How Palestinian refugee families living in refugee

camps within the West Bank and the Gaza Strip

deal with their engagement with formal education

at primary and secondary school level

Gillian L Kerr-Sheppard

B.A., D.L.I.S, Dip. Ed

This thesis is presented for the degree of Master of Education (by research

only) of the University of Western Australia

Graduate School of Education and Graduate Research School

University of Western Australia

2010

i

ABSTRACT

In light of the universally accepted importance of engagement with education, this

research set out to contribute to theory through the central research question, ‘How do

Palestinian refugee families living in refugee camps within the West Bank and Gaza

Strip deal with their engagement with formal education at primary and secondary

level?’ Despite being at the centre of a long running conflict, Palestinian refugees of the

West Bank and the Gaza Strip have consistently demonstrated a high degree of

engagement with education, in addition to achieving universal, gender equal, basic

education. (United Nations Millennium Development Goals Two and Three)

The choice of symbolic interactionism as the theoretical framework for the research

allowed the emergence of socio-cultural meanings underpinning the perspectives and

actions of the refugees in their dealing with education. The participants in the study

came from four generations of refugees, resident in ten camps across the West Bank and

in the Gaza Strip. Grounded theory methods of analysis were used with data gathered

during a period of four years from semi-structured interviews, non-participant

observation and document analysis.

The findings indicate that Palestinian refugees of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip deal

with their engagement with education through their ability to prioritise and respond to

positively fuelled aspirations, regardless of the circumstances within which they live. In

doing this, they centre their motivations on their own society and its wellbeing, a

healthier and more constructive approach than responding reactively to a perceived

antagonist.

However, implications arising from the findings suggest that the negative social and

psychological effects of living with prolonged stress and trauma arising from armed

conflict have the potential to severely diminish the positivity and resilience shown by

refugee families in their engagement with education. Therefore in terms of policy and

practice, this study recommends that immediate action should be taken by all concerned

parties, national and international, to alleviate the effects of conflict on refugee families

in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

On a theoretical level, given the importance of engagement with education both

universally and to the Palestinian population in particular, further research into the

interaction of community positivity and engagement with education would be a valuable

addition to theoretical knowledge and have implications for future policy and practice.

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STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

This thesis represents the original research of the author. This work has not previously

been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge

and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another

person, except where due reference is made in the thesis itself.

Gillian Kerr-Sheppard

October 15, 2010

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Undertaking this study has been a journey on several different levels. Such a task would have been impossible without the support of my family, friends and colleagues.

For the academic journey, my heartfelt gratitude is extended to Dr Simon Clarke and Professor Tom O’Donoghue, my supervisors, who guided me from nowhere on the academic scale to making this study a reality. From proposal to completed thesis, despite distance and time, they have been a constant source of knowledge and encouragement.

Over the past five years, as I have moved between Western Australia, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Europe, my physical journey has been made possible by the many generous people who have welcomed me into their homes on my way. My family, Sonia, Alex, Jo, Nikki and Toni, and my wonderful friends Steve, Ian, and Steven have all offered me safe havens in my times away from the field, without which I could not have kept going.

Leaving my comfort zone as a Drama teacher in Perth has involved me in a personal journey, the rewards of which are still unfolding. Without the encouragement of colleagues and past students from my drama teacher days, especially Travis and Tim, I may never have started. Without the amazing positivity and resilience I have learned from my Palestinian friends and colleagues, I could not have kept going.

Finally to my children Sonia and Alexander, whose wholehearted endorsement of my decision to travel to Palestine set me free to go, thank you so much. Your respect, love and belief in me have made all of these journeys possible.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract i

Statement of Originality ii

Acknowledgements iii

Table of Contents iv

List of Photographs, Tables and Figures vii

Chapter 1 – Introduction 1

Context of the study 3

Research methods 7

Justification for the study 7

Conclusion 9

Chapter 2 –Background of Education in the Region 12

The wider region 12

Up to the mid 19th century 13

Changes in the 19th and early 20th centuries 15

The first half of the 20th century 17

The second half of the 20th century 18

The 21st century 20

Conclusion 22

Chapter 3- Background of the Refugees 24

Socio-economic organisation 25

Psychological orientation 27

Involvement with education 33

Conclusion 38

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Chapter 4 – The Palestinian Voice in Literature 40

Introduction 40

The Palestinian past 40

The Palestinian case 50

Palestinian resilience 55

Conclusion 60

Chapter 5 – Methodology 63

Purpose of the study 63

Theoretical approach 63

Data collection 65

Methods of analysis 68

Trustworthiness and authenticity 78

Conclusion 80

Chapter 6 – Description of Findings 81

Introduction 81

Theme 1 – ‘Being a Palestinian refugee’ 82

Theme 2 – ‘Building the future’ 93

Main Strategy – ‘Being educated’ 100

Conclusion 105

Chapter 7 – Discussion of Findings 106

Theme 1 – ‘Being a Palestinian refugee’ 106

Theme 2 – ‘Building the future’ 115

Conclusion 118

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Chapter 8 – Conclusions and Implications 120

Introduction 120

Summary of the study 121

Review of main findings 123

Limitations of the study 125

Implications of research findings 127

Recommendations for future research 131

Conclusion 132

References 134

Appendices 146

Appendix A Aide-Memoire for interviews 146

Appendix B Information sheet for participants in English 148

Appendix C Information sheet for participants in Arabic 149

Appendix D Consent form for participants 150

Appendix E Consent form for parents and guardians 151

Appendix F Consent form for Minors 152

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LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS, TABLES AND FIGURES

Photographs

Photograph 1: Peasant farming family, Palestine, 1935

(Elia Kahvedjian, courtesy of Kevork Kahvedjian, Jerusalem) Title page

Photograph 2: Refugee family, Aida camp, Bethlehem, 2007

(courtesy of Anne Paq) Title page

Photograph 3: Jenin camp (G. Kerr-Sheppard) viii

Photograph 4: Aida camp (G. Kerr-Sheppard) viii

Photograph 5: Al Fawaar camp (G. Kerr-Sheppard) viii

Photograph 6: Rafah camp (courtesy of Anne Paq) viii

Tables

Table 5.1 Participant context timeline in five year increments 67

Figures

Figure 5.1 Open coding of an interview at Aida Camp 72

Figure 5.2 Memo written following an interview at Aida Camp 72

Figure 5.3 Memo written following an observation 73

Figure 5.4 Theoretical memo exploring the concept ‘inaho al dakhilina’ 75

Figure 5.5 Flow chart containing properties of an emerging theme 76

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Rafah Camp, southern Gaza Strip

Aida Camp, near Bethlehem, central West Bank

Jenin Camp, northern West Bank

Al Fawaar camp, near Hebron, southern West Bank

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION TO THE THESIS

Introduction

This study is concerned with a group which is a particular sub section of a wider

population who have achieved universal basic education and gender equality in

education in circumstances of ongoing displacement, conflict and trauma. That

achievement has been attained over a period of sixty two years, thus allowing valuable

insights into how four consecutive generations of young people have found and

maintained their motivation to learn, at the same time as building their resilience in the

face of both internal anxieties and external dangers. The purpose of this study is to

develop substantive theory on how this particular sub group deals with their

engagement with formal education at primary and secondary level.

The participants in the study are members of Palestinian refugee families living in

refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, two parts of the Palestinian Territories.

They range in age from seventy-five down to eight years old and include the original

generation who were displaced in the middle of the twentieth century before moving

into the camps as young people and their descendants. Prior to the displacement sixty

two years ago, the participant families were part of the socio-economic group of peasant

farmers that inhabited villages surrounded by farming land, throughout historical

Palestine. The majority of the group was illiterate and had limited access to formal

schooling. The participants currently attend, or have attended, schools within the

refugee camps administered by the United Nations Relief Works Agency for the Near

East (UNRWA) and, since 1994, licensed and overseen by the Ministry of Education

and Higher Education, one of the Ministries of the Palestinian National Authority.

UNRWA schools serve only the registered refugee population and are free, single

gender schools running from grade 1 to 9, following which students who continue their

education join the government or private secondary schools from grade 10 to

matriculation at the end of grade 12. UNRWA began operations in 1950, at which time

most of the participants in this study had parents or grandparents who could neither read

nor write. Today’s reality is very different. Figures for the whole population of the

West Bank and Gaza Strip over 15 years old in 2006 (of which the participants in this

study are a sub section) show a literacy rate of 93.5%. In addition to the 6.5 % illiterate,

another 7.2% can read and write but have not received formal schooling, which is still

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an enviable percentage. The school enrolment ratio of both males and females in 2006/7

in basic schools (grades 1 -9) was 91.2%, dropping to 74.5% in secondary schools

(grades 1- 12). In terms of gender equity, the percentage distribution of males to females

in schools was 50.1% males to 49.9% females (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics,

2007, p. 311).

The participants in this study come from seven of the UNRWA refugee camps in the

West Bank and three camps in the Gaza Strip. Camps are variously described as the

frontline of resistance or extremely vulnerable places, depending on the discourse

within which they are being framed. What is without doubt is that the inhabitants of the

camps, over the sixty two years of the camps’ existence, have faced consistently adverse

conditions, including a variety of challenges, physical, social, economic and

psychological. Physical challenges affecting children have included lack of

infrastructure and basic facilities such as water and electricity; and lack of personal and

social space, leading to overcrowding at home, school and play. Socially the refugees

are seen as a distinct group, not always well integrated into the general population

which the children have to join in their final three years of schooling. Economically

refugees have had fluctuating high rates of unemployment depending on political

circumstances around them, with consequent lack of often basic needs. Psychologically

refugee children face constant uncertainty about the events in everyday life, direct

emotional trauma resulting from conflict in their camps, and frequent loss of contact

with family members through incarceration or death. Details of the above adverse

conditions have been regularly recorded and referred to by such interested international

parties as the United Nations bodies, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the

World Bank, Human Rights and non-governmental charitable organisations on the one

hand, and similarly by local and national groups on the other. Despite the agendas

behind all the information available, any background to a study of the conditions under

which Palestinian refugee families approach schooling and education is thus rendered

accessible.

The combination of educational attainment as quoted above and the existence of the

adverse conditions in which that attainment is gained leads to an enquiry into the

motivations of the school children and their families and the resilience they show in

dealing with adversity where education and schooling are concerned. In seeking to

generate substantive theory about how Palestinian families living in refugee camps

3

within the West Bank and Gaza Strip deal with their engagement with formal education

at primary and secondary level, this study attempts firstly to understand the background

to how illiterate peasant villagers, once they became refugees, came to regard education

as one of the most crucial assets attainable in their lives. It also looks at the context

within which their children and grandchildren, after sixty two years of dispossession,

occupation and conflict, still seek education with passion, industry and pride at a time

when their economy and consequently their employment prospects are virtually

nonexistent.

Context of the Study

Who are the Palestinian Refugees?

A basic knowledge of who the Palestinian refugees are and which United Nations

agencies contribute to their well being and education is essential context to this study.

As mentioned, the participants in the study belong to a sub group of the overall group

‘Palestinian refugees’, and in order to facilitate understanding of that, a brief overview

is provided below.

Palestinian refugees define themselves as those people, and their descendants, who were

displaced from their land and homeland during the 20th century (Yahya, 1999, p. 19).

According to Farsoun and Zacaria, ‘Every child of Palestinian parents, whether born in

historic Palestine (al-dakhel) or in exile (al-manfa) is considered to be one of the

Palestinian people (al sha’ab al filastini)’ (Farsoun & Zacaria, 1997, p. 12). They are

the largest group of displaced people in the world, in diaspora across North and South

America, Europe, Russia, Australia and the Arab States, with a total estimated number

of 7.1 million (Badil Resource Centre, 2008). The United Nations, under UN General

Assembly Resolution 194, defines Palestine refugees as ‘persons whose normal place of

residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes

and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict’ (UNRWA, 2010a).

Palestinian refugees registered with the United Nations in 1950 numbered 914,000,

however the definition also covers the descendants of those persons who became

refugees in 1948, and by 2005 the number of refugees had grown to 4,718,899

(PASSIA, 2010, p. 327). During the 1967 Arab-Israeli war approximately 300,000

Palestinians were displaced from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This number included

some 175,000 UNRWA registered refugees who thus became refugees for a second

4

time. They are known as ‘1967 Displaced Persons’ (Abu Lughod, 1996; PASSIA, 2007,

p. 308) and by 2008 their number had grown to 940,000 (Badil Resource Centre, 2008).

Thus, there are now three groups of refugees as follows: firstly, the 1948 Palestinian

Refugees under UNGA Resolution 194(III) and their descendents, including both

registered and non-registered refugees; secondly those displaced as a result of the 1967

War, the 1967 Displaced Persons under UNSC Resolution 237; and thirdly others

outside the area of former Palestine who are unable or unwilling to return due to well

founded fear of being persecuted (Badil Resource Centre, 2006b, p. xvi, 2007a). There

are in addition two main categories of Internally Displaced Persons. Firstly, those who

remained inside the area that became Israel in 1948, known as 1948 Palestinians or

Israeli Arabs, but who have since been displaced from their lands or homes; and

secondly Palestinians inside the Occupied Territories who have been and continue to be

displaced due to land confiscation, house demolition, construction of the Wall and

revocation of residency rights in East Jerusalem (Badil Resource Centre, 2007a).

The United Nations Refugee Agencies

The United Nations created two separate agencies to deal specifically with the

Palestinian refugees. In December 1948, UN General Assembly Resolution 194(III),

set up the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP), with a brief

to work towards a solution based on the principles in Paragraph 11 of UNGA

Resolution 194 which stated a right of return or compensation for loss of property and

livelihood (Badil Resource Centre, 2005). However, by 1952 the UNCCP, which was

created to seek a solution to the refugees’ status, became unable to fulfil its purpose and

ceased effective operation (Badil Resource Centre, 2005; Rempel, 2006).

The United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East

(UNRWA) was established by UN General Assembly Resolution 302(IV) on 8

December 1949 with a brief to deal with operational aspects created by the

dispossession (Badil Resource Centre, 2005; Bowker, 2003; Pappe, 2006; Rempel,

2006). UNRWA was solely ‘a service provider in the camps which in a legal sense

were host government facilities’ (Bowker, 2003, p. 135). UNRWA began operations on

1 May 1950 with relief accounting for 69 per cent of its budget. Due to the crisis

situation UNRWA inherited a ‘largely reactive rather than proactive and strategic

approach’ (Bowker, 2003, p. 131). It was meant to be short term, until the crisis was

5

solved through UNGA Resolution 194, however by 1955 it had extended the relief

operations of providing tents, food staples and health care to include education, housing,

training and employment (Farsoun & Zacaria, 1997, p. 142). During this time the tents

were replaced by breeze block or concrete ‘shelters’. In cooperation with UNRWA,

since 1950 UNESCO ‘has been responsible for the UNESCO/UNRWA education

programme, covering basic education (elementary and lower secondary), technical and

vocational education, teacher training and a university scholarship programme’

(Samady, 1997).

UNRWA Refugee Camps

There are 58 recognised UNRWA refugee camps distributed throughout Jordan,

Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Most of the camps were established

between 1949 and 1953, a further ten were established after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war

and the following Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza

Strip. Some camps have been closed (UNRWA, 2010a). UNRWA refugee camps are

built on either state land or land leased from local landowners by the government or

authority of the country in which they are situated. UNRWA does not administer or

police the camps, which remain the responsibility of the host government or authority.

Therefore, administrative control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip camps has

changed over the period of 1948 to 2008 as the ultimate responsibility for those areas

has passed from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, to Egypt, to Israel and then in some

cases to the Palestinian Authority (Bowker, 2003; Schiff, 1995). However, UNRWA

does administer its own facilities within the camps such as education, health centres and

distribution centres (UNRWA, 2010a).

Not all UNRWA registered refugees live in camps. As at June 2006, 30 percent of

registered refugees were living in camps, while 60 percent lived outside of camps. In the

West Bank, the proportion of registered refugees living the nineteen camps was 26.1

percent, that is some 185,522 refugees; whilst in the eight Gaza Strip camps the

percentage was higher at 47.5 percent or 475,675 refugees (UNRWA, 2007). Originally

the camp refugees were housed in tents by the Red Cross and the UN. However over

time, as it became clear that the solution to the refugee problem was not going to be

found with any expediency, UNRWA permitted more permanent shelters to be built.

The camps changed from ‘wind-swept tent cities with hardly any services into highly

6

congested mini cities or shanty towns with some infrastructure’ (Farsoun & Zacaria,

1997, p. 143).

In the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, UNRWA refugee camps are often close to, or

even within, cities and towns. They are readily accessible to Palestinian and

international visitors, except during specific periods of curfew. The camps consist of

concrete buildings, which, as the ground area of the camps has not altered, have

increased in density and height due to natural population growth. Thus today’s camps

typically contain three or four story flat roofed buildings in close proximity, with

narrow streets and pathways and extremely rare green areas. It is not unusual to find

small gardens or livestock on the roofs of housing blocks. Although conditions in the

camps do vary, overall the high population density, cramped living conditions and

inadequate basic infrastructure, such as roads and sewers, lead to a general paucity of

life style, particularly in extreme weather, either summer or winter. Electricity and

water are the responsibility of the host governments and are frequently intermittent or

lacking (Badil Resource Centre, 2006a).

An idea of the density can be gained from the area and population of the camps. In

Gaza, the most populous area, Beach Camp (Al Shati), which had a population of over

80,688 refugees in 2007, was built and is still situated on an area of less than one square

kilometre. The largest camp in the West Bank is Balata (population 22,878) built on

less than two square kilometres and the smallest Beit Jibrin (population 2,058), built

within the Bethlehem municipal boundaries on 20,000 square metres (UNRWA, 2010f).

It must be noted that refugees in camps do not own or lease the land on which their

shelters are built, they only have the right as registered refugees to use it while living in

the camps (UNRWA, 2010d). As stated above, not all registered refugees live in the

camps. Many have moved to locations outside the camps, often in districts near them,

and bought and built on land of their own. The participants in this study, however, are

families who are registered refugees living in camps within the West Bank and Gaza

Strip. The camps from which the participants come are Jenin, Qalandia, Aida, Beit

Jibrin, Deheisha, Al Aroub and Al Fawaar in the West Bank and Al Shati (Beach

Camp), Khan Younis and Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

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Research methods

The purpose of this study has been to develop substantive theory about how Palestinian

families living in refugee camps within the West Bank and Gaza Strip deal with their

engagement with formal education at primary and secondary level. The substantive

theory has been arrived at by uncovering the perspectives, actions and changes in

actions decided upon by the participants with regard to their engagement with education

across the four generations of participants who contributed to the study. The use of

symbolic interactionism has been appropriate in this circumstance as it not only

provided a theoretical framework through which to interrogate the ways in which

individual participants dealt with other individuals and situations, but also to understand

the importance of such social meanings that the collective group attached to the world

around them, including how they responded to those social meanings (Taylor &

Bogdan, 1998).

Qualitative methods of data collection were used, as they allowed the emergence of

patterns of ‘action and interaction between and among various types of social units’ or

actors (Strauss & Corbin, 1994, p. 278). Data triangulation, involving collecting data at

different dates and places and from the perspectives of different generations, has been

considered vital (Flick, 2006). Analysis of the data collected used grounded theory

methods, facilitating an investigation of “patterns of action and interaction” between

individuals and their situations (Strauss & Corbin, 1994, p. 278). In keeping with

grounded theory principles, analysis of initial data collection was followed by

subsequent data collection, following emerging directions in that analysis (Punch,

1998). Such perspectives, actions, changes in actions and subsequent changes in

perspectives that emerged from the data have formed the basis of substantive theory on

how the participants deal with their engagement with education in their particular social

environment, namely refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Justification for Study

Education is seen as essential for the nurturing, development and civil growth of

individuals, peoples and nations alike. The universal provision of that part of early

formal education which involves literacy, numeracy and social learning, often called

fundamental or basic education, has been a goal of most empires, states and

international organisations from the nineteenth century to the present day. Gender

8

equity, particularly in the primary years, became an equally important focus during the

twentieth century.

Provision is one side of the educational coin, the part that can be legislated for,

financed, staffed and offered by the authorities in control of, or contributing to, the

relevant states or nations. The other side of the coin is the acceptance of, participation in

and engagement with the education on offer, by the individuals for whom the provision

is intended. Although participation can be deemed compulsory, meaningful

participation, or engagement with that education cannot be enforced. The ability to

benefit from education depends on a variety of factors. One of the foremost is intrinsic

motivation, which encompasses the individual’s desire to take part in the education

process. Extrinsic motivation, based on the individual’s perceived need for education is

another powerful motivating factor. Without both of the above, that is a personal

motivating force combined with an aim or goal, taking part in the structure of schooling

may become a shallow undertaking with limited potential for individual growth and

gain.

Education is an ongoing process which builds upon itself. Formal education intended

for young people or children in their developmental years requires the personal

motivations mentioned above as an ingredient for success. However, many young

people are subject to stressors, either from within themselves or from external factors,

which affect their ability to engage meaningfully with the learning process. In such

cases, in addition to motivation, young people may need to build resilience in the face

of such stressors in order to achieve their educational goals. A large proportion of young

people in today’s world undertake their early formal education in circumstances

including high degrees of conflict and trauma. Many are deemed ‘at risk’, that is at risk

of falling below the minimum standards of literacy, numeracy and intellectual

development which are currently seen as desirable to fulfil the internationally stated

agendas of building meaningful participation in the progress and development of each

individual’s humanity and social and national responsibilities. These circumstances of

conflict and trauma are specific to the perceptions of each individual child and may

equally be present in industrialised, ‘developed’ nations, as well as in those parts of the

world deemed ‘developing’.

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Given the international acceptance of the importance of universal, gender equal

education to the well being of our world and its inhabitants, and the vast amount of

financial and organisational resources tied up in the endeavour of providing such

education in all parts of the globe, it follows that an understanding of how young people

access both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to learn, including the ways in which they

build resilience in the face of obstacles to their learning, is vital to the success of the

education provided by all sectors, nationally and internationally.

Conclusion

This chapter has introduced the focus of this study. Information related to the group

under consideration has aimed to give a general understanding of the context and

circumstances within which the participants engage with education. Methods of

research have been briefly outlined and a justification for the study has been provided.

In order to provide a contextual space for enquiring into engagement with education in

contemporary times, Chapter Two looks at the historical background of education in the

wider region surrounding Palestine. Two main aspects are relevant to this study, firstly

the existence of a long established belief in the value of education from both cultural

and religious points of view, and secondly the effect on the indigenous Arab Palestinian

population of the manner in which both the provision and content of education have

been used as a means to achieving specific objectives by successive waves of non-

indigenous groups with interests in the region.

In Chapter Three the historical and cultural background of the refugees living in

UNRWA camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is examined in order to gain an

understanding of the wider context of their perceptions and behaviours with regard to

engagement with education. The importance of the group over the individual is

identified as providing a solid basis for personal and group resilience in times of

difficulty, whilst a group characteristic of proactive response to perceived injustices

underpins resilience and forward motion, even under extraordinary circumstances of

difficulty.

Chapter Four, ‘The Palestinian Voice’, identifies and discusses a body of literature

written mainly by Palestinians, in English. The literature has been selected from the

vast body of works available on the subject of Palestine, and does not include

10

comparisons with literature relating to other refugee situations. Rather than locating

education pertaining to the sixty two year old Palestinian refugee case in the context of

other current or resolved refugee situations, the intention of Chapter Four is to

illuminate specifically Palestinian perspectives which have emerged during the course

of the study as relevant to the central research question. The literature is viewed in three

sections. The first, ‘Palestinian Loss’, consistently affirms the belief that a grave

miscarriage of justice has been suffered over the last century, unsolicited by Palestinian

actions. Secondly, the ‘Palestinian Case’ is explained through examining the current

situation related to Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law. The third

section, ‘Palestinian Resilience’, presents literature related to the conditions in which

Palestinian children go to school and their response to those conditions.

Chapter Five describes the use of symbolic interactionism as a theoretical framework

through which to interrogate the way in which the participants in the study deal with the

situations they experience by engaging with education. Examples of data collected over

a period of four years and the inclusion of participants from ten camps across the West

Bank and Gaza Strip, including two families of three generations and one extended

family, allow a view of the development of the participants’ perspectives over a period

of sixty two years.

