army in the Israeli society (Kimmerling 1993; Ben-Eliezer 1995). Being the place where almost every young Israeli spends two years of her or three years of his life, Israel’s army serves as an important agent in the process of nation-building. It is also a powerful language planner. It serves as a sort of educational system for adults, where young Israelis from all classes and origins get together and acquire a common linguistic, cultural and ideological capital. A large portion of Hebrew slang, for example, originates from the army. Terms set by the army not only can be imposed on soldiers, but also can be propagated in military correspondence with civil bodies, become compulsory for both parties in the military courts (where Palestinians are brought to trial), in military prison camps for Palestinians, for instance.

Another factor is the army’s accessibility to the media. The Israeli military can veto the appointment of military correspondents, so those who work with the military already sympathize with it. The army is responsible for the borders as well as for the Occupied Territories; it is therefore the first “to be there”, the first to brief the media and the first to set the terminology used. While reporting an event, the media tends to adopt the language of the official bodies involved, in order to maintain an impression of neutrality (see for example the Guidelines: Rogel— Schejter 1995: 47). Thus military briefings - a mixture of facis. and interpretation - find their way, almost unedited, to the media, both electronic and printed (Gilat 1989). It would be wrong to view the army as a mere technical agency, translating the government’s policy into physical


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violence. A military document entitled “The Task of the Israeli Defence Forces in the Territories”, dated November 1988, mentions “preventing political damage and damage in the media”, among other things, as an objective (Rosen— Hamerman 1990: 26). The army presents the “facts” to suit its own purpose. Many of the euphemisms can thus be traced back to briefings of spokespersons - spokesmen, actually - on behalf of the military.

The word ‘closure’ seger means prohibiting the Palestinians in the Territories to enter Israel. This measure was taken for the first time during the Gulf War and a few times thereafter, but was usually called ‘general curfew ’ ozer kelali (a misleading term, since curfew in the Palestinian context means a prohibition to leave one’s home) and sometimes “ban”, “closing the passages” and the like. When the measure was once more imposed on Friday, 20 March 1992, the daily newspapers (all Hebrew papers and the English Jerusalem Post) were still not sure how to name it. On the next working day, Sunday the 22nd, the word seger, English ‘closure’, was used by all newspapers with no exception. This can best be explained by assuming that a military briefing took place during that weekend, introducing the new term, which has been in use ever since. One can thus use a newly introduced term, free of any historical burden, that sounds harmless (a 1987 Hebrew-English dictionary cites under seger merely ‘lock, bolt, shutter’), to refer to a measure of collective punishment that leads in reality to acute pauperization, if not starvation, of an entire population.

5. The Process and the Hebrew language

I am not aware of any effect of the peace with Egypt on the Hebrew language, except for a tendency to refer to the people of that land more as “Egyptians” and less as “Arabs”. Peace with Jordan will probably lead to a similar “birth” of “the Jordanians”, but no further change can be expected.

What influence on Hebrew can we expect from peace with the Palestinians? What influence of the Process was the actual? Does the present linguistic situation show any signs of undoing/redoing the previous language policy - or is it just a continuation of the status quo, as the political analysis implies?

5.1. In the ‘Language of “us” and “them”’ (3.1.) we could have expected an undoing when an integrative policy of the two communities was introduced. Obviously, the Process moves in the opposite direction: separation. Actually, one of the most popular arguments used by the government to justify its policy is the “danger” (“the demographic bomb”, “the Arab womb”) of a “bi-national state” if no separation is made: the Process is thus a measure taken to secure the Jewish majority. The term ‘separation’ hafrada has become extremely popular during the Process - referring to fences built around Palestinian autonomous enclaves, to roads paved in the Territories exclusively for Israelis, to the decrease of the number of Palestinians employed in Israel or allowed to enter into it altogether. The stereotypes of the Palestinian society as “backward” have not changed either.

5.2. The ‘Language of an armed conflict’ (3.2.) is likely to change when the armed conflict comes to an end. This is not (yet?) the case. There is one major change: since the mutual recognition, the PLO is no longer the enemy.13 But the “saboteurs” have not disappeared: the Palestinian opponents of the Process (Islamic and leftist Palestinian movements) keep that title. The new order did not end the armed conflict, but rather shifted it into a new setting, with Israel and the PLO on one side of the barricade and the Palestinian opponents of the Process on the other.

In the 1995 version of the Guidelines, the sections that define the PLO as a hostile organization and prohibit the application of the term “notables” to its leaders have been dropped (Rogel— Schejter 1995). This version also cancels the compulsory censorship regarding interviews from the Territories (see 4.2.) - but replaces it by a similar restriction on covering Palestinian demonstrations of masked or armed opponents of the Process.


