From Beirut to Jerusalem: Teaching the Continuing Nakba

• In Event: Teaching After Palestine: Speaking about the Occupation and Palestinian Culture in the U.S. Academy

Abstract

My contribution to the panel will focus, on the one hand, upon the ways in which my experiences in Lebanon informed a course I developed called the Political Geography of the Middle East. On the other hand, my remarks will look at the ways in which a recent trip to the occupied Palestinian territories informed a new course I am developing on Israel/Palestine: The Colonial Present? More broadly, I will critically analyze the problems and possibilities of travel as a starting point for teaching.
Political Geography of the Middle East centered largely on the historical geography of Zionism, particularly the ethnic cleansing inherent to the establishment of the state of Israel. The people I met in the Shatila, Bourj al Barejneh, and Nahr al Bared Palestinian refugee camps inspired and informed much of my education on these matters. And it is on their place within the broader Palestinian struggle where my course centered. My students spent far more time, for example, reading about 1948 refugees, their denied right of return, and their visions for single, unified state of Palestine than on the occupation of the West Bank, the siege of Gaza, or Palestinians within the state of Israel.
A trip to the occupied West Bank during the spring of 2013, however, forced me to change (and ultimately recreate) this course to shed more light on the struggles of Palestinians living under occupation. Hence, the Political Geography of the Middle East transformed into Israel/Palestine: The Colonial Present? I expected this shift, although I did not anticipate the unfortunate ease with which I could connect the 1948 Nakba to the contemporary occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, I learned, is an ongoing process.
This panel presentation will explore the shifting geographies through which I have (not unproblematically) experienced, conceptualized and represented Palestine.

Author

• Robert Ross, Point Park University (PA)