A description of the findings which have emerged from the data is provided in Chapter

Six. Two main themes, ‘Being a Palestinian Refugee’ and ‘Building the Future’ lead to

the contention that within Palestinian refugee society each individual is accepted as

responsible for the collective future of the group. Consequently, it becomes an

individual’s duty to form and apply specific strategies for engagement with education in

order to assure the future and to empower the collective group ‘Palestinian Refugees’ to

continue in existence.

Chapter Seven will present a discussion of the two main themes, ‘Being a Palestinian

Refugee’ and ‘Building the Future’, in the light of literature dealing with engagement

with education and resilience in education and conflict. The discussion of the first

theme will look at the nature of West Bank and Gaza Strip camp refugee society and its

relationship to the refugees’ successful engagement with education. In the discussion of

11

the second theme, the focus will be on the proactive and positive elements of young

refugees’ attitudes to their lives and education.

In Chapter Eight a summary of the study reported in this thesis will be followed by a

section on the limitations of the research. Implications arising from the study include

questioning the shifting baseline of ‘normal’ where the daily lives of Palestinian refugee

children intersect with their educational aspirations. The chapter concludes with

recommendations for future practice and research.

The following chapter presents an overview of the historical background of education in

the wider region surrounding Palestine, including Ottoman Turkey and Egypt.

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CHAPTER TWO

BACKGROUND OF EDUCATION IN THE REGION

Introduction

This Chapter examines the background of education in the region, from Turkey to

Egypt. Two main aspects concerning education are relevant to this study. Firstly, the

existence of a long established belief in the value of education and secondly, the manner

in which both the provision and content of education have been used as a means to

achieving specific objectives by successive waves of groups with interests in the region.

Information will be presented in sections, corresponding to the following five eras. The

first section will give a general overview of education available up to the 19th century,

which was provided mainly through religious bodies or with Ottoman Governmental

requirements in mind. The second section will outline the developments in the nature

and availability of education in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt during the late 19th and

early 20th centuries. Of importance are the importation of European ideas and the

modernisation of Islamic educational thought. The third section will comment on the

influence of the Imperial British format of education in the wider region during the first

half of the 20th century and, through the British Mandate, in Palestine. The fourth

section will focus on the second half of the 20th century and briefly describe the

infrastructure, delivery and curricula of the education system in Palestine under the

successive controls of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Egypt and Israel (through the

Israeli Military and Civil Authorities), including the United Nations’ contribution to

refugee education in the region after 1950. Finally, an outline will be provided of the

current provision of education in the Palestinian Territories through the Palestinian

Ministry of Education, established in 1994, and of the development of the National

Curriculum by the Palestine Curriculum Development Centre.

The wider region

The term ‘Levant’ has been used by Europeans since the 15th century to describe the

wider general area encompassing what is now Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Cyprus, Iraq and

Israel and the Palestinian Territories. This area is known amongst Arab peoples as part

of ‘the Fertile Crescent’ and ‘bilad al shams’. It was important because of the fertile

land it contained; its sea boundaries and its position mid way between the East and the

13

West, giving it both an economic significance in world trade and a cultural importance

as a meeting place of differing peoples and civilisations. Civilisation, religion and

learning have formed an important part of the ‘Levantine outlook’, stereotyped by

Europeans, not always in a positive manner, as quick thinking, open minded, lively,

intelligent and informed. For centuries therefore, the area known as Palestine, as a part

of this wider area, has been the recipient of a cross section of cultural influences from

both East and West, including the Arab and Ottoman Empires and European and British

colonial ventures. In the case of Palestine, this is not only because of its geographical

placement at the edge of the Eastern Mediterranean connecting the West and the East

but, in addition, due to its role as the ‘Holy Land’, of major significance to the three

religions ‘of the book’ which share common mythology and foundations based in the

area.

Up to the mid 19th century

For children, a limited form of education, mainly consisting of reading, writing and

some numeracy, was disseminated through places of religion, in the case of Islam and

Christianity, mosque and church schools (Kramer, 2002; Starrett, 2004). Young people

who showed academic ability, usually from the privileged classes, continued their

education to become either bureaucrats, destined to work in government, or religious

scholars. The main tasks of the latter focussed on the interpretation of religious matters

to those who had not studied, and included the judiciary, local government and teaching

(Kramer, 2002).

Provision of education for Muslim students was administered through schools attached

to mosques. The main agenda behind this schooling was that students should learn to

memorise and recite the Holy Q’ran and become familiar with the correct rituals needed

for worship. Reading and sometimes writing were achieved as a part of this learning;

however the classical Arabic of the Q’ran was not the dialect, or even the language,

spoken by most of the Muslim students in the wider region. Therefore, achieving a true

understanding of the text was not part of the curriculum of the mosque schools, but was

reserved for those students considered academically talented enough to proceed to a

madrassa, where they learned to understand and interpret the Q’ran, studying other

disciplines in the light of Q’ranic knowledge. Graduates from madrassas formed the

‘Ulamma’, or body of learned scholars and judges in Islamic law (Kramer, 2002;

Starrett, 2004).

14

For Christians, Palestine, known as ‘the Holy Land’, contained many sites of religious

importance. Under the Ottoman Empire, worship at and maintenance of religious sites

was undertaken by the relevant religious organisations through agreements with the

Ottoman Government. An example of how this interacted with education in the region

is the influence of the Catholic Franciscan Order, which had originally been granted

custodianship of the Holy sites in Palestine by a decree from Pope Clemens VI in the

mid 14th century, and despite a fluctuating influence over the following centuries,

remains a central custodial presence in the Holy Sites today (Custodia di Terra Sancta,

2007). As part of their custodianship, the Franciscans hosted Christian pilgrims during

their visits to the various sites across the Holy Land, and the need for local guides who

understood foreign languages and Catholic worship to assist the monks with the

pilgrims was a priority contributing to the form of education offered by the Christians.

From the 16th century there are written records of schools established by the Franciscans

to educate male children from the indigenous Christian population, both Catholic and

Greek Orthodox. The children were from families which acted as tour guides for the

pilgrims and they were intended to become tour guides themselves. The instruction

provided the children with elementary education and ensured fluency in Italian.

According to Fr Halim Nujaim, quoting from records of the General Chapter of the

Franciscan Friars, Toledo, Spain 1645, by 1645 the Friars were formally responsible for

‘raising the children of the guides and interpreters serving in the convents of Jerusalem,

Bethlehem and Nazareth and instructing them in the principles of the Christian religion

until the age of nine’ (Nujaim, 2005). In 1687 the curriculum included humanities,

Italian, religious singing and religious principles. A letter written in 1767 also describes

a vocational school at a convent in Jerusalem which taught carpentry, iron smithing and

printing and mentions that some students ‘conduct commercial activities in the East and

in Europe’ (Nujaim, 2005).

In the various divisions and regions of the Ottoman Empire, the administrative details

such as tax collection, census taking and conscription were organised and carried out at

local level by indigenous clan and religious leaders, who then reported back to the

‘Sublime Porte’, the centre of authority in Istanbul (Starrett, 2004). To enable and

facilitate this structure of government, education in the regional areas was designed to

create a literate, Turkish speaking elite within the colonised peoples, able to run the

15

local administration of each area (Assad, 2000). The language of instruction in

government schools was therefore Turkish and schools were located in the main urban

centres of each region. Two separate districts covered the area of Palestinian lands, one

governed from Istanbul, the other part of the sub district of Beirut (R. Khalidi, 1997).

The leading clans in each area formed a minority elite class and it was mainly their sons

who benefited from the schools in the main towns of each area. The majority of the

population, who lived in rural areas and did not benefit from education, remained

illiterate. Arabic was used as the language of instruction only in mosque schools where

the education provided was religious rather than a preparation for civil administration

(Sayigh, 1979; World University Service (UK), 1993).

Changes in the 19th and early 20th centuries

The change to a curriculum focussed on secular subjects was part of a general cultural

and intellectual expansion during the 19th century which lessened the hold of religion on

learning. In Britain this change was formalised as late as 1862, when schools could not

obtain a government grant if religion was the central part of their curriculum (Starrett,

1998). At a similar time, educational changes were taking place in both the Ottoman

Empire and Egypt, where the interest in a taking broader approach to learning was part

of a movement towards a greater integration with European affairs (Kramer, 2002;

Starrett, 2004).

The Ottoman Tanzimat were part of a reform movement which ‘sought to transform a

disjointed social and feudal order into a modernised state’ (Starrett, 2004, p. 45).

Included were changes to the established format of Islamic religious and legal training,

which were followed by the eventual secularization of post Ottoman Turkey and the

abolishment of the Caliphate in 1924. In addition, the Tanzimat included an upgrade

and secularisation of the education system. The previously narrow concept of education

as a pathway to either religious learning or civil administration for an elite few was

broadened. Changes which started in 1846 included plans for a government primary and

secondary system, and by 1869 free and compulsory education were decreed (Kramer,

2002; Starrett, 2004). The implementation of these changes was not backed up by

economic support or initiatives in teacher training and therefore they were not followed

through to actuality in the distant regional areas of the Empire. However, despite the

general lack of actual opportunity, the powerful idea of education as something for all

people to aspire to was established from this time (Kramer, 2002).

16

As mentioned above, in the Palestinian urban centres, education for literacy and

numeracy had been funded by the Religious organisations and missions for centuries. In

the nineteenth century, however, due to another Ottoman reform, the Tanzimat Fermani

of 1839, which gave greater freedoms to religious groups in the Empire and allowed an

expansion of the number and type of schools available, there was a steady increase in

the number of private religious institutions, especially in the main Holy centres

(Kramer, 2002). The already established Franciscan schools were consolidated and in

1846 Pope Pius IX required that tuition be extended to girls as well as boys in every

parish of the Holy Land. In 1841, the first girl’s school was opened in Jerusalem and in

1853 the Sisters of St Joseph founded the Terra Sancta School for girls in Bethlehem,

which today runs from kindergarten to 12th grade with approximately 950 students

(Associazione di Terra Santa, 2010). The Lutheran Church first opened an orphanage

for girls in Jerusalem in 1851 and increased its mission to include a larger school, a

deaconess school and a teacher training program by the outbreak of WW1. Lutheran

educational operations were resumed in 1925 and continue to be an important presence

in Palestine today (ELCJHL, 2010). The Quakers’ equally important and continuous

educational presence was started with the Friends Girls School, founded in 1869, and

the Friends Boys School in 1901 (The Friends School, 2010). Under the auspices of the

Anglican Church, St Georges School in Jerusalem was opened in 1899.

In Egypt a ‘cultural, educational and linguistic revival’ referred to as ‘The Awakening’

(al Nahda) (R. Khalidi, 1997) followed the outward looking agenda of the ruler

Mohamed Ali and his dynasty, who took control in 1805 (Kramer, 2002). As part of his

overall programme he sent Egyptian scholars, such as Rifat al Tatawi, to Europe, from

where they brought back modern European ideas which were then interpreted from the

standpoint of their own cultural back ground. It is important to understand that the idea

of European thought and learning was not accepted by all. To counter the growing

interest in European thought and philosophy, scholars such as Jalal al Afghani

highlighted the strengths of Islamic learning and thought and looked for a revival of the

‘Golden days of Arabic learning and scholarship’, the reality of which was later put into

practice by Egyptian teachers such as Hassan Al-Bana and Said Qu’tub (Starrett, 2004).

European style learning, imported to Egypt in the 19th century, formed the basis for a

new model of education based on literacy and numeracy (Langohor, 2005). The

17

movement towards a Western style education was accelerated under British

colonisation, which started in 1882, when it became more of a reality due to British

government and Western donor funding. An article entitled Popular Education in

Egypt, in the New York Times of May 2, 1900, displays both the enthusiasm for

extending education and the agenda behind it:

Scarcely had the last hostile gun been fired at Ondurman when Lord Kitchener’s

scheme for the Gordon Memorial College was inviting popular subscriptions in

England ....The conquerors are diligently carrying out the obligations which

civilization has imposed upon them, .... the vanquished are eagerly responding to

the new conditions with which they find themselves surrounded. (Anon, 1900)

The priority of teacher training was put in place by the British as they gradually

changed the nature of education, even in the mosque schools where funding became

contingent on upgrading the curriculum to the new model (Langohor, 2005). When in

1922 the British handed over control of the education sector to the Egyptian

Government, the administration, delivery and content of the system was firmly in place,

including both government and private schools which offered a teacher centred,

academic curriculum leading to a final matriculation exam designed to determine

entrance to university (Langohor, 2005).

The First Half of the 20th Century

In a similar manner to the Ottomans, in Palestine the British predominantly encouraged

education of the elite classes designated to take civil service positions in the colonial

infrastructure (R. Khalidi, 2006). In government schools, the overall aim of schooling

was literacy and numeracy and although the language of instruction was changed from

Turkish to Arabic, the curriculum reflected the values that the British wished to

inculcate into the group which they were targeting as useful for administration and local

control. Indigenous culture, beliefs and values were absent from the curriculum and

remained so, particularly as the British increasingly struggled with manifestations of

Arab nationalism (Sherman, 1997; World University Service (UK), 1993). In general,

schooling continued only to the sixth grade, in village schools it usually terminated at

the fourth grade, following which students who wanted to continue had to relocate and

find places in schools in cities and urban centres (Lynd, Bahour, & Bahour, 1994;

Sayigh, 1979; Tibawi, 1956). In the mosque schools both boys and girls attended but

18

girls learned reading only, as it was not considered culturally desirable or necessary for

women to achieve full literacy (R. Khalidi, 2006; Lynd et al., 1994). However, in the

larger private schools in main centres such as Jerusalem, girls from upper class families

were included and fully educated (Sherman, 1997).

The curriculum offered by the private schools reflected the beliefs and values of the

providers. The following quotation from an educator of the time who taught at St

George’s Anglican School for Boys gives a clear view of the British attitude towards

curriculum content:

It is an absolute fact that the boys in the schools here find their Arabic poets dull

and uninteresting, while they lap down Shakespeare with avidity .... they are

likely to find, on the whole, more akin to their own aspirations in Nelson and

Cromwell than in Salah ed Din and Suleiman the Magnificent. (Sherman, 1997,

pp. 72,73)

Despite the overall caution with which the British approached the spread of education,

particularly to the peasant classes, literacy did increase over the period of the Mandate.

The 20 percent of Palestinian Arab children who were in school in 1922 had risen to

44.5 percent by the end of the Mandate in 1947, that figure included both rural and

urban children. However over half of those children, some 60 percent, were in the

private schools in the main urban centres (R. Khalidi, 2006, pp. 15,22).

The second half of the 20th century

Following the establishment of the State of Israel on 77 percent of Mandated Palestine

in 1948, the remaining 33 percent fell under the control of two separate Arab states.

Eastern Palestine was annexed by Transjordan, and came to be known as the West

Bank. In 1950 Transjordan, including the West Bank, became the Hashemite Kingdom

of Jordan, ruled by King Abdullah I. The Gaza Strip retained its identity as a part of

Palestine and was administered by Egyptian military forces as a separate territory

(Chatty & Lewando Hundt, 2005). Transjordan was originally part of the British

Mandate, with King Abdullah I recognised as nominal ruler from 1923. His successors

were immersed in a British and Western style education, both at school and military

college. Abdullah’s son, Talal, graduated from the British Royal Military Academy

Sandhurst in 1939, while his grandson Hussein, the future King, was educated at first in

19

Egypt at Victoria College, Alexandria, then at Harrow before going to Sandhurst. The

current King, Abdullah II, whose mother was English, was educated at St Edmund’s

school in Surrey, Eaglebrook School and Deerfield academy in the US; Pembroke

College, Oxford and Sandhurst Military Academy.

Government schools, therefore, continued to deliver the traditional British structure of

education systems across Jordan and Palestine, that is to say, teacher centred learning in

primary and secondary schooling leading to a matriculation exam intended to be used as

a university entrance requirement. Furthermore, the content of curricula continued to be

non-indigenous as far as Palestinians were concerned. No mention was made in either

curriculum of Palestinian past history, ‘the catastrophe’ of 1948, or the subsequent

refugee crises. The Egyptian curriculum after Nasser took power in 1952 focussed on

Pan Arab nationalism, while the Jordanian reluctance to focus on Palestinian issues in

the interests of lessening conflict within its borders meant that the subjects of

dispossession and transfer were regarded as neither necessary nor desirable (Nicolai,

2007).

In neither case was spending on the infrastructure of government education in the Gaza

Strip or the newly annexed part of Jordan west of the river a high priority (Nicolai,

2007; Schiff, 1995). Despite the massive difference in the demography and number of

the populations in both areas due to the influx of refugees, particularly in Gaza, the

existing infrastructure of local organisation was kept in place by both Jordan and Egypt,

that is, local leadership by the elite, educated members of the most important Palestinian

families or clans (Bowker, 2003; Farsoun & Zacaria, 1997).

However, as continued development of education in the wider region was seen as

important, UNESCO, established in 1945, held the Third Session of its General

Conference in Beirut in 1948 to show ‘the importance it accorded to the Arab League’

which had been created in 1945 (UNESCO, 2009). Following the displacement of

Palestinians in 1948, the UN created an agency specifically for the refugee situation. In

1949, UN General Assembly adopted resolution 302 (IV) on 8 December establishing

UNRWA as ‘a service provider in the camps which in a legal sense were host

government facilities’ (Bowker, 2003, p. 135). UNRWA began operations on 1 May

1950, taking over from the small number of temporary schools already existing in the

camps and establishing schools for all refugee children. In the West Bank and the Gaza

20

Strip, curricula lead to the Jordanian or the Egyptian university entrance examinations

respectively (Rigby, 1995; Schiff, 1995). UNESCO formally prohibited any use of

inciteful material inside its classrooms and therefore texts provided by Egypt or Jordan

were censored by UNESCO, further ensuring a lack of indigenous Palestinian content

(Bowker, 2003; Schiff, 1995).

The problem of texts used in schools was compounded after 1967, when the

administration of education in the West Bank was taken over firstly by the Israeli

Military, and then Civil Administrations. The Jordanian and Egyptian matriculation

exams remained in use, however Israeli censorship of texts led to problems with

accessing information needed for success in those exams. According to Assad, between

1967 and 1978, 1788 books were taken out of use (Assad, 2000), whilst a double

censorship was applied in UNRWA schools, firstly through UNESCO and then by the

Israeli administration (Schiff, 1995). In addition, the West Bank became officially

known as Judea and Samaria, which nomenclature was printed on all educational

materials used in schools, effectively eradicating even the concept of any indigenous

ownership of education. A lack of modernisation of curricula, added to limits on

building infrastructure, led to a situation in which out of date information was presented

to students in buildings which could not accommodate the natural population growth

(Schiff, 1995). Double shift schools existed in dilapidated buildings, either housing two

completely separate schools with separate staffs in one building, or one school with a

division of junior grades in the morning and with senior grades in the afternoon. Classes

of up to 60 students, seated on fixed wooden benches in front of a blackboard, learning

a culturally irrelevant and out of date curriculum were the norm, a fact consistently

deplored by the UN in reports of the time (United Nations, 1979).

The 21st century

Education in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is currently under the control of the

Ministry of Education and Higher Education, one of the Ministries of the Palestinian

National Authority. The Ministry took over control of education in August 1994 as part

of the infrastructure of national government set up following Declaration of Principles

and the Oslo Accords 1993. It is responsible for provision, administration and financing

of government pre-school, school and university education; the development and

updating of the national curriculum; testing, including the Tawjihi matriculation

examinations; and teacher training and in-servicing. In addition, the MoEHE is

21

responsible for licensing and overseeing United Nations, private and non-governmental

schools (Christina, 2006; PASSIA, 2007; Rigby, 1995). In 2006 there were more than

one million students and 39,000 teachers in nearly 2000 schools (DCI/PS, 2006, p. 53).

Under the Palestinian Child Law of 2005, primary and secondary education is free in

Government Schools and compulsory until the completion of ‘higher basic schooling’,

which is Grade 10 (Nicolai, 2007). The current school education system follows a

kindergarten to year 12 model. Grades 11 and 12 are the post compulsory grades,

providing for both academic and vocational studies. The academic streams lead to the

Tawjihi, the matriculation type exam which provides the results from which University

places are offered. The technical and vocational stream provides a pathway to

employment in the non-academic sectors (DCI/PS, 2006; Nicolai, 2007).

Within the West Bank and Gaza Strip three types of schools are available, government,

UNRWA and private. MoEHE figures in 2004 showed that the government directly ran

76 percent of schools and educated 67 percent of students, whilst UNRWA

administered 13 percent of schools and taught 24 percent of students. Private schools

took up 11 percent of the total, but serviced only 6 percent of the students (Nicolai,

2007, p. 27). The UNRWA schools, which serve the registered refugee population, run

from grade 1 to 9 only, following which students who continue their education join the

government or private schools (Rigby, 1995). Private schools are mostly funded and

administered by Christian and Islamic religious organisations, and are usually open to

both Christian and Muslim sectors of the population. Primary and secondary education

in government and UNRWA schools is not co-educational, although there are moves to

offer mixed classes in the early grades. Mixed gender education is provided by some

private schools and pre-schools, however the majority are also single gender.

In 2000, the first Palestinian national curriculum was introduced to schools in Grades

One and Six, with full implementation completed in 2006. The goals of the National

Curriculum reflect the indigenous Palestinian desire for an understanding and

appreciation of their own past history, in addition to a strong focus on citizenship

values, Human Rights and knowledge of the world in general (Samady, 1997). This

curriculum is now used in all government, UN and private schools and is the required

curriculum leading to the Tawjihi exams. In addition, under licence from the MoEHE,

private schools financed and resourced by a variety of religious and non-governmental

22

organisations are able to offer extra subjects alongside the National Curriculum, to

employ international teachers and import and experiment with international teaching

methods and approaches (Christina, 2006; Rigby, 1995).

The timeline set for development and delivery of the National Curriculum has been

almost completely adhered to and according to the World Bank:

a key accomplishment in the development of education in Palestine in this last

five year period has been the construction of a national curriculum, followed by

the editing and distribution of text books, and the delivery of targeted in service

training to all teachers for curriculum implementation. (World Bank Middle East

and North Africa Development Group, 2006, p. 4)

Teacher training, historically one of the biggest problems in implementing education

plans in the region, has also been successfully addressed:

Since 2000, almost every teacher in the West Bank and Gaza has been provided

with opportunities for training, another goal set by 2000-2005 Education

Planning. Results of the impact evaluation show that many of the teachers view

the provision as well as the outcomes of the training positively. From the point

of view of institution strategy development, the creation of a national Institute of

educational training (NIET) is an important step in the right direction. (World

Bank Middle East and North Africa Development Group, 2006, p. 4)

Conclusion

This chapter has discussed the historical background to the variety of influences that

have come to bear on educational thinking and availability in modern Palestine. It has

shown that religion formed the basis of education for most of the historical period up to

the middle of the 19th century. Developments in education administration, content and

availability which took place in the 19th century during the latter stages of the Ottoman

Empire increased the availability of education generally and incorporated Western ideas

into the approach to curricula. Concurrent developments occurring in Egypt, both

before, during and after the British conquest at the end of the 19th century, affected

educational thinking and discourse. Despite the fact that practical developments in

educational law and curricular content in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt themselves

responded to outside influences from Europe and Britain, the lengthy cultural heritage

23

of Islam and the Arab world in learning and scholarship retained its place as an

important influence on Arab appreciation of and engagement with learning.

In the 20th century the demise of the Ottoman Empire led to the British Mandate in

Palestine, followed by the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and the

occupation of the Palestinian Territories in 1967, causing waves of fragmentation which

affected the administration, provision and content of education to Palestinians. The

establishment of the United Nations and UNESCO in the middle of the 20th century had

a direct bearing on the provision of education, particularly after 1950, in the Palestinian

refugee camps, through the UNRWA school system.

However, despite the constant presence of education in the region over a long period, at

no time were the curricula in any way related to the situation or national needs of the

Palestinian people. Instead, embedded within those curricula were the agendas and

expectations of the various providers. The situation was resolved by the establishment

of the Palestinian National Curriculum through the Palestinian National Authority

Ministry of Education and Higher Education.