404 Ran HaCohen

When foreign media coverage of such demonstrations is shown, the Guidelines urge to emphasize that “the crew had been invited to the scene” and that the demonstrations or parades “are likely to have been staged” (Rogel— Schejter 1995: 47).

Moreover, violent measures against Palestinians have not ceased. They are now taken by both Israeli and PNA forces. It is not surprising that the language here shows development along the lines of continuity, not change.

In December 1992, Israel expelled some 400 Palestinians from the Territories to Lebanon. The government tried to promote a new euphemism: ‘the distancees’ (ha-murhakim) instead of ‘the deportees’

(ha-megorashim), but failed.

The introduction of “closure” has already been discussed (4.3.); in the summer of 1995, it served as euphemism to an actual siege of the PNA-enclave of Jericho.

To cite the evening news on Public Television, August 1995: “In a violent conflict.. .Chaidi Muhammad Chafiz was killed.. .during shooting by settlers”. “Those suspected of the shooting that brought about his death ...” (Kasin 1995). In July 1995, two Palestinian houses where the killing of “saboteurs” took place were destroyed by bulldozers. The military spokesman describing the demolition said: “the area was cleansed” (ha-shetah nukka).

The intensifying use of torture, as well as other violations of human rights, are legitimized under the cover term ‘the price of peace’ (mehir ha-shalom). Having caused the death of an interrogated Palestinian, a new torture method was exposed (summer 1995): ‘shaking’ tiltul. The pseudo-controversy that followed (focusing on “how to ensure its being used without causing death, which is counter-productive to the interrogation”) led to the introduction of a periodically renewed government

licence to use torture, with a legislation in parliament now in preparation. During the discussions, a new euphemism was introduced (instead of “moderate physical pressure”): “intensive interrogation methods” (shitot hakira nimrazot), more recently replaced by “special interrogation methods” (shitot hakira meyuhadot).

The Israeli army does not “leave” or “withdraw” from the Territories: it carries out a “redeployment” or a “new deployment” (prisa me-hadash, prisa hadasha) there. Thus Israel does not renounce claims on the Territories, either on a linguistic, or on an operational level.

5.3. As for “the language of political discussion” (3.3.), we could have expected a stabilization here if the conflict ceased to be a controversial political issue, and a definite settlement gradually prevailed. This is not at all the case: the political discussion is anything but definite. The permanent status of the Territories has not yet been discussed in the negotiations. Thus all the alternatives for a political settlement proposed in the last decades - from annexation to an independent Palestinian state - still circulate on the Israeli arena, with their different terminologies respectively promoted. The media uses the same terms as before; a couple of new terms were proposed by the government, not always successfully; at least one term was withdrawn at a later stage, when it no longer suited government’s policy.

The 1995 Guidelines repeat the 1985 version with regard to calling the Occupied Territories “Judea and Samaria”;14 “The West Bank” is “an obsolete Jordanian term”; “The Territories” is allowed only for stylistic variation (Rogel— Schejter 1995: 29). In addition, the new Guidelines now prohibit the term “East Jerusalem” (Rogel— Schejter 1995: 37).

Around the time of the 1992 general elections, the new government, unsuccessfully tried to distinguish its peace policy from that of the former by calling it “the making of peace” (asiyyat ha-shalom) instead of “the peace process” (tahalikh ha-shalom). Alongside some anti-settlements


406 Ran HaCohen

rhetoric, the new government introduced a differentiation between “security settlements” (hitnahaluyyot bitlioniyyot, allegedly substantial for Israel’s security) and “political settlements” (hitnahaluyyotpolitiyyot, of merely political significance), implying that the latter might be evacuated in the name of peace. This differentiation was dropped when Israel refused to evacuate any settlement in the Interim Phase and implied it does not intend to do so even in the Permanent Phase, an intention reinforced by the present large scale investments in the Territories, especially in roads intended for Jewish settlers exclusively. The very last remnants, if any, of the anti-settlements rhetoric disappeared following the assassination of prime minister Rabin (November 1995), when “re-uniting the nation tom apart” became the name of the game.

Resistance can be found in right wing circles who reject the Oslo accords.

The opposition distances itself from the term “Peace Process” either by using quotes or by calling it “the political process”. For the first time in Israeli history, the term “peace” itself has become controversial: since the Oslo accord, the opposition uses slogans like “we want another peace”, “this peace is killing us” and ‘nightmare-peace’ (shalom balahot, a pun on halom balahot ‘nightmare’). It also refuses to accept the new image of Arafat and the PLO by naming them “saboteurs” as before. To confront the challenge of naming the Palestinian Police, the oxymoron “saboteurs in uniform” was launched. When the discussion concerning the future of the Jewish settlements seemed to become serious, the right wing claimed that the term “evacuation” (of settlements) was a euphemism for “deportation of Jews from their homes”. Some of the harsher expressions of opposition were softened following the assassination of Rabin.