The next chapter will look at the historical background and cultural heritage of refugee

families living in the UNRWA camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It will

investigate the socially cohesive and at times politically proactive peasant villagers of

ancient Palestine and discuss their transformation from a mainly illiterate farming

community into a highly literate group of refugees. Specific reference will be made to

the attitudes to and expectations of the education that has been variously offered to or

withheld from the villagers, and then refugees, over the 19th and 20th centuries.

24

CHAPTER THREE

BACKGROUND OF THE REFUGEES

Introduction

This chapter examines the background of the refugees from three perspectives. Firstly, it

will provide general information about the physical and social circumstances of the

peasant farmers in the 19th and 20th centuries, including a description of the clan system

which formed the infrastructure of their society. Secondly, it will present an account of

the peasant readiness to resist and rebel against perceived injustices in spite of their

isolation from the main urban and economic centres. Thirdly, it will look at the nature

and type of educational opportunities available to the villagers during Ottoman, British

Mandate and immediately post-Mandate periods and discuss the manner in which the

villagers’ social heritage and proactive attitude to challenges informed their response to

the education provided in refugee camps by the United Nations.

A study undertaken within the interpretivist paradigm should pay attention to the

participants within their own particular social setting. In order to come closer to an

understanding of the perspectives of participants and the ways in which they deal with

their own world, it is important to investigate the culture, traditions and social norms

that make up that world. It will be recalled that the participants in this study are refugees

and displaced persons. However, there are some interesting circumstances surrounding

their refugee status. Whereas many refugees, for example those in Australia, have to

forge a new life within a foreign country and strange culture, learning to speak a

different language, the Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are

refugees in their own indigenous land, where the language and dialect which they speak

are native and the culture surrounding them is that of their forefathers. So close are their

places of origin that they can, in some instances, actually see their own former farm

lands from the camps in which they now live.

In addition to the above observation, in terms of culture, tradition and heritage sixty two

years (the length of their refugee status) is not a lengthy period, therefore the current

refugees are still closely connected to their past ways. For the purposes of this study, it

needs to be clear that the participants originated in and are still part of an Eastern

Mediterranean or ‘Near Eastern’ Arab culture. As inhabitants of the ‘Holy Land’ of the

Jews, Christians and Muslims and as part of the Eastern Mediterranean area, known

25

historically by Europeans as the Levant and by the Arab world as The Fertile Crescent

or Bilad Al-Sham, the indigenous Palestinian population has been the recipient of

exchanges of varied cultural, religious, political and economic influences over centuries,

including Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Arab, European, Ottoman, and British (R. Khalidi,

2006; Sabbagh, 2006). This historical overlay has resulted in a great degree of

sophistication in the contemporary culture, allowing for a breadth and depth in

understanding of the world at large. It is important that the perspectives of the

participants are not interpreted through the lens of purely Western culture, as that may

limit any understanding of their perspectives and actions.

As stated in the introduction to this chapter, the majority of registered refugees who live

in camps originate from a peasant villager heritage. An understanding of both their

traditional socio-economic organisation and their long term pattern of pro-active

response to perceived socio-political threats will provide a framework for investigating

the mores and cultural norms of the current camp society, which underlie the refugees’

ongoing resilience in the face of continuous conflict and trauma. The importance of the

group over the individual is fundamental to the thinking and operation of the Palestinian

psyche, both traditional and modern, and should not be understated. It can be seen in

operation in both areas mentioned above – the close knit protective bond of social

organisation found in the camps and the accepted and respected proactive response to

perceived injustices perpetrated by those in control of the refugees’ lives.

Socio-economic organisation

The importance of the group over the individual is inherent in the traditional social

organisation of all the indigenous Arab inhabitants in the region, both Muslim and

Christian. For centuries Palestinian society was organised and controlled by a system of

kinship dominated by patrilineal clans called hamulas (Tamari, 2002). Each person in

the region, whether in villages or cities, belonged to a large extended family or clan,

known as their ‘hamula’. The clans originated in specific areas across the districts

comprising historic Palestine, major urban clans centred in the larger towns and cities,

the rural clans centred on villages surrounded by the lands used for farming. Although

individual villages could contain members of more than one clan, those villages tended

to be in groups, geographically close to each other (Farsoun & Zacaria, 1997; Sabbagh,

2006; Sayigh, 1979). The hamula leaders ‘provided the individual within the nuclear

family collective protection in all aspects of his life’ (Farsoun & Zacaria, 1997, p. 25).

26

The hamula leader was the most senior male of the clan and took responsibility for all

economic and social organisation and decision making within the clan, including

distribution of farming land, marriage arrangements and arbitration of family disputes

(Bowker, 2003). The actual physical structure of villages and buildings reflected the

clan system. Hamula members lived in groups of houses which often surrounded central

courtyards or open areas. The positioning of a house within the group reflected the

degree of closeness to the leading male of the particular branch of the clan. Sons moved

to their own house after marriage but often shared the same courtyard. Cousins’ houses

were more distant but were built within the same area of the village (Amiry & Tamari,

1989).

Distribution of land for farming was originally one of the main tasks of the hamula

leaders, as they were responsible for negotiating land use both within their own and

between other hamulas. Subsistence farming was carried out through a traditional

method known as the musha’a system, in which the land around the villages was shared

by the members of the villages. The land was divided into sections according to its

arability and rotated amongst the farming families to ensure fairness and equity within

the community, while common land, state or miri land, was shared by all. The essence

of this system was that the land was collectively rather than individually worked and

used. ‘Ownership’ was through established use, or usufruct, rather than written title,

each village being surrounded by areas of land traditionally farmed by the members of

the village. The community of each village was the unit which fostered, supported and

worked towards the wellbeing of its individual members (Bowker, 2003; Farsoun &

Zacaria, 1997).

Marriage arrangements were an important part of the economic strength of the clans and

Hamula leaders also controlled marriage and inheritance, thus cementing their power

over the economy of the clan. Marriages between cousins protected land from moving

to the influence of other clans, whilst for inheritance purposes women’s portions of land

were often added to the hamula leader’s (Abdo, 2000). To avoid ‘parcelisation’ of land

which would make it less effective for farming, inheritance was through the oldest son,

keeping power in the hands of the oldest male of each generation. The village leader

was the leader of the most influential hamula represented and traditionally taxation

commitments were organised by the leader, rather than through agents appointed

27

externally by the Ottoman government (R. Khalidi, 2006). Consequently, villages were

able to preserve a great deal of autonomy from the outside world and rely upon their

own organisational abilities to ensure the prosperity of their communities (Tamari,

2002).

The changes in land tenure that began with the Ottoman Land Laws of 1858 removed

much of the power of the hamulas and their leaders in economic and political

organization. They precipitated the start of a series of significant alterations to both

traditional ways of life and the security of the peasant farmers’ subsistence on the land.

Following implementation of the Ottoman Land Code of 1858, land had to be formally

registered and the owners taxed individually, thus increasing the power of the Ottoman

Government to effectively supervise taxation (Abdo, 2000). In the village communities

much of the village land was registered in the name of the resident hamula leaders or in

the name of other important clan members living in urban areas. Once registered, land

could be treated as an economic asset instead of a groups’ subsistence and sold to

absentee landlords, who came from a rising class of merchants, industrialists and

professional elites (R. Khalidi, 1997; Kramer, 2002). However, these changes, whilst

precipitating the end of the economy of subsistence farming era, did not alter the basic

structure of social organisation and the importance of hamula membership (Bowker,

2003; Farsoun & Zacaria, 1997).

Psychological orientation

The registration of land under private ownership at times presented the peasants with

life altering crises, as most peasants did not register the land they used in their own

names. In cases where they continued to use the land in the traditional way after

individual ownership of the land was registered by an absentee landlord, the peasants

were often not aware the land had been registered until it was sold on to a third party

who wished to take possession of it. Only at that point would they discover that they

had lost their livelihood (R. Khalidi, 1997, 2006; Kramer, 2002).

Because the first Jewish colonies, established in the late 19th century, were run along

more traditional lines of colonisation, in which a small group of foreign owners use the

land for their own benefit whilst using local agricultural labourers to farm it, early

peasant resistance to leaving land they no longer had the right to use, such as in the

village of Yahudiyya in 1886, was resolved when the peasants were able to lease the

28

land back or to work seasonally on parts of it (R. Khalidi, 1997). However, from 1905,

with the second wave of Jewish immigration, or second aliyah, the immigrants wished

to work their own lands and did not require or want Arab labour. From this time on,

dispossession of the peasant farmers grew steadily as a source of discontent and

conflict. In a case in the Tiberias District in 1908, although they had no legal title to the

land which had been sold on by a merchant family in Beirut, the peasants refused to be

removed from the land and accept the loss.

Despite their status as uneducated, illiterate peasant farmers living in isolated networks

of rural communities, peasant resistance to the growing threat of dispossession played

an important role ‘in making the issue of Zionism a central one in Arab political

discourse before 1914’ (R. Khalidi, 1997, p. 111). By April 1909, the Ottoman

government had sanctioned the formation of a Jewish paramilitary group to guard the

fields of the Galilee against the disposed peasants who had resorted to armed conflict

(R. Khalidi, 1997). Peasant organised political groups led the main armed resistance to

the Zionists in the 1920’s and the British in the 1930’s (Farsoun & Zacaria, 1997).

These groups were added to by the growing class of urban poor created from those

peasants already dispossessed (Sayigh, 1979).

By the time the British Mandate was established in 1922, violent riots and political

conflict had flared up on frequent occasions and were severe enough for the authorities

to resort to commissions of enquiry to ascertain the causes. The US organised 1919

King-Crane Commission and the British Government’s 1921 Haycroft Commission;

1930 Shaw Commission Report, Hope Simpson report and Passfield White Paper; and

the 1937 Peel Commission all identified two main problems as being Palestinian

discontent over lack of self determination and massive disquiet over Jewish immigration

and land purchases, with their deleterious social and economic effects (Farsoun &

Zacaria, 1997).

The dual injustices of taxation without representation and land dispossession were the

main cause of the three year revolt from 1936 to 1939. In 1928, the British introduced a

new land tax and between 1931 and 1936, the ratio of immigrants in the population

nearly doubled, rising from 16 percent to 28 percent (Farsoun & Zacaria, 1997, p. 104).

Leading up to the outbreak of the revolt, between 1932 and 1935, five new Palestinian

political parties were formed, with representation through National Committees in the

29

towns and larger villages, once again including the villagers in a national grouping. All

five parties joined to form the Arab Higher Committee, which started the rebellion by

calling for civil disobedience and a general strike (W. Khalidi, 1984; Kramer, 2002),

followed by armed rebellion, which was continued with some success, particularly in

the hill areas where the peasants were the most populous (R. Khalidi, 2006). The

contribution of the peasant villagers can be seen in the 1936 -39 revolt, which was

organised by the urban and rural populations, working together against the British and

Zionist interests, with most of the actual fighting carried out by armed groups of

villagers and urban poor. Many of the dispossessed peasants had moved to the coastal

cities in search of work, forming a new group of urban poor which provided the fighters

for the rebel leader Sheik Iz al Din al Qassam, the ‘first articulate public apostle of

armed rural resistance’, killed by the British in 1935 (R. Khalidi, 2006, p. 107).

The revolt started in 1936 and lasted until 1939, during which time the British

conducted another enquiry. The Peel Commission found that the causes were the

Palestinian desire for independence and their fear of the establishment of a Jewish

National Home on their lands (Kramer, 2002). The Commission’s recommendation to

end the Mandate and partition Palestine into two states with a British zone around

Jerusalem caused the fighting to continue with renewed vigour. To put down the revolt,

the British used extreme, and still familiar, methods such as curfews, administrative

detention, house demolitions, destruction of crops, summary executions and exile.

According to Khalidi some 5,000 rebels were killed, 10,000 wounded and an unknown

number exiled or forced to flee. In addition, by 1939 there were 5,679 detained (R.

Khalidi, 2006).

Within ten years of the end of the failed 1936 -39 rebellion against the British, the

Mandate was terminated and the peasant villagers had been affected by events they

perceived as so extreme that they ultimately named them the Nakba or ‘the catastrophe’.

The importance to this study of understanding the peasants’ perception of these events

is paramount, as it forms the basis for their actions since that time. The sheer scale of

the demographic change that occurred should not be underestimated in taking account

of the follow on effect that it created upon the refugees. There is currently little

argument between historians over the ultimate fate of the towns and villages affected by

the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Palestinian historians and ethnographers estimate that some

600 Palestinian towns and villages were depopulated in 1948 and the generally accepted

30

number of refugees created is 750,000 (Badil Resource Centre, 2005; W. Khalidi, 1984,

1992). More recently, an Israeli historian puts the number of villages destroyed and

depopulated at 513, the number of urban neighbourhoods depopulated at 11, and the

number of refugees at 800,000 (Pappe, 2006, p. xii). These towns and villages and their

lands made up 92 percent of the current area of Israel and contained 85 percent of the

indigenous inhabitants of the land (Abu Sitta, 2001, p. 197). Extensive work has been

carried out investigating the depopulation and according to Walid Khalidi in All that

Remains, of the 418 villages affected, 292 were totally destroyed; 90 largely destroyed

(20 had only one house left); 8 had only a small number of houses destroyed; less than

2% survived but were taken over by Israeli settlers; 20 could not be determined because

13 were in closed security zones and 1 was inside a settlement; 6 had standing houses

but the original number of houses was not known (W. Khalidi, 1992).

The paths and ultimate destinations of the 1948 refugees depended on their socio-

economic status, the areas they lived in, and the date of their flight (Sherman, 1997).

The upper and middle classes living in the main cities of Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem

moved from potential areas of armed conflict starting in late 1947 (Shehada, 2003).

Most of them moved outside Palestine to the cities of Beirut, Damascus or Cairo where

they had relatives or friends (Sabbagh, 2006; Sherman, 1997). Others moved away from

the cities to their summer houses within Palestine, in areas such as Ramallah (Shehada,

2003). These refugees had the resources and finances to restart their lives and

businesses. Those refugees, whose pathways ended in the UNRWA refugee camps, both

in the remaining 22 percent of Mandated Palestine not included in the State of Israel and

in neighbouring Arab countries, were mainly the peasant farming families of the

estimated 418-513 depopulated villages (Sherman, 1997).

The peasant villagers moved in stages when the conflict reached them, firstly to other

villages where they had clan based affiliations or into the forests and mountains to hide.

There were four main waves of movement starting from the time of the 1947 UN

Partition Resolution. The first was the urban middle class, as noted above; the second

included 200 to 300,000 urban and rural people; the third came from central Palestine

(Ramle and Lod) and the fourth was transferred from the South (Al Majdal) to the Gaza

Strip (W. Khalidi, 1992, p. 583 map ). Not wanting to move far from their villages and

lands of origin, the villagers moved to areas close to their homes and lands, to which

they expected to return once the conflict had ended (Abu Sitta, 2001; Yahya, 1999).

31

Many tried to return to their villages to harvest their crops but were killed or expelled

again (Badil Resource Centre, 2007b, p. 13). The salient factor for this study is that

throughout the series of movements made by the village refugees from 1947 until their

eventual location in camps, they maintained as much contact as possible with others

from their clans and original village groupings (Farsoun & Zacaria, 1997; Sayigh, 1979;

Yahya, 1999).

Figure 3.1 Map of refugee displacement (W. Khalidi, 1992, p. 583)

32

The geographic waves of displacement and the contact maintained between villagers

originating from the same areas meant that each refugee camp contained clans,

households and families from particular groups of villages. To take the three refugee

camps in the Bethlehem area as an example, Beit Jibrin camp is informally known as

Azza because that is the hamula name of most of the residents. In Aida camp, around

sixty percent of the refugees are from the Abu Srour clan, whilst in Deheisha camp the

refugees come mainly from twelve hamulas which were located in a group of forty five

villages. This continuity of ‘village and clan solidarity’ (Sayigh, 1979, p. 10) meant

that the refugees took the social organisation of their past with them, rather than being

fully dislocated from it. According to Bowker, ‘when violence threatened and people

were forced to become more dependent on each other for subsistence and protection,

Palestinian society organised itself ever more closely around pre-national structures,

including kinship ties’ (Bowker, 2003, p. 71). Social conventions such as endogamous

marriage which had originally been intended to protect land ownership, continued to be

practised with the new intention of preserving the identity of the groups within the

camps. In the West Bank in the 1990’s, statistics showed a forty percent rate of

marriage within hamulas (Bowker, 2003, p. 70).

Thus, as dispossessed people, through reorganising themselves around their traditional

structures, the refugees were able to preserve their sense of belonging and bond to their

places of origin, their land and their villages, as well as their cohesion as social groups.

This fact has created the circumstances under which the camps have ‘evolved as self-

contained, segregated communities that continue to reflect in broad terms the social

structure of pre 1948 Palestine in distinguishable neighbourhoods’ (Bowker, 2003, p.

69). It has also meant that through an ‘unbreakable umbilical cord’ (Sayigh, 1979, p.

10) refugees subsequently born in the camps have preserved their sense of identity and

belonging to their families’ indigenous places of origin (Bowker, 2003; Sayigh, 1979;

Taraki, 2006).

In addition to this preservation of kinship structure, relocation to the camps created a

further social structure, a new ‘hamula’ as some writers have referred to it – that of the

camp dwelling refugee (Bowker, 2003). Created under circumstances of conflict and

trauma due to the original transfer and subsequent occupations, which have been

ongoing over the sixty two year period, strengthened by discrimination from other

33

elements of Palestinian society, the position of camp refugees occupies a unique place

in the fragmented geography and psyche of the Palestinian people. ‘The people of the

camp consider themselves one family, sharing their bread to survive and steadfast in

their will to live’ (Yahya, 1999, p. 87).

Involvement with education

It has been explained that a proactive response to perceived injustices appears to be one

of the cultural characteristics of the Palestinian peasant farmer group. Injustices detailed

so far have ranged from military conscription, excessive taxation and taxation without

representation, to loss of land and livelihood. Of greater importance to this study,

education, including the lack of provision and the non-indigenous curricula content,

gained an increasingly prominent position in the growing list of perceived injustices as

the 20th century progressed.

As described in Chapter Two, from the middle of the 19th century the nature and

provision of education was a matter of growing interest to all governments in the region,

however despite legislation in both Turkey and Egypt regarding universal education, the

actual availability of places in schools spread to rural and village areas slowly. In

Palestine, as the changes in traditional ways of life took place following the Ottoman

Land reforms and the consequent sales of peasant land and loss of livelihood, lack of

education began to be perceived by the villagers as one of the causes of their evident

powerlessness in stabilising and maintaining their way of life (Sayigh, 1979). During

the final years of the Ottoman Empire, in the late 19th century, the increase in schooling

available in the urban areas included the proliferation of schools funded by religious

endowments, as well as increased numbers of Government schools. However, the

growth in number of village schools was not equal to that in urban areas (Kramer,

2002).

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, during the British Mandate, many village

schools were built and staffed with funds raised by the wealthy hamula members and

despite the fact that most village schools only reached the 4th grade, those villages

which could provide schools for their children felt a great sense of achievement (R.

Khalidi, 1997; Miller, 1985; Tibawi, 1956). The 1937 Peel Commission acknowledged

the villagers’ desire for more schools and commented that their high illiteracy rate ‘was

the more deplorable as many Arab villages are willing, if only the Government will do

34

its share, to contribute to the erection of school buildings’ (Palestine Royal

Commission, 1937, p. 337).

The greater demand than opportunity for attendance at schools has also been described

in anecdotes and oral histories detailing the peasants’ desire for education and the

students’ disappointments when they were unable to secure places in available classes

(Sayigh, 1979; World University Service (UK), 1993). Poverty was one reason for lack

of schooling, as demonstrated by stories of peasants in villages where there were no

schools, who paid visiting teachers for lessons with produce rather than money

(Kramer, 2002). Similarly, there are stories of the disappointments felt by poorer village

children who, despite their academic ability, were not able to afford the travel to larger

centres where the schools provided education past the 4th grade (Sabbagh, 2006).

Two occurrences during the first half of the 20th century clearly illustrated to the entire

Palestinian population the seriousness of being perceived as educationally

unsophisticated. Firstly, in 1919, following the 1914-18 war and the defeat of the

Ottoman Turkish Empire, the League of Nations divided the previously colonised lands

outside Turkey into three sections, defined by the League’s perceptions of the

developmental stage of the peoples contained in those areas (Quigley, 2005; Sherman,

1997). Despite the fact that the Palestinians and their representatives at the peace

conferences felt both ready and able to be an independent people based on the Woodrow

Wilson model of self determination, they were included in the group designated for

partial independence only. Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations

provisionally recognised Palestine as an independent nation ‘subject to the rendering of

administrative assistance and advice by a mandatory until such time as they are able to

stand alone’ (Sayigh, 1979, p. 43). Along with the shock and dismay felt and voiced by

the Palestinian delegations at the time was the underlying feeling of disempowerment

conveyed through being designated an ‘unstructured’ society, in ‘need of a custodian’

(Sabbagh, 2006; Sayigh, 1979, p. 42) From that time, the ‘vast collective feeling of

injustice’ identified by Edward Said ( as cited in Aruri, 2001, p. 1) began to grow as a

part of the Palestinian intellectual and emotional heritage.

Secondly, by 1922, when Britain was granted the Mandatory over Palestine by the

League of Nations, the intentions of the Balfour Declaration had already been

embedded within the British agenda. Articles 2, 4, 6 and 7 of the Mandate allowed

35

Great Britain to consult with the Jewish Agency on matters pertaining to land, Jewish

immigration and settlement, without consulting the indigenous Palestinian people

(Chatty & Lewando Hundt, 2005). Relevant to this study is that as a result of the above

quoted Articles, two separate education systems existed side by side in Palestine under

the British Mandate. On the one hand the Jewish education system was administered by

Vad Leumi and funded by the Jewish Agency, whilst State education for the Palestinian

Arabs was funded and controlled by the British Government (Tibawi, 1956). Despite

the Mandate target to provide primary schools in all Arab areas, the spread of British

funded schools and education to the villages was slow (Palestine Royal Commission,

1937). A perception existed on the part of the villagers that education was being

deliberately withheld from them by the colonial authorities as a means of

disempowerment (R. Khalidi, 2006).

Successive British enquiries uncovered Palestinian frustration at the lack of progress

towards self determination and the 1937 Peel Commission specifically identified the

Palestinian feeling of injustice which arose from a comparison of the two education

systems. Not only did the Palestinian system fail to achieve parity with the Jewish one,

but also national goals in the Palestinian curriculum were held in check and suppressed

by the Mandate. Of the failure to achieve the 1930’s target of bringing the two systems

to parity, the Commission reported ‘we cannot help thinking that if the claims of

education had been ranked as high as they deserved much more money might have been

found for it’ (Palestine Royal Commission, 1937, p. 339).

The issue of the non-indigenous curricular and colonial agenda of the education systems

that were in place was a subject of concern to Palestinians and according to most

sources, the dissatisfaction grew proportionately with the amount of education received

by the population in general (World University Service (UK), 1993). Of interest to this

study, the restrictions on content in curricula continued as a major theme of contention

after the villagers became refugees, when reference to their former heritage and

displacement from their lands was missing from all of the various curricula provided by

the administrators of the different areas of remaining Palestine (Schiff, 1995).

Towards the end of the Mandate, in 1946, there were 795 schools overall, broken down

into 478 government schools, 135 private Muslim and 182 private Christian schools

(Graham-Brown, 1984, p. 18). The villagers were underrepresented in the growth of

36

education, as only about 432 of 800 villages had government schools in 1944/45, and in

252 of those schools classes reached grade 4 or less (Tibawi, 1956, p. 224). Gender

parity was not yet an objective, with only 46 schools provided for girls (Tibawi, 1956).

The overall situation had improved, as stated in Chapter Two, the 20 percent of

Palestinian Arab children who were in school in 1922 had risen to 44.5 percent by 1947,

a figure including both rural and urban children. However, more than half that total

were receiving their education from the private schools in the main urban centres (R.

Khalidi, 2006, p. 15) thus demonstrating the smaller numbers of government schooled

students generally, and the greater number of those students studying in the cities and

towns.

The villagers’ perception that the British rulers did not want them to be educated

brought their lack of education and literacy into the realm of an injustice done to them.

In addition to the lack of provision of schools in general, repressive measures taken

towards teachers and students during the periods of political turmoil during the

Mandate, including the major rebellion of 1936-39, affirmed their perceptions. Student

strikes and demonstrations met with corporal punishment and arrests. Schools were

placed under curfews and closures. Teachers were not permitted to form unions or

associations and publication of materials outside British Government permitted texts

was forbidden (Graham-Brown, 1984). Thus, as Graham-Browne contends, education

became politicised by the actions of the rulers towards the ruled at a very early stage in

its growth of provision.

In the early period following the displacements of 1948, prior to the full involvement of

the United Nations, during the series of movements they made which culminated with

their grouping in hamula centred camps, the refugees from the villages were assisted by

volunteer organisations. It is important to note that schooling was commenced in the

camps very early on, in ‘refugee initiated schools’ in which the teachers were refugees

themselves, using donated ‘teaching materials, large tents and rations for the instructors’

(Schiff, 1995, p. 13). The existence of schools in the camps was therefore not solely a

United Nations initiative, imposed upon an illiterate population, but rather a

continuation of a previously existing desire for education. No longer hard working

farmers, raising families and crops in established villages, the villagers had become

displaced persons in crowded tent camps, with no land and therefore no way of

providing a future for their children (Schiff, 1995). Thus the peasant villagers, now

37

refugees, included their existing belief in the importance of education and the injustice

of its lack of provision into their life style paradigm shift.

By 1950 the provision and administration of education in the camps had been taken

over by the United Nations, with UNESCO providing ‘professional guidance and

supervision’ (Samady, 1997, p. 1) and UNRWA funding and administering the camp

schools (Schiff, 1995). In the same manner as the previous education providers in the

region, the United Nations had an overall agenda behind its provision of education. The

backbone of the UN educational initiative across all of its fields of operation was

democratisation, driven through the aim of basic (primary and lower secondary)

education for all. The UNRWA administered programmes prepared students for entry

into ongoing state education in which ever country or place the refugee camps were

situated, but over and above local stipulations, the ideology of democracy and the ideals

of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights were the framework through which

education was delivered (Schiff, 1995). In fact, the preamble to the Declaration

explicitly called upon all member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and

‘to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools

and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of

countries or territories’ (United Nations, 1948).

Although the curricula in UNRWA schools were tailored to the countries in which the

camps were situated, texts permitted for use by UNESCO had to conform to the UN

agenda. The prohibition of ‘inciteful’ materials allowed screening and filtering out of

content deemed inappropriate, in short, a form of censorship (Schiff, 1995). For the

villagers who had been displaced from their lands and heritage there was, in essence,

little if any difference between this and the reality of the curricular control which had

existed in the Mandate, with the additional step of other Arab government agendas

being layered on before the UNESCO controls were applied. The lack of relevance of

the curricula to the villagers’ past, their present circumstances and the existence of a

future to which the United Nations had given them an ‘inalienable right’, became one

more perceived injustice. Once again, within their communities they responded

proactively as time passed, taking actions to fill the gaps in the curricula by informal

teaching and community programmes, which in themselves became the subject of the

style of repressions that had previously experienced been during the Mandate years

(Nicolai, 2007).

38

The importance of the education provided to the refugee villagers appears to have

elicited responses in two distinct areas. On the one hand, it was vital for pragmatic

reasons and immediately accepted as such. Without farming lands, the only future

available for the new generations lay through education and vocational training and

within a dramatically short space of time the peasant farmers transformed their society

into an urban, skilled and professional one (Samady, 1997; Schiff, 1995). Secondly, the

democratic, rights oriented foundation of the UN’s approach affirmed the refugees’

belief in their rights - firstly to return or compensation as set out in UNGA Resolution

194, III (1948); then as human beings under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

(1948); and ten years later, as restated in the 1959 Universal Declaration of the Rights

of the Child (United Nations, 1959). The corollary of this last area is that some of the

very rights in which their education was framed allowed for nationhood and a relevant

educational curriculum, actualities which did not exist for them in reality. The

dichotomy of their situation was clearly understood by the villager-refugees,

particularly as their literacy and educational standards rose over time, a time during

which their refugee status showed no signs of resolution.

Thus over the period of sixty two years of camp refugee life, education has achieved a

unique position. Within the closely knit communities of the camps it has enabled new

generations of refugees to change from farmers to urban dwellers and to find work with

which to support and sustain their extended family groups. Through education, the

refugees have become sophisticated, literate observers of the international struggle

played out over their unresolved situation. Finally, education has become a way of

proactively resisting the loss of history, culture and heritage, whilst contributing to the

quest for nationhood.

Conclusion

This chapter has firstly shown that the Palestinian refugees in camps in the West Bank

and the Gaza Strip are largely grouped in extended familial social units which reflect the

traditional heritage of their peasant farmer forebears. The strength of these social units

is found in the philosophy of the importance of the group over the individual, thus

providing a solid basis for personal and group resilience in times of difficulty.

39

Secondly, this chapter has suggested that the Palestinian villagers have historically

demonstrated a psychological readiness to respond proactively when threatened by

perceived injustices. Education, which had become increasingly sought after by the

largely illiterate villagers in the first half of the 20th century, was perceived as having

been purposefully withheld from them in order to lessen the effectiveness of their

response to the growing threat to their livelihood and existence in their ancestral lands.

As the threat became a reality, education became an important part of their proactive

struggle for survival.

Finally, the chapter has shown that once in the UN refugee camps, basic education for

the villagers’ children became freely available through UNESCO and UNRWA. The

education offered was based on a Western, democratic, rights centred approach which

was apolitical where reference to the refugees’ indigenous culture, heritage and past

history were concerned. On the one hand it affirmed their status as refugees with rights,

whilst on the other it did not give them the opportunity to develop a national education

system reflecting their beliefs and aspirations as members of the nation to which they

believed they had a right.

The next chapter investigates the Palestinian understanding and explanation of their

own narrative through literature presented in three sections corresponding to their past,

their legal situation and their attitude to the present and future.

40

CHAPTER FOUR

THE PALESTINIAN VOICE IN LITERATURE

Introduction

Over the last century a vast amount of literature has been generated on the subject of

Palestine, written in a variety of languages and informed by a divergent array of points

of view. In order to cut through the wealth of available information to establish which

parts of it are relevant to this study, it is necessary to bear in mind that a study

conducted within the interpretivist paradigm, using a symbolic interactionist theoretical

approach should focus on the participants’ perspectives and look for patterns which

develop through the interaction of those perspectives and actions over time

(O'Donoghue, 2007).

With the above idea uppermost, it has been helpful to group the relevant literature in

three sections. In keeping with some opinion regarding qualitative research

methodology (Charmaz, 2006; Glaser, 1998), these sections reflect the manner in which

the literature review was generated by both the process and focus of this research which,

it will be remembered, concerns a particular phenomenon observed amongst Palestinian

refugees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Furthermore, the Palestinian refugee situation contains some features which may be

termed ‘unique’ (Couldrey & Morris, 2006, p. 2) and ‘intractable’ (Bowker, 2003, p. 1).

Specifically affecting the perspectives of the participants and therefore of great

relevance to this study, are the longevity of the situation, encompassing sixty-two years

of refugee status (Sa’di & Abu Lughod, 2007), and the difficulties of achieving the right

of return (Aruri, 2001). In light of this uniqueness, it has been decided not to include

literature relating to other refugee crises, either current or previously resolved, in this

review.

To ensure that the wider population included in the study is understood from the

perspective of its own culture, most of the literature discussed in this chapter has been

written by Palestinians. The first section is entitled ‘the Palestinian Past’ and the

material reviewed is restricted to that written in or translated into English. The aim of

listening to the Palestinian voice is to look for the collective attitudes, beliefs and

convictions that are expressed across different genres of literature and which have been

41

sustained across the period of time in which the literature was written. It is these

collective perspectives which underpin the refugee belief in the importance of

education, which is central to the focus of this study. For the purposes of this study, the

Palestinian voice has been classified as formal, as in historical and ethnographic studies;

anecdotal, including transcribed oral histories; and biographical, in which socio-political

history is presented through the vehicle of a family narrative.

The second section is entitled ‘the Palestinian Case’. As the study focuses on

participants who are United Nations classified refugees, currently waiting for a

resolution to their situation, literature which facilitates an understanding of their case in

a legal sense is both relevant and important. Included in this section is information

produced by the United Nations, the ICRC and by Palestinian and non-Palestinian Non-

Governmental Organisations. This literature relates to Refugee Law, International

Humanitarian Law, the Rights of the Child and the Geneva conventions as they refer to

and impinge on the situation of the population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The third section is identified as ‘Palestinian Resilience’. It will be remembered that this

study seeks to generate theory about how Palestinian refugee families in the West Bank

and Gaza Strip deal with their engagement with education at school level. Over the past

sixty years, much of that education has taken place in an ongoing situation of conflict,

which at intervals has escalated to extreme trauma. Therefore, an investigation of

literature relating to resilience, specifically with regard to education in such

circumstances, will be of value.

Section One: The Palestinian Past

The Palestinian voice expressed in English was largely missing in the first three quarters

of the 20th century. Most early accounts of ‘the Palestine Problem’ were written by

authors of other nationalities representing colonising entities who, despite often being

sympathetic, treated the concerns of the Palestinians through the perspectives of the

colonisers (Dobbing, 1970; Glubb, 1971; Jeffries, 1939; Storrs, 1972). In the process,

the Palestinians themselves became depersonalised as ‘problems’ or ‘questions’ in a

wider area of interest. To counter this, Palestinian academics, many of whom were

refugees from 1948 and who had formerly trained, resided and or worked in the United

States, England or France began to produce a body of work which took a scholarly

approach to the history and ethnography of Palestine, from earliest times to the

42

contemporary. A sophisticated understanding of both the skill with which the Zionist

cause had been presented to the world and of its continuing maintenance through media

control and lobbying left these writers under no illusions regarding the importance and

size of their undertaking.

Formal Literature

The body of scholars of interest to this study who grew to maturity within Palestine

under the British Mandate include Sami Hadawi, Henry Cattan, Abdul Latif Tibawi,

Issa Nakleh, Yusuf Sayigh, Walid Khalidi and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod. These writers

received their higher education at universities outside Palestine, mostly in Beirut,

Britain and America, and they form the core of scholars who pioneered the direct

expression of the Palestinian view point in English, intended to be heard by the Western

World. Apart from writing works which dealt with the Palestinian past and present, they

also founded scholarly journals to promulgate Palestinian opinions, such as the Journal

of Palestinian Studies and the Arab Studies Quarterly, and academic societies to

encourage Palestinian scholars, such as the Institute for Palestinian Studies, The

Association of Arab American University Graduates and the Middle East Studies

Association of |North America. Many of them represented Palestinian interests at the

United Nations and whenever possible they returned to Palestine to contribute to

education within the colonised and occupied lands. The importance of these writers to

this study is that their contemporary knowledge of the British Mandate period and the

circumstances surrounding the formation of the State of Israel in 1948, combined with

their scholarly and informed approach, affords a clearer picture of genuine Palestinian

perspectives and understandings than can be gained from non-indigenous literature,

produced with an agenda of its own.

Since 1948, Palestine has been subject to ongoing and frequent wars, conflicts and

resistance. The generation which experienced the events of 1948 as children and

became refugees within Palestine or in various locations in the Arab world, Europe, the

US and Israel included major Palestinian literary and artistic figures such as Edward

Said, Ghassan Kanafani, Naj al-Ali and Mahmoud Darwish and scholars, human rights

lawyers, politicians and educationalists Naseer Aruri, Samih Farsoun, Salman Abu

Sitta, Salim Tamari, Abdel Wahhab Kayyali and Elias Sanbar. The earliest of the

generation born outside Palestine to refugee parents include Rashid Khalidi, Yezid

Sayigh, Beshara Doumani and Nur Masalha, the latter born within Israel. Events

43

following the Oslo Accords allowed some of the exiled to return, whilst at the same

time, a younger generation of writers has grown up within the Occupied Territories.

However, divergent as these writers are in age, experience and background, the message

of the Palestinian voice has remained consistent and available to the Western World

since its initial expression in English.

The central message of the earliest scholarly and informed writers was that a grave

miscarriage of justice had been perpetrated on the indigenous Arab people of Palestine

through no fault of their own (Cattan, 1971; Hadawi, 1963, 1967; W. Khalidi, 1984,

1992; Tibawi, 1956, 1961, 1978). Furthermore, this injustice occurred through the

machinations of the very nations who purported to be the protectors of justice and

human rights in the modern world. Hadawi states the issue is ‘fundamentally one of

individual rights and principles, as well as territory, and must be treated as a moral and

political issue’ (Hadawi, 1967, p. 3). According to Tibawi, evidence available when

official secrets legislation was lifted on the British Archive on Anglo-Arab relations,

added up to prove that ‘British policy regarding Palestine from 1917 onwards

constituted an injustice to the Arabs’ (Tibawi, 1978 preface). For Edward Said, the

hegemonic relationship between the Western World and Zionism was ‘disastrous for the

Arab Palestinian’ (Said, 1980, p. 37). Henry Cattan identified the hopelessness of

expecting justice in the UN due to the power of the US veto (Cattan, 1981), whilst for

Walid Khalidi ‘what particularly rankles with Palestinians is that the United States’

endorsement of their dispossession has been made in the name of the democratic values

of American political culture’ (W. Khalidi, 1984, p. 13), again making the point that ‘it

happened in the post colonial era and after espousal by Western countries of the

principle of self determination’ (W. Khalidi, 1992). Here can be found the start of the

‘vast collective feeling of injustice’ which ‘continues to hang over our lives with

undiminished weight’ identified by Edward Said (as cited in Aruri, 2001, p. 1) and

which is central to the focus of this study through the manner in which it informs the

West Bank and Gaza Strip camp refugee attitude to education.

Having established that an injustice was done, the first step taken in the formal literature

was to trace the ethnic origins of contemporary Palestinian Arabs. Henry Cattan, one of

the earliest writers in English, is explicit in his aim to ‘correct a current misconception’

and explains, ‘The (ancient) Israelis were not the earliest inhabitants of Palestine. They

were invaders’ (Cattan, 1969, p. 3). He asserts that the contemporary Palestinian Arabs

44

are the descendants of the Philistines, the Canaanites and other early tribes which pre-

dated the original Israeli invasion. Similar accounts are to be found in the contemporary

and subsequent historical literature written by both Palestinian and other writers.

The second step taken is to disprove the claim that Palestine was an empty land at the

end of the 19th century. Sources used for this task included both Ottoman and British tax

and census records and land surveys. For example, whilst working for the Mandate

Government as a land surveyor, Hadawi was a major contributor to Village Statistics,

published by the Government of Palestine, Office of Statistics, Jerusalem, in April

1945. Hadawi updated the information and republished it in 1970 (Hadawi, 1970), in

which form it became one of the sources for Walid Khalidi’s All that Remains (W.

Khalidi, 1992), which documented 418 Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948. Further

information arising from Walid Khalidi’s work is currently available, regularly updated,

on www.palestineremembered.com, an online memorial site. Aside from the existence

of the villages and farming communities proven through the Mandate registry, there was

also proof in the Ottoman and Mandate government records of an agricultural economy

dating back to ancient times. Two examples given by Hadawi relate to the olive and

citrus industries, the former dating back to the Crusades and the latter according to

records which ‘show that in 1912-1913, 1,608,570 cases of oranges were exported to

Europe’ (Hadawi, 1967, p. 8).

Having established their existence and reality as the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine,

the writers then turn to documenting the final years of the Ottoman Empire, the British

occupation in 1917 and the Arab representation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

If the earliest eras of history are written to counter the claim of Palestine as an

historically empty space, the following sections of the literature are written in

explanation of what may be claimed as the ‘ground zero’ of Palestinian dispossession,

the Balfour Declaration of 1917. A variety of adaptations of the original quote from

Koestler appear in much of the literature relating to the Balfour era, clearly expressing

the Palestinian feelings of outrage over the manner in which ‘one nation solemnly

promised to a second nation the country of a third’ (Koestler, 1949, p. 4). Seen in

conjunction with the ‘sacred trust of civilisation’ (Hadawi, 1967, p. 24; Tibawi, 1978),

given to Britain by the League of Nations in 1922 to prepare the indigenous inhabitants

of Palestine for self determination, the prevailing view of the Balfour Declaration as

45

particularly perfidious in all of the literature under review has been frequently re-

affirmed by memorial activities, from early in the Mandate years up to the present.

The failure of the British Government of 1922 – 1948 to keep faith with the trust

incumbent on the Mandate in the area of education is one of the main subjects dealt

with by Abdul Latif Tibawi, an educator and school inspector during the Mandate era,

who believed education to be essential to developing statehood. His contemporary

knowledge of the dismissive British attitude towards the Palestinian Arab

representations to the various enquiries and Commissions held by the British

Government is invaluable in forming a picture of the extent of the Palestinian objections

to being treated as inferior and unready for statehood and to external immigration into

Palestine. Tibawi’s writing is of particular interest to this study because as a senior

government employee he had personal knowledge, backed up by statistics collected

both by the Government and by himself as inspector of education, of the extent and type

of education available to the urban and rural populations (Tibawi, 1956).

The loss of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the founding of the State of Israel on seventy

seven percent of Mandated Palestine are generally attributed in the literature under

consideration to three factors, namely the lack of Palestinian leadership leading up to

the end of the Mandate, due in part to the savage British response to the 1936-39

rebellion; the divided nature of such leadership as did exist within Palestine; and the

disappointing performance of the contribution to the war effort from the Arab States

outside Palestine (Cattan, 1969; Kayyali, 1998; Nusseibeh & Anthony, 2007). The

actual events and history of the period have been widely written, debated and rewritten,

particularly following the release of Zionist and Israeli Government documents and

their use by Israeli revisionist historians such as Ilan Pappe and Benny Morris.

However, of greater significance to this study than exact historical detail is the fact the

events of 1948, known to Palestinians as the Nakba, or ‘The Catastrophe’, signalled an

entirely new phase in Palestinian social, economic and political history. It is essential

that an understanding is gained of the enormity of those events in the perceptions of the

refugees who are the subject of this study. According to Sa’di and Abu-Lughod, ‘after

1948, the lives of the Palestinians at the individual, community and national level were

dramatically and irreversibly changed’ (Sa’di & Abu Lughod, 2007, p. 3). For Salman

Abu Sitta, who compiled a register of the depopulated villages:

46

The Palestinian Nakba is unsurpassed in history. For a country to be

occupied by a foreign minority, emptied almost entirely of its people, its

physical and cultural landmarks obliterated, its destruction hailed as a

miraculous act of God and a victory for freedom and civilised values, all

done according to a premeditated plan, meticulously executed,

financially and politically supported from abroad, and still maintained

today, is no doubt unique. (Abu Sitta, 1998, p. 5)

The loss of 1948 was compounded by the 1950 Israeli Law of Return, followed by the

1952 Israeli Law of Nationality, which afforded all Jewish immigrants citizenship

(Cattan, 1969, p. 69). During the British Mandate, the villagers had had legal status as

citizens of Palestine under the Palestine Citizenship Order 1925-41. The 1952 Israeli

Law of Nationality, by retroactively repealing the Palestine Citizenship Orders,

rendered the exiled villagers and their families, at the same time, stateless persons and

refugees with little chance of return (Akram, 2001; Badil Resource Centre, 2007a).

While their farms, houses and possessions were either destroyed or taken over by the

new immigrants, exiled Palestinians who attempted to return were termed ‘infiltrators’

and killed, imprisoned, or exiled again (Lynd et al., 1994; Sayigh, 1979; Yahya, 1999).

Oral Histories

As a largely illiterate peasant farming society belonging to a culture with a long held

tradition of oral information transmission, the anecdotal voice of the original refugees is

of value to this study. Stories and testimonies of the generation who went into exile in

1948 are a means to assessing the extent of cultural upheaval and the depth of the

collective experience of its people, both at the time of dispossession and as reflected in

subsequent memory (Yahya, 1999).

Accounts of refugee experience in general are familiar to the contemporary world and

contain common features, such as extreme hardship because of weather conditions,

exhaustion due to lack of transportation, ill health arising from lack of facilities,

physical danger from enemies, separation from family groups, untimely death, and the

desperation and lack of dignity felt by humans trapped in cramped camp cities. Oral

accounts of the Palestinian experience from 1948 -1950 include all of the above

elements. However, the Palestinian accounts include an additional feature, which is

central to the focus of this study, namely the exiles’ absolute expectation of return to

47

their lands and homes (Lynd et al., 1994; Sa’di & Abu Lughod, 2007; Sayigh, 1979;

Yahya, 1999). The distinction between colonisation and population transfer was not

comprehended by the refugees at the time of exile (Yahya, 1999). Historically, peasants

had left their lands during times of extreme conflict, to return once the armies in

question had passed through. However, on this occasion, no return was permitted,

despite individual efforts made by many refugees (Badil Resource Centre, 2007a). Even

when their situation was fully comprehended, the camp refugees refused to accept the

concept of population transfer, particularly in the light of UNGA Resolution 194, which

stipulated the right of return (Schiff, 1995).

Furthermore, the complete loss of socio-economic status of the peasant farming class,

when the expectation of return was thwarted, is significant in that it left the camp

refugees either dependant on assistance or in need of alternative means of earning a

living. Anecdotal evidence in the literature points to their distress at being in a position

where constant assistance was necessary, combined with a desire to find any possible

means of self sufficiency and improvement (Yahya, 1999). Their view of the underlying

meaning of condition of ‘refugee’ was ‘a trajectory toward its own overcoming by

restitution and return’ (Jayussi, 2007, p. 128). In this refusal to deviate from that belief

and to stay in the camps, even when relief was no longer required, can be seen the

appearance of ‘samud’ or steadfastness, a central Palestinian characteristic where

resilience is concerned (Barghouthi, 2009; Shehada, 1982). Such distortion of facts as

may have occurred over time (Sa’di & Abu Lughod, 2007) has entered the indigenous

discourse and narrative and thus become a part of the interaction of perspectives and

actions which are so important to this study. Despite debate over the reliability and

historical accuracy of oral accounts (Yahya, 1999), following the fiftieth anniversary of

1948 and the realisation that the original generation of refugees may soon be lost, oral

history became an even more urgent issue in the literature.

Biographies

As a non-scholarly genre, popular in the Western World, biography allows a sense of

the personal outrage felt by Palestinians at the affront to the memory of their

antecedents through the denial of their history, culture and existence (Sabbagh, 2006;

Toubbeh, 1998). In the forward to Fadwa Tuqan’s autobiography, Salma Jayussi

ascribes the desire to write personal stories to ‘the experience of uprootedness’. She

goes further to assert that writing personal accounts affirms the identity of both the

48

writer and the country, in a time when much of the world is in denial over the

Palestinian experience. It is:

a phenomenon of life in crisis, a call on the outside world to look in on the true,

live experience of an afflicted people, to see their tragedy as it is actually

experienced, to feel the pulse of their suffering, and of their pride and resistance.

(Tuqan, 1990, p. viii)

Despite the diversity of Palestinians offering their stories for publication, ranging from

poets and revolutionaries to human rights lawyers and academics, they display

constancy and unity in their presentation of the basic facts of the Palestinian narrative.

Sari Nusseibeh, a prominent Palestinian academic, asserts in his first sentence that his

family have lived in Jerusalem since the 7th century, the time of the Caliph Omar the

Great (Nusseibeh & Anthony, 2007, p. 4). Karl Sabbagh, who concentrates on the

period up to 1948, states that his aim is to show that the injustice done to his people was

achieved ‘by promulgating a series of institutionalised lies to the rest of the world’

(Sabbagh, 2006, p. 6), one of which was that Palestine was uninhabited. He claims

‘sixty percent of the population in the 10th century was in agriculture and all of them

believed themselves to belong to a land called Palestine’ (Sabbagh, 2006, p. 19). Jamil

Toubbeh refers to a ‘hoax’ having been played which ‘denied both my existence and the

existence of my country, Palestine’ (Toubbeh, 1998, p. 5), whilst Leila Khaled, the

Marxist revolutionary, displays the collective dismay over the Balfour declaration and a

deep scorn for the actions of the Mandate Government as holder of the ‘so called

“sacred trust” of civilisation under Western tutelage’ (Khaled, 1973, p. 56). The ‘pride

and resistance’ mentioned by Jayussi in her introduction to Tuqan’s biography (Tuqan,

1990) is conveyed in these biographies through a lack of self indulgence and the

rejection of a victim syndrome. These are replaced by an insistence on the belief that the

truth of the situation, if understood and believed, will speak for itself and that justice

should eventually prevail (Khaled, 1973; Sabbagh, 2006; Shehada, 2003; Toubbeh,

1998; Tuqan, 1990).