Leftist dissent is scanty and gains no access to the electronic media and very limited access to the press. So, apart from a reluctance to apply the word “peace” to the political process, no linguistic features beyond the level of idiolects could be observed.


5.4. N am ing the new entity

What might be the only apparent effect of the Process on the Hebrew language reflects Israel’s objection to a Palestinian state: the introduction of terms for various components of the new Palestinian entity, that are likely to push out the vocabulary for the present Israeli administration in the Territories. The origin of these terms presumably can be traced back to the government and military circles that formulated the agreements with the PLO. All the terms were coined so as to rule out any association of the new entity with an independent state. The term “Palestinian State” is used less frequently than before in some parts of the Israeli left wing, those who hope it will come to be, and perhaps more by the right wing opposition, who fear it might come.

The entity is termed - officially as well as in the public media (Rogel— Schejter 1995: 29) - ‘the Palestinian Authority’ ha-rashut ha-palestinit (the word “National” of the abbreviation PNA is omitted). The head of the PNA (Yasser Arafat) is called ‘chairman’ (yoshev rosh), not “president” as the Palestinians call him. The armed forces are called “the Palestinian police”, although the Palestinians distinguish between a “navy” and an “air force” within this “police”.15 The high officials are called “holders of a portfolio in the Palestinian Authority”, not “ministers” or “government”. The Palestinian national flag may now be named either ‘the PLO-flag’ (degel ashaf) as before or ‘the Palestinian flag’ (ha-degel ha-palestini), but ‘the flag of Palestine’ (degel palestin) is still prohibited.

Tiresome official circumventions in particular - as in the case of “ministers”- tend to reduce the extent to which they are observed.

408 Ran HaCohen

6. Summary and conclusion

The renativization of Hebrew, being a constitutive part of nation-building, went hand in hand with the Palestinian/Arab conflict. The conflict is thus inherent in the language, that includes a whole terminology reflecting a differentiation on a national basis, stereotypes of-the Palestinian society and a sophisticated apparatus to portray “our” side of the conflict as legitimate, just, moral, self-defending, peace-loving and victimized, and the other side as the opposite of all the aforementioned. When the armed conflict and the oppressive measures taken in order to maintain the occupation escalated, euphemisms where introduced for the same purposes.

The political discussion of the desired status of the Territories occupied in 1967 has since given rise to politically-dependent sets of parallel terms relating to these territories and their inhabitants. In this by-product of the occupation, speakers can choose terms that reflect their ideology.

The on-going “Peace Process” seems, so far, mainly to reaffirm, not change the previous political situation. Political changes seem to be inspired not by a recognition of Palestinian rights, but rather by a search for an efficient way to avoid friction without giving up the Occupied Territories. Meanwhile this is being achieved by replacing direct control over the Palestinians by an indirect control, mediated by the PLO/PNA. If the “permanent solution” is to look much like the present Interim Agreement - as the present large scale investments in separation facilities seem to indicate - then the popular term “separation” would turn out to be a permanent ethnic discrimination, confining Palestinians to tiny enclaves under indirect Israeli supervision and leaving most of the land, resources and authority in Israeli hands.

Corpus planning seems to take a similar course by maintaining the status quo. As the political discussion about a future arrangement continues to use the familiar terms, the vocabulary of violence and its camouflage are being enhanced. The terms used (e.g., in the public media) for the Occupied Territories reflect Israel’s traditional claim. Terms that might have implied readiness to evacuate Jewish settlements have been withdrawn. The terms for the Palestinian autonomy reflect Israel’s rejection of a Palestinian state. No real

attempt to change Palestinian image has been observed, and the excluding stereotypes are now reinforced by an exclusive political policy. As the image of the PLO changed radically (in light of the opposition from the right wing), the old line between “us” and “them” has been redrawn to include the “good” Palestinians (PLO) among “us”: we who share the common interest to survive by violently oppressing the Palestinian opposition. (Not surprisingly, the legitimation given to fierce suppression of opposition - “battle for peace” - coincides with the findings of Abd-el-Jawad— Al-Abed Al-Haq (this volume) concerning Arab countries.)16 So far, this is not a case of restoring the old order, but rather maintaining it under the cover term “peace process”.