The biographies also give insight into the feelings of impermanency that went hand in

hand with refugee status. Apparent from the early decades of dispossession, the

interaction of the continuity of struggle and the constant disappointments over

reclaiming the past and establishing a future have become part of the conscious or

psyche of the first generation born in exile (Khaled, 1973; Toubbeh, 1998; Shehadeh,

49

2003; Nusseibeh, 2007). For the second generation, the underlying grief and shame,

directly expressed by the original refugees, or interpreted and felt by their children,

appears to have been as unsettling as the impermanency (Shehada, 2003). However, loss

of respect for the parent figure does not appear to have occurred as a result of the above,

instead a determination is demonstrated to work through the diminishment of parental

respect by understanding it thoroughly, thereby guarding against repeating the observed

mistakes (Kanafani, 1978; Shehada, 2003). The lesson learned from the Nakba

(catastrophe) of 1948 was tested in 1967 during the Naksa (disaster), from which time

the central Palestinian characteristic of steadfastness was identified and woven into the

culture (Barghouthi, 2009; Nusseibeh & Anthony, 2007; Shehada, 1982).

The politicisation of ordinary people through living in times of constant uncertainty and

conflict is of consequence to the central focus of this study, as it appears to be related to

the resilience demonstrated by Palestinian families of all social strata throughout their

sixty two year period of exile. The Palestinian voice in biographical accounts

demonstrates this conjunction of normal life and politicisation by highlighting the fact

that however removed from politics a person may believe him or herself to be, the

experience of being Palestinian, either in Palestine or in exile, involves them personally

in political events. For example, Fadwa Tuqan, whilst writing about the difficulties of

growing up as a female poet in a very conservative Nablus family, was also an

eyewitness to the effects of the rebellion of 1936 to 1939, and was able to comment

personally on the effect on her immediate family of the violent response to the British

Government’s 1939 White Paper (Tuqan, 1990). In the same way, Raja Shehadeh, who

had refused to be involved in politics, was eventually drawn into it through the murder

of his father (Shehada, 2003).

Section One, ‘The Palestinian Past’, has examined literature generated by Palestinians

to explain that their ancestors had been indigenous to the area of land now known as

Israel and the Palestinian Territories for centuries, and that as a people they were

unjustly evicted from their homelands, through no cause or desire of their own. An

acknowledgement of the strength of their sense of belonging is vital to gaining an

understanding of contemporary Palestinian refugee perspectives. The next section will

look at literature which explains the strength of the refugees’ belief in their ‘inalienable’

rights, including that of return.

50

Section Two: The Palestinian Case

The use of a legal approach to challenge the events of 1948 and 1967 through national

and international courts was in put in place soon after 1967 (Cattan, 1971; Shehada,

2003). The legal fight for ‘the case’ has continued to be one of the main avenues used

for seeking a just resolution by Palestinian and Israeli advocacy agencies and Human

Rights organisations such as Al Badil, Al Haq, and B’tselem and should be clearly

differentiated from the political concept of fighting for ‘a cause’ (Khaled, 1973).

According to the literature generated by the United Nations, Palestinian and other Non-

Governmental Organisations, the ‘Palestinian Case’ rests on United Nations

Resolutions; Human Rights; and International Humanitarian Law. Within the refugee

camps included in this study, knowledge and understanding of those Resolutions, Rights

and Laws is widespread, an important fact in understanding the strength of the refugee

belief in the justness of their ‘Case’.

United Nations literature

The basis of the case for refugee return is United Nations General Assembly Resolution

194 (III) of December 11, 1948, which established a right of return and/or compensation

in paragraph 11as follows:

The General Assembly, having considered further the situation in

Palestine.....resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live

at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest

practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those

choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under

principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the

Governments or authorities responsible. UNGA Resolution 194 (III) Paragraph

11, December 11 1948. (Farsoun & Zacaria, 1997, p. 327)

Following the 1967 war, UN Security Council Resolution 237 of November 22, 1967

stated the need to find a just settlement for the new refugees and displaced persons

(United Nations, 1967).

The basis for self determination is UNGA Resolution 181 (1947), the original UN

Partition resolution, which established the United Nations decision that Palestinians

51

should have a state of their own (Farsoun & Zacaria, 1997, p. 325), followed in 1967 by

UNSC Resolution 242, which called for the withdrawal of the Israeli armed forces from

all occupied territories, the right of all states in the area to live in peace with secure and

recognised boundaries, and called for a just settlement of the refugee problem (Farsoun

& Zacaria, 1997, p. 319).

Crucial to the perceptions of the participants in this study has been the regular re-

appearance of the issues of refugee repatriation and self determination within the United

Nations over the last sixty years, thus re-affirming their belief in the strength of the

Palestinian ‘case’. In addition to Resolutions, literature in the form of pamphlets and

reports has been regularly disseminated by the United Nations for the express purpose

on informing the world about Palestinian rights. This literature is based on the

application of Human Rights, and following the 1967 War and the occupation of

remaining Palestine, on International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Conventions.

In setting out the relevant UN resolutions, the literature also calls attention to the effect

of the veto on their efficacy, as with the 1976 draft of a two phase plan for a solution

suggesting return of 1967 displaced persons to a Palestinian State in the West Bank,

Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and the return of 1948 refugees to their home of origin if

they wished to do so (Badil Resource Centre, 2005; United Nations, 1979).

In 1974, through UNGA Resolution 3236 (XXIX), the General Assembly reaffirmed

...the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including the right to self

determination without external interference, the right to national independence

and sovereignty, and the right to return to their homes and property. (United

Nations, 1989a, 1990b)

Following the resolution quoted above, in 1975 the General Assembly established the

Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Right of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP):

... and requested it to recommend a programme of implementation to enable the

Palestinian people to exercise their inalienable rights to self-determination

without external interference, national independence and sovereignty, and to

return to their homes and property (UNGA Resolution 3376). Since that date

‘The Question of Palestine’ has been subject to review every year. (United

Nations, 1989b)

52

The CEIRPP publishes an annual report, formerly in pamphlet form and now available

on the website http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/com.htm. The phrase ‘Inalienable

Rights’ has been solidified in the refugee discourse and is frequently to be seen in the

refugee camps, particularly during commemoration activities such as the International

Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, created by the UN on 29 November 1977.

The United Nations literature is informative, in that apart from setting out the historical

background of events in Palestine from the UN point of view, it presents details of the

realities of the situation on the ground (United Nations, 1979, 1989b, 1990b, 1997).

From this, some understanding can be gained of the ongoing nature of the conditions

over the sixty two year period within which Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and

the Gaza Strip have been born, grown up to maturity and raised families. The language

used tends to be extreme in its contemporary descriptions of the different decades,

whereas in fact the situation has steadily worsened. For example in a pamphlet written

after the 1st Intifada, the UN referred to the 1970’s and 80’s as a period of ‘occupation,

humiliation and deprivation’ (United Nations, 1990a, p. 41). The period of the 1980’s

was characterised by ‘violent and repressive measures’, including armed settlers who

‘uproot trees, burn crops, attack children and shepherds’ (United Nations, 1990, p.17).

In 1988 the CEIRPP referred to ‘an extension and intensification of various practices of

collective punishment and recourse to new forms of collective reprisal such as economic

sanctions.’ It also mentioned an ‘unprecedented scale’ of house demolitions, systematic

and prolonged use of curfews, sealing off of entire localities, ‘which in several instances

has provoked food and fuel shortages; interruption of flow of water and electricity’

(United Nations, 1989a, no page numbers provided). However, in light of contemporary

events in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the above occurrences appear standard rather

than extreme practice. Through comparison over time therefore, the literature is

valuable in documenting the continual deterioration of conditions, despite successive

UN Resolutions and efforts to mitigate the effects of the situation. This historical

overview assists in gaining valuable insight into how the refugee perspectives have been

framed and sustained.

Non-Governmental Organisation Literature

The Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) generated literature usually refers to

specific occurrences or discrete periods of time, interrogating them through the

application of the Human Rights Charters and International Humanitarian Law. For this

53

reason, it tends to be generated in waves corresponding to periods of heightened tension

and conflict, thereby affording a picture of extreme conditions. Examples of this are

readily available from the 1st intifada (Al Haq, 1990) and the 2nd Intifada (Save the

Children, 2004). The importance of NGO literature to this study rests on the manner in

which the information published is garnered, which is often through obtaining first hand

evidence from the population (DCI/PS, 2000; Save the Children, 2004; Al Haq, 2005;

B’tselem, 2006; World Vision, 2007). Once again, it should be remembered that in a

study of this nature it is the perceptions of the participants which are of value and

therefore, despite the possibility of overstatement during qualitative interviews

(Charmaz, 2006), in instances where the information is published by reputable

organisations, the opinions expressed can be accepted as informative. More

importantly, although the inhabitants of the camps do not need documentation to know

their own reality, such documentation repeatedly affirms their perception that they have

justice on their side, thereby strengthening their resilience.

Al Haq (Law in the Service of Man) was founded in Ramallah in 1979 and affiliated to

the International Commission of Jurists, Geneva. In its 2004 Annual Report, Al Haq

summed up its purpose as covering violations of human rights and providing ‘an in

depth legal analysis of these violations on the basis of international human rights law

and international humanitarian law applicable to the OPT’ (Al Haq, 2005, p. 1). It takes

a case by case approach, one example of which is Provocation to Kill: the use of lethal

force as a response to provoked stone throwing (Johansson, 2003), which documents an

incident between children and soldiers in a village schoolyard. Affidavits and witness

statements attest to the particular incident reported, which is then given a legal analysis

under the applicability of International Law, using Articles 51 and 52 of the Additional

Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 (Johansson, 2003, p.18) concerning the

protection of civilians and civilian objects. The purpose of the report is expressed in the

conclusion, in which Al Haq ‘calls upon the Israeli authorities to carry out an

investigation into these events and hold the perpetrators responsible.’ It further appeals

to the international community to ‘demand that Israel takes action in this case’

(Johansson, 2003, p. 26).

Using a similar approach, B’tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights

within the Occupied Territories, publishes reports on specific incidents and violations.

In Barred from Contact, Violation of the Right to Visit Palestinians Held in Israeli

54

Prisons (Barsella, 2006), the legal framework is explained under Article 4 of the Fourth

Geneva Convention, which gives ‘civilians lawfully staying in the occupied territory the

status of protected person’. The case study then analyses the prohibitions and rights

applying to family visits in prisons, starting with Article 49 which prohibits forcible

transfers of protected persons ‘from occupied territory to the territory of the occupying

power’ (Barsella, 2006, p. 7). In the conclusion, the report discusses the applicability of

the Fourth Geneva Convention to the occupied territories and summarises the violations

of rights and principles of International Humanitarian Law and Israeli law, including

‘the right of the prisoners’ children to have physical contact with their parents, the

prohibition against collective punishment, and the principles of proper administration’

(Barsella, 2006, p. 42). It then calls on the government of Israel to undertake measures

to relieve the situation.

Defence for Children International/Palestine Section, established in 1992 as an affiliate

of the Geneva based organisation, aims to promote and protect the rights of Palestinian

children. In A Generation Denied, Israeli Violations of Palestinian Children’s Rights in

2000 (DCI/PS, 2001), each section addresses a particular right such as the Rights to

Life, Education, an Adequate Standard of Living, Health and Survival, and Protection

from Discrimination. In the Legal Frame work section, the report bases the Palestinian

Case upon the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and on Refugee Law. In

addition to its advocacy approach, DCI/PS has an active role, operating a Legal Unit

which represents children in Palestinian courts and a Training and Social Mobilisation

Unit designed to empower children (DCI/PS, 2004).

Al Badil, located in Bethlehem, has both a refugee advocacy agency and a practical

role. Founded after the Oslo Accords in recognition of the apparent erosion of refugee

rights through the agreements, publications explaining the history and legal status of the

refugees are combined with journals and annual surveys of the situation aiming to

encourage information dissemination and lobbying for refugee rights (Badil Resource

Centre, 2010).

In all the above cases an enormous amount of detailed research is presented, including

statistics and the frequent use of photography, to add faces to the figures. This research

is disseminated in English, both in printed form and on web pages, rendering it easily

available to local and international readers.

55

Section Three: Palestinian Resilience

The Palestinian national characteristic of sumud, or steadfastness, originally arose as ‘an

affirmation of the collective presence on the land’ (van Teeffelen, 2009, p. 25). The

main element of sumud is ‘persevering despite all the oppression and hardships’ (van

Teeffelen, 2009, p. 24), underscored by ‘the justice of the cause’ (Barghouthi, 2009, p.

18). Engaging with education under conditions of conflict can be seen as one aspect of

the ‘general struggle to carry out normal life in Palestine’ (Shehada, 2003, p. 144).

Resilience, the ability to recover or ‘bounce back’ from difficulties is an important part

of sumud and is therefore an essential component of the refugee families’ processes and

actions where education is concerned.

Resilience in education may be understood through the contrast of conditions and

achievements. Two types of conditions are relevant, the prevailing education systems

through which children are taught, and secondly, the context of the conditions within

which the children live and attend school. Therefore to gain insights into the resilience

shown by Palestinian refugee children and families in their quest for education,

literature which sheds light on both the state of educational infrastructure and

restrictions in delivery is of interest. Similarly, specific information about the

difficulties and dangers refugee children face arising from the conflict is relevant.

During the British Mandate difficulties faced by peasant families who wanted their

children to be educated arose from the lack of schools available in villages (Sabbagh,

2006; Tibawi, 1956). Tibawi showed that due to minimal spending on infrastructure by

the British Government, village education went up to the fourth grade only and was not

sufficient to attain the stated British minimum objective of permanent literacy (Tibawi,

1956, 1961). Nevertheless, the passion for schooling and the personal effort undertaken

by peasant children and their families to firstly obtain places at village schools and then

to overcome the economic and geographic difficulties involved in progressing to the

larger schools in towns is well documented (Sabbagh, 2006; Sayigh, 1979).

Once in refugee camps after 1948, the availability of primary education for the villagers

increased. Tent schools were set up almost immediately in which the teachers were

literate, although not necessarily teacher trained, refugees (Yahya, 1999). The well

documented place of UNESCO and UNRWA in ensuring free education for refugee

56

children after 1950 was central to the growth of literacy amongst the refugees (Badil

Resource Centre, 2006a; Samady, 1997; UNESCO, 1990). However, in the first decade

of exile uncertainty about the future, constant attacks and wars, combined with the

aftershocks of coming to terms with what was becoming evident as the new reality of

life, contributed to a dangerous and deprived context for education (Bowker, 2003;

Lynd et al., 1994). Nevertheless, during this period children did become educated and

the culture of engagement with education amongst the refugee community took a firm

hold (United Nations, 1979).

However, better access to schooling was not met by increased provision of

infrastructure. Black and white photographs, available on the UNRWA website, confirm

that in the 1950’s, facilities were minimal, with schools either in the open air or in tents,

few books, no electricity and no private space for study in the overcrowded tent

dwellings in which families lived (UNRWA, 2010a). Limited spending on infrastructure

by the Egyptian Government in Gaza and the Jordanian rulers in the West Bank during

the 1950’s and early 1960’s meant that facilities did not increase in proportion to the

growth of the young population (Barakat, 2007; Rigby, 1995; Sa’di & Abu Lughod,

2007). Despite this, through the ‘education revolution’ (Farsoun & Zacaria, 1997, p.

147) children schooled in the 1950’s and 1960’s became doctors, lawyers, engineers,

teachers and administrators, many of whom made an essential contribution in the

opening up of the Gulf Arab States (Sayigh, 1979; Schiff, 1995).

From 1967, the literature points to increased problems arising from the occupation

(United Nations, 1979). After some initial disruption, the education systems in place in

the West Bank and the Gaza Strip remained those of Jordan and Egypt respectively,

however, very little modernisation of infrastructure or curriculum took place, leading to

overcrowding, understaffing and an out of date curriculum. School buildings were used

for double, and sometimes triple, shifts, in which each building housed two schools, one

in the morning and one in the afternoon, with class sizes which were regularly up to

sixty or more (Rigby, 1995; United Nations, 1979). As well as lack of relevance to

modern developments, particularly in science and mathematics, censorship of many

texts approved by Egypt and Jordan led to gaps in the curriculum causing difficulties for

those students moving on to universities in other countries (Halstead & Affouneh,

2006).

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Substantial damage to infrastructure during and following the First Intifada (or popular

uprising) which broke out in 1987, worsened the state of education provision (United

Nations, 1989a, 1989b) and by the time the Palestinian Education Ministry was

established in 1994 the condition of the entire educational system was ‘in a near state of

collapse’ (Halstead & Affouneh, 2006, p. 204). Within the first five years of Palestinian

administration, building of infrastructure and curriculum was enthusiastic and effective

(World Bank Middle East and North Africa Development Group, 2006; World

University Service (UK), 1993), however this upward cycle was interrupted by the

Second Intifada in 2000 during which once again, buildings, books and equipment were

deliberately destroyed by military intervention (Giacaman, Abdullh, Abu Safieh, &

Shamieh, 2002; Halileh, 2002).

The politicisation of education has meant that the context within which families and

children live and go about their schooling has contained elements of threat and danger

for most of the 20th century. Students and teachers have consistently been singled out

for harsh repression by the various occupations. During times of unrest and rebellion,

the Mandate powers targeted students and teachers using closures, curfews and

detentions. Along with these strategies, the prohibition of unions, demonstrations and

strikes were policies used then and which have been repeatedly used up to and during

contemporary times (Sayigh, 1979; Tibawi, 1956; Yahya, 1999).

Following the occupation of 1967, International customary and conventional law

including The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, as well as the Fourth Geneva

Convention, Articles 27 and 32, became relevant (United Nations, 1949). They state

that children are to be treated humanely, free of coercion, corporal and collective

punishments, with respect for their life, physical well being and moral integrity (United

Nations, 1990a, p. 6), while Article 50 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states ‘The

occupying power shall, with the cooperation of the national and local authorities,

facilitate the proper working of all institutions devoted to the care and education of

children.’ (Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of

War of 12 August 1949 in United Nations, Treaty Series, vol.75, No.973, p.320).

However, the daily reality faced by children going to school during the first twenty

years of the occupation was very different (World University Service (UK), 1989,

1993).

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At the end of 1986, before the start of the First Intifada, almost half of the population of

1.5 million living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories were children. In the West

Bank, 45 percent of children were registered refugees, 11 percent of them living in

camps, while in the Gaza Strip 83 percent were registered refugees, with 46 percent of

those living in camps (United Nations, 1990b, p. 3). Education, already under threat

from lack of development and modernisation, became an integral part of the conflict in

the First Intifada. Specifically targeted by the Israeli administration, schools, vocational

colleges and universities were shut down for extended periods causing noticeable gaps

in the education of many children and young people of that time (Chatty & Lewando

Hundt, 2005). The resilient reaction from a population which showed ‘unity, cohesion

and mobilisation of all elements’ (ICCP, 1988 ,forward) was the formation of popular

committees to ensure that students were able to continue learning. Classes took place in

private homes and teachers provided what education they could to small groups.

However, by 1988 the Israeli Authorities declared all Popular Committees illegal and

any teacher caught giving lessons was liable imprisonment for up to 10 years. Despite

this, education continued as an underground activity, in this instance resilience being

effectively augmented to become resistance (Anon, 1988; ICCP, 1988; JMCC, 1988,

1989; World University Service (UK), 1989).

The 21st century has seen the environment worsen, starting with the increased violence

of the Second Intifada. Once again, school infrastructure was targeted, affecting the

general education and matriculation chances of large percentages of students (Giacaman

et al., 2002; Halileh, 2002). From 2001 to 2005, more than 765 children, including 158

camp refugee children, were killed and 1,556 injured. Of the 765 killed, 31 percent were

involved in clashes and stone throwing; 29 percent died due to shelling; 24 percent died

in random shootings; 8 percent died during extra judicial targeted killings; 4 percent as

a result of mines and unexploded ordinance; and 4 percent due to closures and house

demolitions. In 2002, 48 percent of children killed were 12 and younger (Badil

Resource Centre, 2006a). During the 2004/5 school year 98 students and 4 teachers

were killed, some of those while actually in school (DCI/PS, 2005).

Detention and imprisonment have played a major part in the lives of children, one of the

effects of detention on the final years of education being the prevention of

matriculation, as without sitting and passing all the Tawjihi exams together the whole

year has to be repeated (Al Haq, 1990; Rigby, 1995). Until recently Palestinian children

59

were tried in Israeli military courts, without the benefit of juvenile courts (Barsella,

2006). Interrogation can last weeks, during which time they are prevented from meeting

their lawyers. The literature documents that ‘interrogators and guards subject child

detainees to intense physical and mental abuse in order to obtain confessions or as a

form of punishment and humiliation. This includes beating, threats, sleep deprivation

and preventing them from going to the toilet’ (DCI/PS, 2004, p. 17). In the 5 years from

2000 to 20005, over 4,500 children, aged 12 years and over, were arrested. In 2004

alone, more than 750 Palestinian juveniles were taken into custody by Israeli authorities

(DCI/PS, 2005, p. 33). In that year, 15.7 percent of the cases were children aged 12 to

14, while 33.4 percent were children aged 15-16 and 50.9 percent were 17 years old. Of

those children, 31percent were charged with the crime of stone throwing (DCI/PS,

2004, p. 18).

In light of the increasing levels of violence inherent in the conflict following the

outbreak of the Second Intifada at the start of the 21st century, a body of literature has

been produced warning of the consequences of prolonged and increased conflict on

community psycho-social and mental health in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Much of

this literature has direct relevance to schooling in times of conflict and therefore to

children’s resilience and abilities to engage successfully with education. Reports on the

condition of children in times of conflict compiled by international and national non-

governmental organisations, including Birzeit University’s Institute of Community and

Public Health and the Gaza Community Mental Health Service, articulate grave

concerns about the effects of the conflict on children’s resilience generally and in

education specifically (Dabbagh, 2000; Giacaman, 2004; Giacaman et al., 2002;

Giacaman, Saab, Nguyen-Gillham, Abdullh, & Naser, 2004; Halileh, 2002; Nicolai,

2007; Punamaki, Qouta, & El-Sarraj, 2001; A. Thabet, Abu Tawahina, El Sarraj, &

Vostanis, 2008). Recent reports from the Gaza Community Mental Health Service show

that in the Gaza Strip, the war of 2008/9 and the extended blockade, or siege, have

intensified the effects of the conflict on the community to an extraordinary degree (A.

Thabet, Abu Tawahina, El Sarraj, & Vostanis, 2009). According to the literature,

although the resilient attitude noted during the First Intifada (Barber, 2001) is still

evident, it is now in danger being eroded as the degree of violence in the conflict

escalates. As a result of this, engagement with education is being affected by a ‘deep

negative influence on the children’s ability to learn, their sense of security and their

mental health status’ (Giacaman et al., 2002, p. 16).

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Sounding a more positive note, attempts to counteract the negative effects of ongoing

conflict on the mental health and wellbeing of children have led to an emphasis on the

relevance of the Right to Freedom of Expression, Article 12 of the Charter of the Rights

of the Child (OHCHR, 1989). Concerned with the impingement of military escalation

on children’s lives and human rights, schools, universities, NGO’s and camp refugee

agencies have made empowerment of young people a main agenda of their work.

Literature and multimedia created by Palestinian children and young people offer an

avenue through which they can express their opinions and communicate their feelings in

a positive way. Published and thus tangible acknowledgement of the children’s views

and feelings has a twofold value in that, in addition to contributing to their mental

health and well being, it plays a major role in affirming their dignity as human beings,

despite the often desperate circumstances of their daily lives (Al Rowwad Centre, 2007;

Atallah & van Teeffelen, 2001; DCI/PS, 2005; Right to Educate Campaign, 2006; Terra

Sancta School for Girls, 2004).

Conclusion

This chapter, the Palestinian Voice, has looked at the literature generated by

Palestinians in three sections, the Palestinian Past, the Palestinian Case, and Palestinian

Resilience. Distance, time and de-classified British and Israeli documents have given

contemporary historians a clearer picture of the events which occurred in Palestine in

the 20th Century. However, of greater importance to this study is the fact that for the

Palestinians involved there has never been any doubt. The Palestinian voice in the

literature has been remarkably consistent in presenting the same themes and facts in a

number of different genres from scholarly, through direct speech in the first person, to

transliterated oral testimonies. The Palestinian voice has been, and still is, clear, precise

and unwavering, qualities which bear testament to the existence of great resilience in the

collective beliefs and values of the population, both within Palestine and in the diaspora.

It has investigated, interrogated, accepted blame, explained and tried to reach out to the

world in a measured, intelligent and sophisticated way.

Palestinians, writing in English, have shown a knowledge and understanding of past and

recent events, and of the manner in which they have been represented by others. They

have constantly repeated their perceptions and perspectives of the past sixty two years

in the attempt to communicate their narrative to a world that appears to them not to

61

want to see or listen. Across this time span and across the different genres represented

in the literature, the basic message continues to be that a grave miscarriage of justice

occurred, unsolicited by Palestinian actions, and that according to their legislated rights

as human beings they hold the moral ground. An understanding of this constancy of

opinion, held since the early part of the 20th century, is essential to the focus of this

study.

Although under International Law there is a major differentiation between the periods

1922 to 1948; 1948 to 1967; and 1967 to the present day, the Palestinian narrative

demonstrates a perception that occupation and repression have been ongoing from the

start of the Mandate in 1922, including the period after 1948 in which the West Bank

was ruled by Jordan and the Gaza Strip was administered by Egypt. In the centuries

during which historic Palestine was a part of the Ottoman Empire until the Ottoman

reforms or Tanzimat, life in its traditional form carried on despite periodic repression

and injustices. However, according to the literature reviewed for this study, the British

Mandate of 1922 - 1948, followed by the 1948 and 1967 Wars, known to Palestinians as

the Nakba (Catastrophe) and the Naksa (Disaster) respectively, are now understood to

have introduced different elements to the usual methods of colonisation, the latter two

events in particular including forced population transfer.

In gauging the perceptions of Palestinians over the period of time, the descriptions in

the literature of contemporary modes of oppression and repression do not differ

significantly from those used by the British during the Mandate, and to a slightly lesser

extent the Jordanians after 1948, with the exception of an increase in hardships caused

by technological enhancement of military ordinance and surveillance. Curfews,

closures, house demolitions, arbitrary arrest, unlawful detainment, imprisonment and

death coupled with economic repression, destruction of infrastructure and restrictions on

education were already familiar to many of the generation that went into exile in 1948.

Since that time, the regular incidence of major and minor wars in the region,

interspersed with periods of severe restrictions affecting daily life, has formed the

background to the lives of all four generations of Palestinians under consideration in

this study. In addition, whereas the original exiles had to deal with forced migration

from their places of origin, since 1967 their children and grandchildren have

additionally had to deal with the influx of settlers colonising the remainder of the lands

where they are indigenous.

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With regard specifically to the villager antecedents of the camp refugees who are the

participants in this study, the information contained in the literature confirms the lack of

education available in villages during the century before 1948, the desire of the villagers

for more education and their perception that education was withheld from them in a

deliberate attempt to disempower them, the corollary of which is that they came to

perceive education as the key that would open a different and better life to them. The

literature clearly demonstrates that education was and has remained a priority in the

West Bank and Gaza Strip under all circumstances. However, during the increased

violence of the current decade, growing attention has been given in numerous reports

and studies to analysing the psycho-social aspects of constant conflict. Resilience in

education is being challenged by the devastating effects of the ongoing violence and

repression suffered by school age children and their families, at the same time as being

supported by a growth in available psychological and social support services. The

precarious balance between the effects of the violence and the support available to

children is one of the most important factors impacting their ability to effectively

engage with education. This study, therefore, seeks to add to the body of information

directly related to that particular aspect of the refugee’s lives.

The following chapter will describe the methodology which allowed the perspectives of

the participants to emerge from the data collected by means of semi structured

interviews, non-participant observation and document analysis.

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CHAPTER FIVE

METHODOLOGY

Introduction

This chapter describes the purpose of the study and the design and methodology which

have been used to achieve that purpose. It explains the use of a symbolic interactionist

theoretical approach in the creation of guiding questions and the selection and

composition of the participant sample. It details the data collection process and gives

examples of how the grounded theory methods of data analysis were applied. Finally it

sets out the procedures used to ensure trustworthiness and authenticity and to deal with

ethical issues

Purpose of the study

The purpose of this study has been to develop substantive theory about how Palestinian

refugee families living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip deal with their engagement

with formal education at primary and secondary school level. Engagement with

education has been understood as having six main components. Students, whether

ultimately successful or not, are understood to have made an active commitment to

schooling and to have shown a desire to engage with both class and homework; to

succeed within the system and to pass examinations; and ultimately to graduate through

the system.

In seeking to achieve its objectives, the study has been concerned with uncovering the

perspectives, actions and subsequent changes in perspectives based on the results of

those actions which have been demonstrated by the participants over the sixty two year

period of their refugee status. Understandings of the ways in which the participants

have dealt with situations specific to the various phases of both internal developments

of refugee life and of external changes impacting on their society where education is

concerned over the sixty two years have been crucial in arriving at substantive theory.

Theoretical approach

This research has been located within the interpretivist paradigm, using a symbolic

interactionist theoretical approach and grounded theory modes of data analysis. The

interpretivist paradigm has been particularly appropriate for this study in that it holds

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that the individual and society are considered as inseparable units and therefore a

complete understanding of one is not possible without a complete understanding of the

other. Any examination of the meanings that phenomena have for people must be

undertaken in their everyday settings. Palestinian refugee camps tend to be autonomous

and culturally homogenous settings, which fact rendered understandings of the

meanings various phenomena have had to their society, over the sixty two year time

span, relatively accessible.

The approach of Symbolic Interactionism, which places primary importance on the

social meanings people attach to the world around them, and how they respond to them

(Taylor & Bogdan, 1998) has been appropriate in this circumstance as it not only

provided a theoretical framework for understanding the way in which individuals deal

with other individuals and situations, but also placed importance on the social meanings

groups of people attach to the world around them, and how they respond to those social

meanings (Taylor & Bogdan, 1998). The concern has been with the study of ‘how

people define events or reality’ and ‘how they act in relation to their beliefs’ (Chenitz &

Swanson, 1986, p. 4).

Symbolic Interactionism rests on three primary premises found in Herbert Blumer’s

interpretive model for sociology which ‘inserts a middle term into the stimulus response

couplet so that it becomes stimulus-interpretation-response’ (Wallace & Wolf, 1986, p.

206). The premises are that human beings act towards things on the basis of the

meanings those things have for them, that such meanings arise out of the interaction of

the individual with others, and that an interpretive process is used by the person in each

instance in which he must deal with things in his environment. Additionally of

importance are Blackledge and Hunt’s four main assumptions underpinning symbolic

interactionist research. Firstly, every aspect of society can be traced back to the way

people act in everyday life; secondly, in everyday life people can and do create their

own activity to some extent; thirdly, everyday activity nearly always involves a person

interacting with other people rather than acting in isolation, as a result of which

individuals not only give meaning to their own actions, they also give meaning to the

actions of others; and finally everyday activity involves a process of ‘negotiation’ of

meaning and through this, we come to modify our understandings and views

(Blackledge & Hunt, 1985, p. 235). Following from the above, all human beings

develop perspectives on phenomena with which they have to deal, that is to say, ways of

65

perceiving or looking at these phenomena. A perspective is an absolute basic part of

everyone’s existence, and it acts as a filter through which everything around us is

perceived and interpreted (Charon, 2001).

A researcher adopting a symbolic interactionist theoretical approach when conducting a

study within the interpretivist paradigm is concerned with revealing the perspectives

behind empirical observations, the actions people take in the light of their perspectives,

and the patterns which develop through the interaction of perspectives and actions over

particular periods of time (O'Donoghue, 2007). As stated above, the relatively confined

nuclei of Palestinian refugee camps, almost wholly dependent on interactions with and

changes in the world around them, have lent themselves readily to examination through

this type of theoretical framework. The refugees’ ability to recognise and ascribe

meanings to the patterns of their own actions and those of others and to subsequently

adjust their perspectives and actions has constituted a strong suite in their ongoing

struggle for a future, thus making them an appropriate group to investigate through the

symbolic interactionist approach.

Data collection

Qualitative methods of data collection are concerned with situations resulting from the

interaction of individuals and society. They aim to discover patterns of ‘action and

interaction between and among various types of social units’ (Strauss & Corbin, 1994,

p. 278) and, as such, have been particularly appropriate for this type of research.

The field work for this study was undertaken over a period of four years in order to

detect patterns which have arisen from the ongoing process of the subjects’ actions and

interactions within their society and all of its challenges (O'Donoghue, 2007). The

study was grounded in the empirical world defined as:

the minute-by-minute, day-to-day social life of individuals as they interact

together, as they develop understandings and meanings, as they engage in ‘joint

action’ and respond to each other as they adapt to situations, and as they

encounter and move to resolve problems that arise through their circumstances.

(Woods, 1992 p. 338)

With specific regard to Palestinian refugee camps, daily life is affected by frequent

fluctuations, and at times swift changes, in conditions imposed on the refugee

66

communities externally. Therefore, the choice of a protracted period of time for the field

work was helpful in uncovering the individual and group perspectives held by the

participants and their community, and such actions as were taken in the light of those

perspectives, particularly during and after the fluctuations in conditions. This allowed

for uncovering changes in, or retention of, perspectives as the subjects engaged with

their inescapable realities.

Guiding Questions

The intention of three guiding questions, developed from the central research question,

‘How do Palestinian refugee families living in refugee camps within the West Bank and

the Gaza Strip deal with their engagement with formal education at primary and

secondary school level?’, was to provide a framework within which participants could

convey their points of view (Patton, 1987). In keeping with the theoretical framework

of symbolic interactionism, the first guiding question was designed to allow an

understanding of the participants’ general perspectives and intentions with regards to

engagement with formal education. It sought information about the strategies they

planned to use in their attempts to achieve those intentions, including the significance

and expected outcomes of those strategies. The second guiding question dealt with the

actual actions that the participants took, in the light of their perspectives and intended

strategies. The final question sought to establish such changes as had taken place in

their perspectives as a result of their actions. Together, the three guiding questions

facilitated the development of a list of data collection questions which engaged the

participants in conversations across a range of relevant areas in order to yield data

regarding their perspectives on engagement with education (O'Donoghue, 2007).

Selection of Participants

Purposive sampling, employed in this study, is sampling which is intended to uncover

as wide a scope of perspectives as possible. On that basis, the initial selection of

participants was chosen from refugee camps in geographically separated areas of the

West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Considerable variations exist in the conditions

experienced by the various camps in both Territories, depending on factors such as size,

density, economic activity and proximity to Israeli military installations and settlements,

thus the choice aimed to provide the possibility of uncovering a wide range of

viewpoints. In reality, expediency dictated availability of the intended samples,

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particularly where the Gaza Strip was concerned. However, in the West Bank, the initial

selection was, in the main, adhered to. Further choices of participants that took place

during the study were also purposive, that is ‘guided by emerging directions in analysis’

(Punch, 1998, p. 167). Ultimately, the participants came from seven camps situated in

the North, centre and South of the West Bank and three camps across the Gaza Strip.

The Participants were all refugees and represented a variety of educational stages and

attainments, including those who had failed to complete their formal school education.

Thirty four participants aged from seventy five years old to the youngest at eight years

old contributed to the semi structured interviews. A further nine, mostly close family

members of the participants interviewed, provided data through informal, non-recorded

conversations and observations. Participants selected due to emerging directions in data

collection were chosen for specific attributes they possessed, and included refugees who

were successful professionals and those who had undertaken their education in

extremely difficult circumstances.

In keeping with the sixty two years of Palestinian refugee status covered by the study,

the selection of participants, informed by the need ‘to provide the greatest opportunity

to gather the most relevant data’ (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, p. 181), reflected the

traditional structure of Palestinian society. Wider extended families, or hamula groups,

were represented, whilst four multi-generational family groups were selected in two

geographically separate camps in the West Bank, including three families from Jenin in

the North and one from Aida in the South. These extended families were invaluable in

representing the development of, and changes in, perspectives and actions regarding

education over the sixty two year period of refugee life. They provided a sense of the

ever constant, but always changing, set of challenges faced by four generations of

students. The original refugees, from the generation that was born on their own farming

lands, had survived the socio- economic shift from independent village farmers to tent

city dwelling dependants of the United Nations and grew to maturity in the turmoil and

wars of the 1950’s. Their children were being schooled at the time of the 1967 war, and

grew up under occupation, experiencing the start of settlement building within the

Territories. The third generation faced the curfews and school and university closures of

the 1st Intifada of 1987- 1992, and their children, the current school age generation, have

contended with the 2nd Intifada, which started in 2000, the building of the Separation

68

Wall, the rapid increase of settlements in the West Bank and the economic sanctions,

siege and war in the Gaza Strip.

From the table below, which shows the participants by age in relation to major historical

events which have affected their lives, an appreciation can be gained of the

circumstances during which their schooling was undertaken.

Dates in five year increments

Key events affecting the West Bank and the Gaza Strip

Participants by age and camp

16A 17A 18A

20A

24J 11G 22J

6A 15A

23J 27 M 32J

1A 2A 33J

3A 21A

12C 9G 31J

4D 5KY 13AF 14AF

10A 25J 27J 28J 30J

7A 8A 26J 29J 34J

Pre 1948 born

1948-52 The Nakba born

1953-57 1956 Suez War 5 born

1958-62 10 5 born

1963-67 1967 War 15 10 5 born

1968-72 Settlement starts 20 15 10 5 born

1973-77 25 20 15 10 5 born

1978-82 Camp David 30 25 20 15 10 5 born

1983-87 1st Intifada 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 born

1988-92 1st Iraq War 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 born

1993-97 Oslo, PA 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 born

1998-2002 2nd Intifada 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 born

2003-07 Wall started 55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5

2008-10 Gaza Siege and War

60+ 60 55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10

Table 5.1: Participant context timeline in five year increments

Methods of analysis

Data Collection

Qualitative research methods of data collection seek to uncover ‘the different ways in

which individuals invest objects, events and experiences with meaning’ (Flick, 2006, p.

15). This study utilised three qualitative techniques for obtaining data, namely semi-

structured interviews; non-structured, non-participant observation; and document

analysis. These methods show a concern for the empirical social world and a

69

commitment to field work and were thus appropriate to the interpretivist underpinning

of the research.

Researchers should attempt to see the world from the point of view of the participants in

the study, always keeping in mind that the participants’ own reality is important, rather

than the reality of the researcher (Charmaz, 2006; Punch, 1998). When the participants’

world is culturally different from the researcher’s, any attempt to achieve this objective

requires a prior knowledge of the participants’ heritage and a constant sensitivity to

nuances of cultural meanings expressed both verbally and non-verbally. With field work

set in an environment of occupation and military conflict, in addition to a language

barrier which at times necessitated the use of translators in interviews, the difficulties

involved in accurately uncovering the participants’ perspectives may appear to have

been overwhelming. However, the time span over which field work in this study took

place, including extended periods within the four years from 2007 to 2010, facilitated

adjustment to the environmental circumstances and allowed the possibility of multiple

visits to all of the fields involved, giving the best possible chance for familiarisation

with the cultural settings to take place.

Semi-Structured Interviews

Interviewing ‘permits an in-depth exploration of a particular topic or experience and,

thus, is a useful method for interpretive inquiry’ (Charmaz, 2006, p. 25). In-depth semi-

structured interviews elicited the participants own perspectives with regard to the

concerns of the study by allowing them the space and opportunity to reflect on their

own experiences. Assisted by an aide-memoir or semi-structured interview guide, the

researcher’s task was to ‘listen, observe with sensitivity, and to encourage the person to

respond’ (Charmaz, 2006, p. 25). The aide memoir used in this study was designed to

reflect educational issues only and did not seek to elicit any political responses, a fact

which participants were assured of during initial meetings. As education is highly

valued within Palestinian society, all prospective participants were comfortable and

enthusiastic about taking part. Many Palestinian refugees speak English, albeit with

varying accuracy, therefore, as many of the thirty four interviews as possible were

conducted without the use of a translator. The oldest, youngest and least educated

groups of participants, however, did require a translator and in each of the eleven cases

requiring translation, the translator was a refugee from the same camp as the participant

and also a prior participant. These choices were intended to facilitate the comfort of

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both the participant and the translator, reducing the potential barriers to a free flow of

communication.

The thirty four interviews were conducted in a wide variety of venues reflecting both

the lack of personal space available in the majority of camps and the ease with which

Palestinian refugees were able to express themselves articulately in less than private

surroundings. Venues included homes, extracurricular educational centres, balconies,

cafes, a video store and in two cases a grocery shop, this variety of venues demanding

maximum sensitivity and flexibility on the part of the interviewer. In many cases the

participant was not alone, a culturally appropriate circumstance in light of both the

collective nature of Palestinian family society and the security situation which refugees

face on a daily basis. The interviews, ranging in length from under thirty minutes to

well over an hour, were digitally recorded and subsequent transcription was at times a

painstaking process because of the amount and variety of background noise from

people, from the streets and, at times, from overhead. Once transcribed, copies of the

interviews were returned to the participants for scrutiny, using the same translators from

each camp when needed, providing opportunities for follow up questions and

discussions. As movement between refugee camps in the West Bank can be an uncertain

process, time gaps from a week to several months occurred between the interviews and

the return visit for transcription scrutiny. This facilitated the ongoing process of

constant comparison that took place in the analysis of the various participants’

contributions.

Non-structured non-participant observation

By observing and analysing everyday events, ‘routine actions in ordinary settings’

(Charmaz, 2006, p. 53), the underlying heartbeat or atmosphere within which events,

incidents, and phenomena occurred in the field was allowed to emerge. Observing at

first hand ‘how participants manage daily life’ helped to ‘define subtle patterns and

significant processes’ (Charmaz, 2006, p. 53). Of relevance to life lived in situations of

conflict, through observing a combination of ordinary and extraordinary events, the

process of constant comparison afforded insights into the way in which the abnormal

became assimilated into the normal. Observation partnered interviews as an important

part of the process of ‘looking for concepts in data through constant comparison of

incident with incident, incident with concept to emerge more categories and their

properties’ (Glaser, 1992a). Furthermore, within the interviewing process, sensitivity to

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‘non-verbal messages, effects of the setting and nuances of the relationship’ (Patton,

1987) was gained through observation.

Observation took place in a variety of venues and situations within and outside refugee

camps, in the company of refugees, thus covering both the routine and the less ordinary

referred to above. Within camps the participants were observed in the streets, shops and

cafes and also in their own homes, both during extended stays and on shorter visits.

Young people were observed at school, in class and in the school yards; contributing to

projects at the extracurricular cultural centres in the various camps; visiting cultural

events outside the camps; and taking part in politically motivated events. Older

participants were observed at universities, at their work places and at cafes and

restaurants. Observations were also made on local buses, in local shared taxis, at fixed

checkpoints and at ‘flying checkpoints’. Field notes were recorded digitally or taken in

note form as close in time to the observation as possible. They were then analysed and

the data were used to extend the process of data collection by both checking the

emerging concepts and themes from interviews and for stimulating further data

collection questions.

Document analysis

The documents analysed included ‘artefacts’ such as art, photography and performing

arts works created and performed by young people. Considered as empowering under

Article 13 of the Convention for the Rights of the Child, the Right to Self Expression

(OHCHR, 1989), these artefacts tapped into both the refugee past and present and

allowed valuable data to emerge relating to the position of young refugees in the

structure of Palestinian life. The data were collected over the extended period of field

work and used in the ongoing process of comparison which contributed to the

development of emerging concepts and themes. Included in document analysis were a

school Art Installation which involved UNRWA, Government and private schools in the

Bethlehem district and a photography and video programme, ‘Images for Life’, at the Al

Rowaad Centre in Aida camp in Bethlehem (Al Rowwad Centre, 2007). The latter took

place over a period of two years, culminating in exhibitions in Bethlehem, Nablus,

Jerusalem, and in New York at the United Nations in 2008 (United Nations News and

Media Division, 2008). In addition, youth theatre productions from the Freedom

Theatre in Jenin camp (The Freedom Theatre, 2010) and Al Rowaad Theatre in Aida

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camp were viewed, including a combined performance day for both youth theatres held

in Jenin camp in September, 2007.

Analysis of data

Grounded theory methods of data analysis, investigating “patterns of action and

interaction” between individuals and their situations (Strauss & Corbin, 1994, p. 278)

were ideally suited to this study. Inherent in grounded theory coding are the two

procedures of making comparisons and asking questions, which together start the

process of analysing the data and shaping a ‘frame from which to build the analysis.’

Within the frame ‘generalizable theoretical statements that transcend specific times and

places’ moved the data beyond concrete happenings into interpretations (Charmaz,

2006, p. 44).

The analysis of data involved two types of coding, open coding and axial coding

(Glaser, 1992b; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). In keeping with grounded theory principles,

the initial data collected was analysed using open coding, whilst subsequent data

collection was guided by emerging directions in that analysis (Punch, 1998). Using “the

constant comparative method of analysis” (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), a number of

substantive codes emerged from the data. Once substantive concepts had been

identified, the data ‘fractured’ by open coding were put back together again during the

process of axial coding. This was done by clarifying the relationships between concepts

and developing theoretical links between them (Chenitz & Swanson, 1986).The moves

between inductive and deductive thinking, as properties suggested by the data were

verified against other incidents in a “constant interplay between proposing and

checking” (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, p. 111), allowed higher levels of abstraction to be

reached throughout the period of analysis and theory formulation. Examples of the use

of open and axial coding during the study are provided below.

Open Coding

Concepts are the basic units of analysis in grounded theory methodology (Glaser,

1992a). They are defined as “conceptual labels placed on discrete happenings, events,

and other instances of phenomena” (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, p. 61). Open coding was

used at the outset to break up the data and identify emerging substantive concepts.

Through this process, concepts were identified and labelled. As these various concepts

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were recognised, they were labelled and elaborated on according to situational factors,

then explored further in subsequent data collection and analysis. Memos, or detailed

notes of the concepts emerging from the data, were used in the comparison, verification

and modification of the concepts as new data was collected.

The following figure is an example of line by line open coding which led to the

emergence of the concept ‘respect for social order.’ During an interview, 6A4, a 48 year

old married man, discussed his opinions on the teacher pupil relationship.

Figure 5.1: Open Coding of an interview with 6A4 at Aida Camp, 19.3.07

Immediately following the interview, prior to coding, the following memo was written:

Memo: Importance of society and social learning (19/03/07)

Although 6A4M didn’t mention social learning specifically as a positive factor in attending

class, it comes through very clearly in his discussion on teachers. He makes a clear

correlation between learning social behaviour and accepting the relative status and roles of

teachers and parents. This is important! The social grouping, in which families are familiar

with the teachers and vice versa, appears to be enormously important in the students’

commitment to engagement with education.

Figure 5.2: Memo written following an interview at Aida Camp, 19.3.07

The emerging concept ‘respect for social order’ was then examined in comparison to

information in subsequent interviews with participants of various ages, from university

For me, because my parents teach me to respect others, so I have to respect the teachers.

Accepting social behaviour set by parents

None of the teachers punished me because I was polite and good in school.

Recognising the rewards of following parents’ rules

The headmaster had the power to punish, he can ask my parents to come, and this is not easy if they do!

Acknowledging the status of teachers and parents

If you behave well, everyone has to respect you because you respect others. It’s life, it’s normal.