Notes

1. This rather arbitrary choice reflects the general feeling and corresponds with the era of political changes dealt with in other articles in this volume. Some would, however, argue that the Process started in the Camp David accords in the late seventies which is quite a reasonable periodization as

well.2. Italicized words are Hebrew. I am using the General Transliteration Rules

of the Encyclopaedia Judaica (Vol.I, p.90).3. This is a Biblical idiom: Palestine was considered of Mesopotamia or

Egypt, so “ascending” was meant literally. In modem Hebrew, however, the term has acquired the Zionist meaning of “coming to Israel as a Jew in order to stay there for good”. The same holds true for the opposite term yerida ‘descent’.

4. Cf. “Israeli Defence Forces”, the official name of the Israeli Army.5. Again, I refer her to consensual language, not to extreme examples like

“bipedal beasts” used by Prime Minister Menachem Begin.6. This is by no means new. It was Prime Minister Golda Meir who coined-,

sometime in the seventies, the phrase: “We shall never forgive the Palestinians for what they make us do to them”; but the idea is even older.


410 Ran HaCohen

7. The other side of this coin is the reduced age of criminal responsibility: a 16 year old Palestinian is considered an adult by the military law (vs. 18 years in Israel and elsewhere), and even children under 12 can be administratively punished, the penalty being imposed on their parents (Military Order nr. 1235, 1988).

8. Mainly exposed lawyers, like Mrs. Tamar Pelleg Sryck - to whom I am greatly indebted - and by human rights associations (eg. B ’TSELEM 1991), that interviewed tortured Palestinians and made their findings

known.9. Cf. Kimmerling— Migdal (1993: xvi). An alternative way to deny

Palestinian rights without denying their national existence is by viewing the Kingdom of Jordan as “the true Palestinian state”, using the fact that Palestinians (actually: Palestinian refugees; which makes all the difference) form a majority in that country.

10. I shall not dwell on the complex question of naming this non-Jewish population of Israel (Arab Israelis, Israeli Palestinians and all other

permutations). Cf. Kimmerling— Migdal (1993: xvii, 159-184).11. Non-public and regional cable television entered the market during the

nineties, reducing the “rating” of the public media. However, as far as our subject matter is concerned, their language seems to be modeled after that of the public media.

12. Henceforth: “the Guidelines” . An internal document of the Israel Broadcasting Authority. Only its 1995 version has been published (Rogel— Schejter 1995). I managed to get hold of the previous, unpublished version dated September 1985 (Rogel 1985), but failed to obtain

earlier versions.13. As an Israeli journal ironically defined it, a couple of months after the

Oslo accord: “PLO: an extremely dangerous voodoo spell that was canceled in an impressive ceremony. Though no longer valid, it is still in use on the margins of the tribe.” (Rosenthal 1993)

14. The 1992 changes in Parliament went into effect in the plenum of the Broadcasting Authority only in summer 1995. The new version of the Guidelines was written before that. One should be careful not to think of


the Guidelines as a kind of party manifesto: they are written by people who regard themselves as apolitical civil servants who express existing practices, not obey current dictates of politicians. This ethos implies a conservative policy with slow-paced changes.

15. Just some of the many differences symptomatic of the gap between Israel’s interpretation of the Autonomy and the Palestinians’.

16. The Israeli right-wing opposition, however, is used by Israel ideologically in the opposite way: to justify Israel’s “inability” to make concessions. The Israeli opposition must be “understood”, “taken account o f ’ and “appeased”.

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The impact of the Peace Process in the Middle East on Arabic1

Hassan R.S. Abd-el-Jawad and Fawwaz Al-Abed Al-Haq

1. Introduction

Sela (1992: 674) maintains,

W ar is one of the most complex and intricit phenomena in the human history; it is obviously of great moment for the sides involved. Rarely has this been more evident than in the war fought between Jews and Arabs in 1948, in which a diverse array of actors participated: fledgling states- institutionally weak and inexperienced in the art of war and international relations - informal organizations, local and foreign alike, and the Great Powers, seeking to secure their overseas interest. It was a war of highly charged and intense polarities: fear and despair, hope and disappointment, intentions and capabilities, public rhetoric and secret talks, uncertainty, perception and reality - and at the same time it compelled the participants to make decisions dictated by a desire for permanent security and relentless drive for prestige and honor.

W e certainly regard this stage of turmoil, uncertainty, vagueness, and political and ideological conflicting interests as paralleled with and mirrored in similar linguistic turmoil, uncertainty, and conflicts.

The Arab-Israeli conflict has been the single most important issue in the Middle East for the last century. This conflict has permeated all aspects of life in the area, including the linguistic dimension. Putting an end to this conflict following the recent on-going peace process (so-called peace making and peace building) is even more important. This peace process, if it is fully achieved, is bound to change many things in the area, among these the linguistic outlook. In this chapter, we intend to study the effects of this process on the language situation in the Arab countries which have been part of the process, i.e., the signing of the treaty or agreements of principles. First we want to give a survey