Seeing functional social behaviour as a desirable norm

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students to school students. It was found to be repeated consistently, although with

different levels of insight depending on the age of the participant. Examples from

younger participants such as ‘Because the teacher is bigger than me I must respect him’

(8A6) or ‘I learn from my friends when a person is dishonest the result is not good’

(26J5) show a basic pragmatism in approach. The responses of university level students

showed a higher sophistication, for example, 4D1’s understanding of ‘respect for social

order’ including an appreciation of the need for ‘social functionality’, an extension of

the original concept:

You don’t only learn from a book or the teacher. You learn the value of being in

a community, how to listen, how to value what you’re listening to, how to

exchange your ideas and how to hear others. (4D1)

The importance of the concepts ‘respect for social order’ and ‘social functionality’ was

corroborated in an observation made during a return bus trip, from Jenin camp in the

North of the West Bank, to Aida camp near Bethlehem. Some thirty young people from

Aida, aged from nine years old upwards had taken part in a Drama day at in Jenin camp,

accompanied by male and female adults, including parents and workshop leaders. The

incident observed was described in the following memo:

Memo: Drama day out!

Date:19 September, 2007

Just after sunset two Israeli soldiers in an armoured hummer created a flying check

point and stopped three coaches going out of Jenin. We were the third coach back.

Despite obviously being a school trip involving young children, no exception was

made for our bus and we all had to leave the bus at gun point. After collecting our

travel documents and identification papers, the soldiers allowed the women, girls

and boys under fourteen back on the bus, while the men and older boys waited on

the roadside outside the bus. The two soldiers’ task appeared to be to query all

identification papers by sending them electronically from the hummer, an extended

process considering the number of people on the three buses.

The children were now in a situation where after a long and exciting day, they were

in unfamiliar circumstances in the dark, with all their male authority figures

removed from the bus. The two armed soldiers were young, nervous and

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outnumbered by the Palestinians on the buses. Therefore it was obvious on

observation that the behaviour of the children was extremely important for the

safety of the group. In fact, the young children behaved with a complete lack of

distress and with a calmness and control that belied their circumstances. The only

behaviour they exhibited that was considered dangerous by the female adults on the

bus was a desire to photograph the soldiers and their hummer, flashes from which

could have resulted in negative reactions from the armed soldiers. However, the

children accepted the request to desist given by the women on the bus.

Outside the bus, the men and boys could be seen conducting the evening prayer at

the roadside. The sight of the group praying underscored the place of spiritual

strength in society. More importantly however, the men were praying because sunset

had occurred whilst the bus was moving and so it was the evening prayer, an

everyday, socially correct occurrence, a stable part of ‘normal’ life, and therefore

reassuring to the children in that their world order had not been disturbed.

Following the prayer the men simply sat on the road side smoking and waiting until,

after an hour, our bus was permitted to leave.

The importance of the concept of functional social behaviour emerged very strongly

from this observation, the respective social status of the group members was upheld

within the group and it was evident that deviant social behaviour was neither

expected by the adults, nor considered by the children. Following the incident the

adults and children continued to sing and chat on the bus for the remainder of the

long journey, passing very little comment on the occurrence. The concept of

‘normal’ arising from this incident is worthy of further investigation.

Figure 5.3: Memo written following an observation made on 19.9 07

Concepts which emerged from interviews, observations and document analysis were

continually recorded and refined by constant comparison throughout the process of open

coding, until a main group of substantive concepts was identified. These substantive

concepts, many of them ‘in vivo’, were categorised into four sub groups corresponding

to the ages, or generations, of the participants. This was done because the data collected

covered the whole period of sixty two years of engagement with education under

consideration, during which evidence emerged of shifts in the perceptions underlying

subsequent actions taken by the different generations.

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Axial Coding

The concepts which had emerged during open coding and which were then connected in

categories expressing similar meanings or processes became the subject of further

interconnection during axial coding (Punch, 1998). To begin with, the categories were

examined for dimensions or properties embedded in the data, recognised as contributing

to the essence of the categories. By continuously collating categories and their

properties they were further abstracted, thus uncovering theoretical categories and

properties at higher levels of abstraction. Theoretical sampling, ‘the ‘where next’ in

collecting data, the ‘for what’ according to the codes and the ‘why’ from the analysis in

memos’ (Glaser, 1998, p. 157) was a continual process, confirming and affirming the

value of the emerging categories and properties.

For example, from initial coding of data from interviews, supported by data from

observations made within camps, the concept of ‘being different’ emerged as a

phenomenon experienced by Palestinian refugees. In exploring the phenomenon, two

consequences of ‘being different’ emerged from the data, one reactive and the other

proactive. The reactive consequence became the category ‘managing everything’ and

the proactive one ‘knowing everything’. From the initial categories described above,

through the process of further sorting and refining at a theoretical level, ‘Being a

Palestinian Refugee’ emerged as a main theme with three main properties or

dimensions: ‘respecting the social order’, ‘wanting to learn’ and ‘enduring everything’.

During this process, memos, including the use of diagrams and flow charts, were

important in exploring the levels of abstraction and checking the validity of the

categories. For example, the following memo was used in conjunction with

diagramming to uncover the shift in perspectives across the sixty two years during

which the phenomenon ‘being educated’ came to be ‘in the blood’ of the refugees:

May 2008: Shift in beliefs about validity of education

The original refugees believed they had lost their land through ignorance and made

sure that their children were educated so that it would never happen again.

The next generation accepted the belief that their parents had lost their lands

through ignorance and believed in education as a valuable weapon in the fight, not

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only to lose no more land, but also to regain what was lost.

Their children believed they must be an educated generation so they could preserve

the existing strength of their society and ensure that the next generation would also

be also educated, thus making their contribution as a generation to the struggle to

regain what they saw as rightfully belonging to the Palestinian refugees, by now

perceived as including more than just land, but also human rights.

The shifts in emphasis shown by succeeding generations continually built on the

concept of the importance of education, to the point where it is now unquestioningly

accepted by the youngest children, even those with parents who did not succeed in

being educated.

Figure 5.4: Theoretical Memo exploring ‘inaho al dakhilina’ ‘it’s in our blood’

The flow chart below is an example of the process of refining the properties of the

emerging theme ‘Building the Future.’

Figure 5.5: Flow chart used in uncovering the properties of an emerging theme

Engagement with formal education at primary and secondary level

Build human capital

Widen employment

potential

Be a functional member of

society

Contribute to a just future for the group “Palestinian Refugees”

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Eventually, two main themes emerged, ‘Being a Palestinian Refugee’ and ‘Building the

Future’, and became the overarching framework through which the categories and their

properties could be viewed.

In keeping with the method of constant comparison and the grounded theory approach

to reading literature (Glaser, 1998), at this point in the study the theoretical categories

and their properties were further considered and investigated by comparison with

selected readings from literature, the relevance of which became evident as the

categories emerged.

Trustworthiness and authenticity

A study conducted within the interpretivist paradigm is evaluated in terms of

trustworthiness, the components of which are confirmability, dependability and

credibility (Guba & Lincoln, 1989). In qualitative methods, as the researcher is the main

instrument of the research, a continual awareness of the necessity of seeing the reality of

the subjects is of the utmost importance. For this reason data triangulation is vital,

involving studying phenomena at different dates and places, from the perspectives of

different persons, and through observing different incidents (Flick, 2006). In this study

triangulation involved interviewing participants from ten different camps in both the

West Bank and the Gaza Strip, chosen from four generations of refugees. Document

analysis, involving cultural activities carried out by refugees, as well as observations

made in different geographical places over a period of four years contributed to

triangulation of data. Information was also gathered informally from refugee advocacy

agency personnel, academics and professionals with refugee backgrounds.

Throughout this study the participants were involved in member checking in which

transcribed interviews were checked back with the participants for modification, using

translators where necessary, until they were accepted as representative of their positions

and opinions (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Member checking was frequently related to

refining the meanings of words or phrases used by the participants, whose native

language was Arabic but who spoke English, during the interviews. In addition to

member checking for substance and accurate meanings, emergent categories were tested

through second and sometimes third round interviews with the participants to check the

plausibility of interpretations (Glaser, 1998).

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All of the raw data, including the digitally recorded interviews, transcripts of interviews,

records and memos of field work, theoretical memos and diagrams, have been preserved

to ensure that an ‘audit trail’ exists that will enable others to follow the process by

which conclusions from the study have been drawn. As the field work took place

outside of Australia and in a conflict zone, dates and places of interviews were recorded

separately from the actual interviews as a security measure required during travel, but

have subsequently been accurately reconstructed. In addition, multiple copies of the

interviews and transcripts were transferred to different electronic devices and kept in

more than one venue, ultimately including the University of Western Australia.

Ethical Considerations

A symbolic interactionist study which seeks personal information and perspectives from

participants must take into account ethical considerations, particularly when the field

work is conducted in a conflict zone where the security of the participants cannot be

assured by the researcher. The University’s Human Research and Ethics Committee

requirements necessitated providing participants with clear information about the nature

of the research, including the proviso that they were free to withdraw from the study at

any time, while ensuring that the participants were able to query the research directly

with the University if they desired.

On a practical level as the study involved children as well as adults, parental or guardian

consent had to be gained in addition to the consent of the children, necessitating a series

of letters appropriate to the varying age range of the participants. Furthermore as the

participants were Arabic speakers, all consent letters were printed in both English and

Arabic. Because of the status of the participants as refugees under occupation, the

option of preserving anonymity by using names other than their own was offered and in

some cases availed of. Names were not used in the recorded interviews, whilst in

written transcriptions the participants were referred to by numbers constituted from their

sequence in the interviews and the initials of the camp they came from. As mentioned

above, great care was taken in transporting the documentation through checkpoints and

borders, both to protect the security of the participants and to ensure the safe arrival of

the documents at the University in Australia.

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Conclusion

This chapter has outlined the research design and methodology used in the study. It has

explained the use of symbolic interactionism as the theoretical basis and detailed the use

of qualitative methods of data collection and grounded theory methods of data analysis.

It has provided exemplars of the use of open and axial coding as well as memoing and

diagramming as main strategies used in moving towards constructing theory. In

conclusion it has explained the measures taken to ensure trustworthiness and ethical

conduct throughout the research.

The next chapter will present an analysis of the findings which have emerged from the

data through the methodology described in this chapter. It will view the findings

through a framework involving two main themes, ‘Being a Palestinian Refugee’ and

‘Building the Future’ and a central strategy ‘Being Educated.’

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CHAPTER SIX

DESCRIPTION OF FINDINGS

Introduction

In forming substantive theory regarding how the Palestinian Refugee families living in

UNRWA camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip deal with their engagement with

education, two main themes have emerged from the data. These themes, ‘Being a

Palestinian Refugee’ and ‘Building the Future’, explain the essence which has

underpinned the perceptions and actions of the group ‘Palestinian Refugees’ across four

successive generations. Together, the themes have provided the motivation and

impulsion through which the group has taken a proactive stance and maintained a

forward momentum in the continuum of an existence necessarily ‘in suspension’ due to

its refugee status. Connecting the two themes is a central strategy, ‘Being Educated’,

which the group has adopted as a means of preparing young people to take their place in

securing the present and continuing the momentum towards the future. This chapter will

provide an explication of the two main themes and the strategy, which emerged through

the analysis of data collected from interviews, observations and documents in the West

Bank and the Gaza Strip over a period of four years.

The first main theme, ‘Being a Palestinian Refugee’, will be examined through three

properties which affirm the relevance of the theme to the focus of the study. Property

one, ‘respecting the established social order’ will be shown to be of central importance

in supporting the engagement of children with formal schooling at primary and

secondary level, particularly in the earliest years of education. The second property,

‘wanting to learn’, will become evident as the basis for continued engagement with

education throughout a learning process often interrupted by events outside the control

of the group. The third property, ‘enduring everything’, underlies the ongoing resilience

demonstrated when dealing with refugee life in general and education in particular.

Three properties of the second main theme ‘Building the Future’ which have emerged

from the analysis of the data are ‘acquiring knowledge of the world’, ‘accepting social

responsibility’ and ‘seeking economic viability’. Through investigating these properties,

an understanding can be gained of perceptions about the manner in which ‘Building the

Future’ can be most efficiently carried out. The attitudes that the group desires to

preserve, and the tasks which need to be undertaken within the established social

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framework, constitute the processes which are perceived as necessary for application to

the endeavour of building the future.

‘Being educated’ has emerged as a central strategy perceived as essential to achieving

the goal of building a future as a Palestinian refugee. In using this strategy, three main

processes are undergone by students engaging with education at school, namely

‘developing self’, ‘learning social skills’, and ‘striving for academic success’. It appears

from the data that actions supporting and furthering these processes are applied

consciously and deliberately by refugee children from a very early age.

Theme One – ‘Being a Palestinian Refugee’

The question ‘Why do Palestinian refugee children go to school and learn?’ is central to

the substantive focus of this study which, it will be remembered, relates to the manner

in which refugee children and their families deal with their engagement with education.

The most common answer given, ‘inaho al dakhilina’ or ‘it is inside us’, may be broken

down into two separate areas of enquiry. Firstly, the concept ‘inside’ infers the

existence of an interior or intrinsic quality, ‘inside, inherited, inside your thoughts’

(11G2). Other descriptions, such as ‘in their blood’ ( 33J12), are even more vivid. The

metaphor of blood conveys the explicit understanding that what is ‘inside’ is not only

deeply ingrained in the psyche, but is also a necessary part of continued existence.

Secondly, from the concept ‘us’ emerges the idea of separateness, which suggests that

Palestinian refugees see themselves as a distinct group or entity. This is supported by

commonly heard phrases such as ‘for us, the Palestinians, especially refugees’ (4D1) or

‘being a Palestinian child, especially living in a refugee camp’ (12C1). The idea of

being a separate entity entails the existence of particular conditions or attributes. These

were defined by members of the group in various ways, for example, ‘We are a special

people. We have to laugh and cry at the same time’ (22J2). Looked at together, the

concepts ‘inside’ and ‘us’ point to the idea of a cohesive group which has been imbued

with a collective identity. For the purposes of this study, the group will be identified as

“Palestinian Refugees’.

From a very early age, camp children were aware of their reality as members of the

group ‘Palestinian refugees’. The three properties, identified as ‘respecting the

established social order’, ‘wanting to learn’ and ‘enduring everything’, emerged clearly

through the words of school children as young as twelve. For example, the importance

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of education in a society where many of the adults are incarcerated or killed was

explained by a twelve year old girl:

When girls haven’t any person to defend them, such as her father or mother or

brother, she must have a degree to continue her life, to be able to fight others by

education. When I get older I want to be educated. To help the others and to find

a good job. (26J5)

A fifteen year old boy, starting Grade 11, explained the importance of studying in the

prevailing economic conditions:

When I was young, my father wanted me to study. He told me: Go study and it

became like a routine for me. So, if from young your parents teach you how...it

will be OK with you. It’s very important for all children because you know

especially in this time in Palestine there is no work. There was just a little bit of

work and all of it was in Israel, but all the relationship with Israel is gone now.

You know I hope to be a doctor, a surgeon. So I have just my education to have

that hope. (10A7)

The data indicate that children as young as ten and eleven were already aware of the

relationship between education and their lives as Palestinian refugees. The substance of

the first main theme, ‘Being a Palestinian Refugee’, will emerge through the following

explication of its three properties, the first of which concerns the nature of the social

group within which the children grow up.

Property One – ‘Respecting the established social order’

The particular group under consideration, ‘Palestinian Refugees’, has been shown to

regard itself as standing apart from the surrounding mainstream groups. ‘All the

families, they have the same problem. They are refugee, they are poor, they must

support each other to manage to continue their lives’ (23J2). As a ‘special’ group,

facing special difficulties, there is evidence that the importance of the established social

order is heightened in the perceptions of all generations of camp refugees. When

phrases such as ‘Many times my father told me...’ emanate from older adults, they have

an almost mythical overlay, heightening the cultural relevance of the information they

contain. That information is often of a cautionary nature, intended to direct the actions

of subsequent generations.

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Respect is a two way process between the generations. The responsibility for providing

the opportunities for study initially rested with the older generation as explained by a 75

year old man, ‘I have to endure and bear all the things so that we have our children

educated and they have jobs’ (18A10). In return, the next generation accepted the

responsibility for learning, as the following comment from a 40 year old man

demonstrated, ‘Look, because we are here we must study. That’s what in the past my

father taught me. I continue to teach my children. It’s very important’ (22J1).

The following generation accepted education as unquestioningly part of the

responsibilities that came with social order, ‘it’s how the fathers have raised the kids –

it’s important to get educated. It’s part of our culture’ (9G1), whereas the attitude of a

teenager who dropped out of school shows that he regrets breaking the established code,

‘I didn’t give care for my parents, I decided to leave and now I am unhappy’(30J9). All

of the preceding comments give the established hierarchical social order as the basis for

engagement with education.

Respect was accorded to those who were educated and also to the educators. According

to a Headmistress born in 1947:

In the fifties when you enter any house you will see many certificates on the

walls. The mother will say “Look, my child, my daughter, my son, look at his

certificates, he is clever!” (20A11)

Teachers were such a vital part of the structure of a community which believed deeply

in the importance of learning that:

During the wedding parties they used to sing for the teachers because they were

valuable in society. If they asked who married your daughter, you said, Oh! A

teacher! (20A11)

Despite being a Headmaster himself, 6A4 demonstrated that social obligations persisted

into adulthood:

For me, because my parents teach me to respect the others, so I have to respect

the teachers. If I saw some of my teachers now, if I am smoking, (I am a smoker

by the way) I have to put my cigarette away, not to smoke in front of them. It’s a

kind of respect. (6A4)

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The accepted social hierarchy is further evident in the following story related by 22J1, a

fifty year old man who did not enjoy school and wanted to leave. Now a successful

professional man, the story illustrates his parents’ determination for him to be educated:

When I am go in the house, go back from the school, daily my mother is talking,

“You must to do the exercises and to read in the house what you are took in the

school, you must to learn it now and do the exercises, after that you can go play.

But before you go to play, you must to read it!” When I am not read, she tell my

father and my father he can coming talk me, make for me a problem. Sometime

he gave me in my face – like that! (22J1)

Within the hierarchy of authority headed by the father figure, the mother played a

central role in guiding the behaviour of the children, followed by a ranking of siblings.

This is illustrated by the continuation of 22J1’s story:

I remember when I have exam, I have percent 49, I am not pass it. I am afraid to

talk my father because I not pass the exam. I put the paper for the exam in my

pocket and I forget it. I had two trousers, just two trousers. I use the trousers for

a week. On Thursday my mother wash them and I use the other one. By chance I

forget it, the paper in my pocket, and she catch it. She don’t know what it

means, she ask my brothers: “What’s this? It is important for (his name) or not

important?” “Wow – what he have?” - My brother tell my father! I hope you

don’t put yourself in myself in the past! Coming my father, gave me – doosh-

very good! (22J1)

Outside the home, the authority structure extended to the school, as explained by 6A4, a

man in his forties:

The Headmaster - he had the power to punish. He can ask my parents to come

and this is not easy if my parents come. If I tell my father to come to school, he

will beat me. (6A4)

The preceding examples demonstrate that it was not enough for the children of the first

and second generation born in the camps to merely attend school, but that within the

social hierarchy of family and teachers the importance of successful engagement with

education was clearly understood.

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Cultural gender differences which had traditionally kept village women from education

lessened over time within the refugee group, partly because it remained under external

pressure. The old social order can be seen in the stories of second generation refugee

women who did not complete their schooling, such as 2A2 who said, ‘my father was

old, my mother wanted me to help at home. She had 10 children.’ Similarly, 3A3 gave

home duties as her reason for not studying, ‘my mother made me do a lot of things at

home. So I was tired. I had 15 brothers and sisters. I was in the middle.’ 27J6M

explained the changing attitude - ‘Traditions and habits were different from now. It’s

more important now to continue, for a woman.’ She ascribed the difference in society to

being ‘open to other cultures’ (27J6M). Others ascribed the change to the place of

women within a social group where men are often missing through incarceration or

early death, as explained by a father: ‘Here the girls more than the boys going to

university, because if she be alone, she have to go to work, to found job’ (21A12), or, as

quoted above, from the twelve year old girl, ‘when girls haven’t any person to defend

them, such as her father or mother or brother, she must have a degree to continue her

life, to be able to fight others by education’ (26J5).

The explications given above demonstrate the evolving attitudes towards education

from the inception of refugee life in 1948 and the swift assimilation of education as part

of the structure of the accepted social order. With the importance of education for all

refugees, regardless of gender, unchallenged by the social hierarchy, the second

property of the main theme ‘ Being a Palestinian Refugee’ shows that in the perceptions

of the group ‘Palestinian Refugees’, education came to be understood as not only

necessary, but also as highly desirable.

Property Two – ‘Wanting to Learn’

The second property, described in vivo as ‘Wanting to Learn’, appears to be connected

to the physical and economic reality of being a refugee. This is illustrated by strikingly

similar views expressed by two refugees separated by geography and age. A 62 year old

woman from the West Bank said:

After 1948 the Israelis moved everyone from his own villages. So we lost the

land. We had nothing to do, we were in camps. So the only thing we can do is

learning, education. (20A11)

A 30 year old man from Gaza confirmed the point, saying:

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Imagine you lost everything, you lost cities, you lost families, you lost

everything...... so it’s inside the kids, it’s in the kids that they want to go and

educate and do something in the future, that’s why. (9G1)

From these statements, it can be seen that the desire to learn has become an intrinsic

cultural characteristic, initially established through default by the groups’ historical loss

of socio-economic status, and then confirmed and instilled into the group ‘Palestinian

Refugees’ through social absorption.

In tracing the emergence of the properties of ‘Being a Palestinian Refugee’, it becomes

apparent that ‘wanting to learn’ was already established among the peasant farming

families before they became refugees in 1948. The peasant farmers ascribed their lack

of education to the circumstances of their occupation, first by the Ottoman Empire and

then by the British Mandate, from which can be inferred an already existing desire for

learning. Two of the original refugees from Aida Camp confirmed this view by stating:

The Turkish government didn’t want us to be educated. In the villages they

didn’t encourage any education…there were no schools. There was a small

house and people who wanted their children educated paid for the teacher. They

gave him bread, honey, wheat – anything that was available at home they paid

for the teaching. (16A8)

There was no government for education. The people who didn’t have money for

the teacher could pay him anything, wheat, rice, anything. That was because we

wanted to be educated. Our parents were under the Turkish rule. Education in

the Turkish rule was better than the British. The British didn’t encourage us for

education. And so the parents, we want our children to be educated, to be better

than us, to have a better life than the lives we have lived. (18A10)

However, once in the camps, when education became available through UNRWA after

1950, there was no question about the refugees’ desire for schooling their children.

Asked why she wanted her children to be educated when she hadn’t been, an original

refugee replied in outrage ‘Do you want them to be stupid? I want them to be better than

me!’(17A9), whilst a man from Jenin said ‘My father could not read or write, but many

times he told me there is a big difference between who can and cannot read’(22J1).

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For the first generation of children born in the camps, their parents’ desire for them to

learn was absorbed in conjunction with the circumstances of dispossession into which

they were born. Education ‘became our main thing in life – it’s a need. I saw my

father’s life – very hard life’ (23J2). It appears that assimilation of ‘wanting to learn’

occurred with rapidity, as understood from the sentiments of a Gazan born in the second

decade of refugee life who said, ‘You feel something is missing when you are not

educated. You go higher steps, always go higher and higher. This is really inside

everybody, all Palestinians’ (11G2).

This speed of assimilation was confirmed through the participants born in the camps

after 1967, whose schooling occurred before and during the 1st Intifada. It is clear that

wanting to learn was by then ‘part of the psychological character of the Palestinian

people’ (33J12). That participant alluded to the fact that the younger children accepted

schooling without thinking because by that time the parents and oldest children were

literate. A woman from Aida also demonstrated this view point saying ‘something

inside us told us – you have to go to school, you have to learn, you have to go’ (3A3).

Although forced breaks in the educational process were a frequent occurrence, they did

not affect the ultimate desire for education. In fact, the effect of the curfews and

closures in the 1st Intifada appears to have increased the desire of children to go to

school. 9G1and 12C1 both expressed the feeling that because ‘we spent long days

sitting at home because the schools were closed, the only way to be out of the house

was to be at school, so it was something we really wanted to do’ (12C1).

Wanting to learn was offered as the reason that two women who abandoned their

education because of the 2nd Intifada and marriage later returned to study. 1A1 said

‘One of the reasons I go back to school to learn is that I am always trying to find

something to improve my knowledge,’ while 31J10 explained that she returned

‘because I want to learn, to read everything, I liked education and learning from young’

(31J10).

For those born in the last two decades of the 20th century, the desire to learn appeared

unequivocal. School was considered by many as merely a basic requirement, ‘the least

thing you can do here is to go to school from first grade to 12th grade’ (4D1). The use of

‘ambition’ to denote forward movement in the process of learning appeared to be a

component of wanting to learn and was often coupled with an expression of enjoyment,

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‘I like studying, I like education. Because always I am ambitious, I always look to be

more and more, to reach more levels and I always preferred (wanted) to study at

university’ (25J4), while for 14AlF it was ‘very important to be a student in a class

because my ambitions were unlimited. I wanted to study English. I want to study not

just English but many languages.’ To him, the opposite of ambition was ‘dropping out’

which ‘would never happen here. It’s a tradition in our country. If you don’t want to

study, you have to find a job’ (14AlF).

The affirmation by the youngest participant, aged eight, ‘I like to study. I like the

teachers. I like everything!’(29J8) sums up the place of education in the perceptions of

the group ‘Palestinian Refugees’. That the refugees’ desire to learn has had to overcome

considerable challenges has been touched on above and will become yet more evident

through the explication of the third property of ‘Being a Palestinian Refugee’,

‘Enduring everything’. Along with adaptability, persistence and resilience have

emerged as essential characteristics in the relationship between education and refugee

life.

Property Three – ‘Enduring everything’

Although the interviews and discussions with participants specifically did not aim to

elicit opinions of a political nature, the property of ‘enduring everything’ emerged as a

constant sub text to the perceptions and actions of all four generations of participants.

Over the course of sixty two years of engagement with education in the camps, the

challenges and discomforts endured by the refugees in connection with education have

escalated at times to very real, often mortal, dangers. It is through the persistence with

which these challenges and dangers have been accepted and responded to that the

concept of ‘endurance’ is revealed.

As has been discussed in previous chapters, Palestinian peasant farmers were

historically no strangers to hardship and endurance, partly due to the very nature of

subsistence farming as a mode of existence. In addition, they were no strangers to the

hardships of occupation, as shown by the following comment from a 75 year old

refugee, ‘They suffered the Turkish rule and then the British rule – and they are still

suffering!’ (18A10). However, for the first refugees to have survived their loss of land

and livelihood with sufficient fortitude to regroup themselves under a new mode of

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existence within the camps was a major accomplishment in itself. The circuitous paths

from their villages to the camps were complicated by hunger, exposure to extreme

weather, and fear coupled with loss of dignity and identity, concepts summed up in the

following statement:

Before the war, before we were chased out of our villages we didn’t depend on

any government for anything. We had farms, we had chickens, we had cattle.

We depended on our selves. After we moved here we lived in tents. Every seven

families shared one tent. After that, in winter, all the water was on us. And we

stayed. (16A8)

Attempts to return to their lands to harvest their crops met with harsh penalties

including death, ‘They still have their keys. Many of my relatives tried to go back and

the Jewish killed them’ (20A11). Not everyone could endure the circumstances as 24J3,

born just after 1948, described:

Afterwards my father went inside (Israel) and he work in his land by money.

They paid him. The Jewish paid him to work on his own land. He wanted that

only because he didn’t want to leave his land. My father after that was broken in

his mind for this problem. (24J3)

It is evident that the adjustment of existence, from mainly illiterate but independent

farmers to dependant tent city refugees, swiftly centred itself on an understanding of the

potential and importance of education for their children. This was clearly articulated by

a seventy-five year old refugee from Aida camp, who said:

I have 11 children. Nine of them have finished their Bachelor. That wasn’t

because I am rich. I haven’t a shop, I haven’t any land. But I have to endure and

bear all the things so that we have our children educated. (18A10)

For the early refugee children, the circumstances within which their learning took place

afforded few facilities, both in the tent schools and in their dwellings. The paucity of

facilities continued even after the tents had been converted to breeze block buildings

during the first decades in the camps, directly affecting the attempts of students to

assimilate the still unfamiliar culture of education. Describing conditions in Jenin camp

in the 1960’s, 22J1 said:

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My family, we were 7 male and 2 girls and my father and my mother and we

had 2 rooms. And the light – not like today – electricity. We had light – like in

the gas – and not clear in the night. And we were near the light when we are

studying. (22J1)

Large families were standard, for example in Jenin 23J2’s family had ‘six sons and 3

sisters. Just we had one room, one kitchen and small yard, we had candles. I don’t know

how, but I managed to study’ (23J2).

The same held true for Aida camp in Bethlehem, where 6A4 said,

‘We were 11 in the family. We were all in 2 rooms. Some of my friends and my

partners in that time, there was no electricity or water, so they were study on the

candles or a gas lamp.’ (6A4)

Nevertheless, engagement with education was successfully undertaken by the first

generation born in camps, with the essence of engagement captured in a statement by

24J3, who asserted that:

Who want to study, he study. In a tent, or small house, or big house, or on the

street. It’s not a problem with the place. The problem is that you have the spirit

to study or not. If you have the spirit to study, you will be successful. (24J3)

Active suppression of students and teachers, familiar from British Mandate times,

manifested as a central issue as the twentieth century wore on. The use of threatened or

actual imprisonment to disrupt teaching and learning is reflected in the education stories

of several of the participants. In some cases, as with 24J3 and 21A, prior imprisonment,

followed by the threat of further incarceration, led to the abandonment of education

altogether. Both these men however, one jailed while at university in the 1970’s and the

other while at school during the 1st Intifada in the late 1980’s, continued to persist with

educating their own children, both male and female. The contribution of families,

relatives and the refugee community was vital to supporting the resilience of students

persisting with their education. 31J10 remembers being in tears because she could not

do her primary school maths homework and had no one to help her as her father was in

jail. Undaunted, her mother went to the street and asked a neighbour to come to the

house and help.

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Destruction of property added to the challenges students endured. Later in her life,

following a period of incarceration, 31J10 lost all her notes and books just before her

Tawjihi (matriculation) exams when her house was completely destroyed in Jenin in

2002. Once more initially in tears, ‘after three days I look for my books. I don’t find

them, but I bring other books from our neighbours. I study, I do the exam and I have a

good mark’ (31J10).

Again, the community rallied to help 12C1, at university during the second Intifada,

‘I threw all my books and said I don’t want to go on. But friends and neighbours

in Birzeit convinced me to give it a try. It (the Intifada) affected us very much

but we thought this is the only good thing we can do in such circumstances.’

(12C1)

The concept of endurance was demonstrated equally by students and families, as in the

case of 11G2, whose university studies had to be pursued in Romania because of a

Palestinian political decision to boycott Egyptian Universities in 1979, a choice which

caused hardship to both students and families in Gaza. In his words:

My Dad was an employee and he spent a fortune in order to get me study in

Romania ...you can’t say what financial difficulties he faced in order to let me

go and continue my study and have the challenge. (11G2)

Travel restrictions also caused interruptions, as with 4A6 who in 1987 was unable to

travel to Jordan to sit final exams for his undergraduate course. However, he persisted

over a period of years until he finally reached his higher degree studies in 2006.

Curfews and closures during both Intifadas interrupted education at schools and

universities. 1A1 was an undergraduate at the start of the 2nd Intifada but ‘they closed

the university. After that I married, I had my first son’ (1A1). It was not until several

years later that she was able to resume her studies, complete them and become a teacher

herself.

Very few of the younger participants referred to the political situation, despite being

regularly affected by it, often through incursions into the camps at night or in the early

morning. From Jenin camp, 25J4 suggested refugees are disadvantaged as they are more

often disturbed at night by soldiers than other students. However, the following two

statements show the use of the concept of ‘normal’ as a measure of the children’s

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acceptance of the elements of their situation that they could not change. To 14 year old

29J8, disruptions resulting from the occupation were ‘normal’, while 15 year old 10A9

said, ‘Sometimes I do not stay focussed so I throw the book. But after everything gone

back to his normal, I get back to study.’

In summary, it appears that endurance has become so ingrained in the culture and habits

of the group ‘Palestinian Refugees’ that refugee students accept what is unchangeable in

their environment, preferring to dwell upon the constructive areas of their lives by

persisting with and enjoying their education. In doing this, they are respecting the

values of their society and protecting its traditions, at the same time as laying the

ground work for their adult lives.

Theme Two - Building the future

Evidence from the data shows that securing a future for the group ‘Palestinian

Refugees’ involves maximising individual human potential to contribute to the

collective need. ‘Building the Future’ depends on producing successive widely

knowledgeable, socially responsible and vocationally qualified generations of

Palestinians. The overall objective is ‘to be a generation educated’, as stated by 12 year

old 26J5. The use of the word ‘growing’ when connected to the future, used by 9G1 in

the following statement, suggests that a proactive position is required:

More or less, it’s part of our culture, let’s say, it’s part of our family education,

family raising. It’s how the fathers have raised us as kids – it’s important to get

educated, this is your future, you have to grow your future. I’m a poor man, so

you have to continue to raise this money and to grow your future. (9G1)

Children as young as 11 year old 7A5 were clear about the need to build the future and

furthermore, that education was a path towards the future. ‘Every year you have

knowledge more than the year before. If you didn’t stay at school you would forget

everything you have learned. You would not continue life’s steps. You will have no

future’ (7A5).

In other words, there is an acknowledgment of being on a path to the future, a

perception that knowledge is essential to building that future and that school is the

means to acquire knowledge.

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Property 1- ‘Acquiring knowledge of the world’

Within the collective understanding of the group ‘Palestinian refugees’ ignorance, as the

opposite of knowledge, is treated as highly undesirable and even dangerous. This was

clearly stated by a fifty three year old refugee from Jenin camp, who cautioned that

‘knowledge is good – ignorance is very, very bad’ (22J24). As explained by two Aida

Camp refugees in their seventies, the concept of danger in ignorance arose from the

original refugees’ belief that ignorance caused them to leave their land. ‘We were not

educated. We didn’t know what will happen to us. If we were educated we wouldn’t

have left our villages’ (18A10), and ‘In the past we were living a simple life. We didn’t

know any politics, anything about other countries, just our lives. We planted trees,

raised animals. Now we are listening all the time to the radio about the news’ (17A9).

Moreover, instead of trying to cover up their ignorance, the original refugees explained

it to their children and grandchildren, as described by a 40 year old man from Jenin

camp:

My grandfather told me, “We thought we will go out for a while and we will

return.” So they left many, many things behind them. My grandfather, he told

me about these stories, they thought just for a short time and they will turn back.

And until this moment, they are waiting to return. (23J2)

In this way, ignorance became the focus of cautionary tales and entered the mythology

of the refugees’ own narrative as an enormously negative concept, the corollary of

which was the high value of knowledge.

This understanding of the dangerous polarity of ignorance and knowledge emerges

clearly from the following explanations by two participants from the first generation

born in the camps. From two geographically distant camps in the West Bank, they both

compared the 1948 Dier Yassin massacre with the 2002 Jenin camp incursion. A

woman from Aida camp explained:

Dier Yassin, this is the first reason why they fled (in 1948). They were afraid for

their families so they ran away. Now they understand it was a strategy to make

them leave their land and to destroy the villages. Look at Jenin (in 2002) – no

one left, they stayed. Now they stick to their land. In ‘48 they didn’t think like

that so they left. Because they were not educated, they were naïve, so they ran.

(20A11)

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The man from Jenin camp whose parents had fled in 1948 said:

My father was ignorant, someone came to him and told him, “Oh, Israeli

soldiers come and kill you and make something with your wife, leave your house

and go away to the mountains and after that, turn back again at the night .”

When they leave, they cannot turn back again. My parents left because they

didn’t learn, and they advise me, “You must learn!” They told me, “Believe us,

but our land, we lost our land by this - because we didn’t learn good. If we are

learn and know everything we are not left our land and go outside.” And now

you know, because we are learn and know everything surround us, when the

soldiers of the Israelis come to Jenin Camp and they damaged it, we are stay

here, we are not go so far. Knowledge is good – ignorance is very, very bad.

(J24)

Literacy, as a step towards gaining knowledge was recognised as essential by the first

refugees, as it allowed them to become better informed so they could judge the world

around them more clearly. 20A11, born in 1948, recalled about her school days:

The first motivation is to know how to write and read. My parents didn’t know

how to read and write so they wanted to convince me. Our parents thought that

it’s a must that any child should go to school. Now people think for themselves,

they use their minds. Now they speak to each other, make conversation, find out

the reasons why. (20A11)

From the second generation born in camps, 23J2 felt that:

Study is very important for us. Without study you cannot know anything

surround you. But if you study, if you learn, you know all the things, you can

read the newspaper, you can read any book you want, your sense is very good.

(23J2)

It should be noted that the type of knowledge under discussion in this section is not

primarily related to employment. For the daughter of J24, continuing education went

beyond the need to widen opportunities for employment. She explained:

If I want a job now, because I was in jail, I find it. But I prefer to study in

university. Someone who learns, he knows everything in life. If you don’t learn

there is a wall around you. If you learn you are not alone in the world. I (will )

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know how to understand another people, from another culture, another country,

how to do everything in my life. (31J10).

The perception that knowledge is important has not abated within the third and fourth

generations. 1A1, a thirty five year old Open University student, stressed it was

important for her to ‘learn how to get information from other sources’. 12C1 was clear

that education had facilitated his ability to understand the world from the point of view

of other cultures, saying ‘I wouldn’t be happy not being able to watch say, the BBC,

being able to understand ... what’s going on’, while 9G1 recognised the value of his

position working for an international media agency, assisting with the dissemination of

information between Palestine and the outside world. The importance of world

knowledge continues to be recognised by the younger generation as explained by 25J4

‘It’s important to be in touch with others, to learn new information, new ideas and new

cultures, about others, not just around us’ (25J4).

The connection between acquiring knowledge and making a meaningful contribution to

society emerged as an important driving force behind the refugees’ attitude to

education. To ten year old 8A6, who was able to explain that ‘in future if I want to be

something or someone, I must have knowledge’, the context of ‘being something or

someone’ was located within her social group, rather than in any achievement she might

make for her individual welfare. Thus, an understanding of the need to show

responsibility for the welfare and continuance of their society was demonstrated by all

the generations included in this study.

Property 2 – ‘Accepting social responsibility’

The development of a person who will be able to contribute to society, whatever his or

her actual job or profession, was identified an essential component of each person’s

ability to give ‘service’ to the group ‘Palestinian refugees’. The concept of service is

described by two men in their fifties from Jenin camp. ‘I want to talk about my children.

All the time I told them - just your duty (homework), if you want to help your country,

just care about your education’(23J2). In the following quote, another father gives

credit to uneducated workers, but explains the value of further education to society:

When you are studying and learning and you pass maybe BA, MA, and PhD,

you know very well about the situation. You can give, you can be effective for

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the Palestinian people in the country here. More than the normal people who is

start working and just he is working hard, difficult work. If I am studying I will

be very effective, very good man and I can talk very well and I can give very

well service, here. (22J1)

It is interesting that in the interview with this man’s daughter, at a different time and

place, she recollected her father saying, ‘Take the degree and be good in the

community. Not to go to the streets and be mechanics. Always spend your time in

studying, better than to spend your time in guns or other things’ (25J4).

Using the metaphor of fighting, 22J1 added:

My father and my family, they talk to me, “You must to learn and to study to be a

good man in the future and you can help all Palestinian people when you are

finished the school, and you can fight in the Palestine to help many Palestinian

peoples here.” (22J1)

‘Fight’ is not used with a military meaning in this instance, but as an example of using

education as a strategy in the struggle for the future. A member of the Palestinian

Refugee Advocacy Agency, Al-Badil explained:

Our National Movement since the very beginning has taken education as a great

weapon to encounter the enemy. We have a very good Arabic saying – ‘you can

find a thousand to carry a gun, but you can’t find two to lead the idea of the

guns’. (15AB)

In other words, as stated by a young teacher from Jenin, ‘to be an educated person is one

of the best ways to confront the occupation. The people can reach their voice and show

the world about Palestinian people’ (33J12).

The use of education in the struggle for survival was explained by many of the

participants using the term ‘case’. ‘Case’ has legal overtones, that is, it can be argued, in

comparison with a ‘cause’ which can be fought for using arms and military strategy. One

of the participants from Gaza explained:

We seek to be competitive with students all over the world, in order to be

outstanding, because we have a case. We have to show ourselves because we are

in the case, and we have to do something more than others. That is what we learn

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and is inside us. So this is the challenge. You’ll find it in hundreds and thousands

of families. You go, you find, you try everything in order to get education. (11G2)

The school aged children recognised the concept that as part of the group ‘Palestinian

refugee’, each individual contribution is important in that it will add to the collective

strength of the group, thus contributing to a future which to them is of paramount

importance. A 12 year old girl from Jenin camp believed that the importance of

becoming ‘an educated generation’ was that ‘in future when we marry our children will

be as educated as us’(26J5). She believed an educated person is better positioned to

render service both to the community and to herself. ‘I want to help people. When I get

older I want to be educated. To help others and find a good job’ (26J5). The concept of

service may also be more specifically directed, as with 29J8 who aimed to be a lawyer

to help ‘find solutions to problems about the soldiers and related to politics. My uncle

was in prison so I decided to find a solution to this problem and fight for him’ (29J8).

The social consequences of being uneducated were explained by 5KhY from the Islamic

University in the Gaza Strip, who believed ‘If people don’t stay at school they become

failures and this leads them to be bad people sometimes.’ He also outlined economic

consequences, by explaining that apart from being general failures, school drop outs

would ‘at the least, get low ranking jobs’ (5KhY). In addition to understanding their

potential value to society as enlightened and educated people, young refugees also knew

that they would have to be in a position to support their existing and prospective

families. Education was seen as the answer, by providing them with the best chance of

developing their personal economic capital.

Property Three - Seeking economic viability

The peasant farmers who lost their lands and livelihood in 1948 were unable to provide

a means of living for their children and thus education became one pathway to

economic survival, as explained by a 48 year old refugee:

My parent have no lands, we don’t have a business, so the only thing I can do is

just to study, to have a certificate which qualifies me to have a job. This is the

only solution I have. (6A4)

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The concept of ‘human capital’ was outlined by the participant from Al Badil:

Palestinians have not had for the last 300 years any kind of national structure

that has stabilised, for example industry, public sector, so on. So a kind of

compensation for the loss of the general public structures is to have education as

a capital. It’s an investment, it’s a capital. (15AB)

This belief was repeated on numerous occasions, such as by the following two young

professionals, ‘Palestinian people have just the school. School will define their future’

(9G1), and ‘For me going to school and university was the best investment a person can

do. In order to get a good job you have to be educated’ (12C1).

University students were clear about the relationship between completing school and

future opportunity. A Hebron University student felt school was just the first step ‘It’s

important to complete yourself. To study at school helps you to complete higher study.’

Once again, the influence of the family in the process of engagement was made

apparent, as she added, ‘especially these days, all mothers make a lot of concern on her

children to have a high mark, because the economic situation is bad and they need to

work to improve their situation’(13H1).

A Bethlehem University student from Deheisha Camp made a similar connection,

saying:

Yes it’s very important (to stay at school for 12 years). It’s the least thing you

can do. Any time you have the leaving certificate, the Tawjihi we call it, if you

want to go anywhere in the world you can study in the university. If you left the

school at the 10th grade and ten years later you don’t have any work and you

wanted to go to university, they will tell you ‘You don’t have any certificate’. So

that’s one thing. The other thing, sometimes in some of the work they need at

least the Tawjihi certificate. If there was less than Tawjihi you don’t have

anything guaranteed. The least thing you can take and finish is the Tawjihi.

(4D1)

Of interest is the manner in which J3, from the Arab American University in Jenin,

linked her economic capital with her ability to serve her community. ‘It’s important to

get a degree. It’s important in this situation first of all to find a job, how much more

beautiful when you are able to help people and draw the smile on their face’( J3).

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The statement above shows the manner in which the two main themes, ‘Being a

Palestinian refugee’ and ‘Building the Future’, underscore the perceptions and actions

of young members of the group ‘Palestinian Refugees’. It demonstrates their combined

awareness of being part of a society with particular needs and their acceptance of the

necessity to develop themselves into viable, functional contributors to the future of that

society.

The preceding explication of the two main themes, ‘Being a Palestinian Refugee’ and

‘Building the Future’ has demonstrated the high priority placed by the group

‘Palestinian Refugees’ on protecting its cohesive identity and pursuing a viable future.

From the earliest days in the camps, the refugees have used education as a powerful

strategy in achieving these goals. In the following explication of the main strategy

‘Being Educated’, the conscious and deliberate manner in which the group approaches

the ground work of protecting the present and ensuring the future will become evident.

Main Strategy: Being Educated

In Palestinian culture, as in the wider Arab culture, children’s learning of behaviour,

morality and religion takes place within the family, with the father, mother and close

relatives integral to the process. Therefore, for children to have described school as ‘the

second home’ (26J5) invested school with an importance far above a place of solely

academic learning. The data show that while at school, in addition to aiming for

academic success, students consciously engaged with processes aimed at building social

responsibility and developing their sense of self. School thus became the ‘coal face’ at

which their development as individual contributors toward the collective strength of

their people took place. Self esteem was understood as one vital component of being a

constructive member of the community, learning to accept personal responsibility for

their own actions was seen as another. In addition to achieving academically where

possible, establishing a reputation at school as a caring, attentive and industrious student

was a way of building self esteem. In other words, a perception existed that it was not

only academic achievement that denoted eventual success as a person, an important fact

in a society within which young people may be prevented from completing their studies

as a result of poverty, early marriage or imprisonment. The deliberate element in the

process of growing personal capital at school became evident through the assurance

with which children were able to describe the strategies they used to achieve these ends

as premeditated and organised.

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Process One – Developing self

The perception that school is a means to establishing self esteem was expressed by a

university graduate from Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip, who stated that ‘school had a

significant role in paving my personality. It helped me in getting self respect and

confidence’ (5KhY). Similar views were found in the West Bank, where a mature age

university student from Aida camp said ‘It is something lovely to have a degree. Maybe

because you feel special, you feel not ordinary person’ (1A1). Self esteem was linked

from an early age to reputation, that is, gaining respect from others at school or in the

community. A graduate from Callandia camp explained that ‘in order to gain respect

among people in your society you have to be educated’ (12C1) and this was

corroborated by the graduate from Gaza who said ‘school is important, as being not

educated is a kind of stigma. You get more respected the more educated you are’

(5KhY). Without their benefit of hindsight, a grade six girl expressed a more pragmatic,

school centred view by saying, ‘the important thing is that the teacher will look to me as

a good student’ (7A5).

Taking personal responsibility for their own learning, both at school and at home, was

understood by the students as a vital part of their self development. Within crowded

classrooms, containing groups of anywhere between thirty and sixty students, seated on

shared fixed benches in front of a chalkboard, the students needed to have strategies in

place to enable effective learning. In many UNRWA schools seating was determined by

the teacher, often depending on the height of the students, with the shortest at the front

and the tallest at the back, leaving no opportunity for enthusiastic students to move to

the front. Therefore, concentration was the primary strategy used, as elaborated by 7A5

who said ‘I listen and hear and keep myself aware of nothing else’ or 26J5, ‘I don’t

listen to the noise of girls around me.’ Of the boys, 10A9 said ‘I stay focussed with the

teacher. Sometimes I talk with my partner, but not that much’ but ‘if my partner is lousy

and I can’t understand anything from the teacher I get away from him’, while 29J8

claimed ‘a person, if he wants to study, he wants to study. He doesn’t care (about noise

from other students)’. 28J7 used three strategies, ‘communication with the teacher,

make preparation for the lesson, and keep attention with the teacher.’ She explained that

if a student was disruptive the girls ‘try to keep her silent or if she doesn’t stay silent tell

the teacher about her.’ Asking the teacher questions was another important strategy,

however the timing of the questions asked depended on the individual teachers. 26J5

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said ‘I at the same time ask the teacher through the lesson’ while 7A5 waited until

‘when the teacher ends the class there is 10 minutes. I ask questions, then I know if I

understood or if I have to study more.’

Outside school, as well as being a strategy for academic achievement, homework was

seen as an area in which the students learned to accept responsibility for their own

performance. Significantly, the word ‘homework’ was translated as ‘duty’ by the oldest

generation of refugees, and as such it had become an established part of young people’s

responsibilities. Within large families, living in constricted spaces and in which the age

range of the children was widely spread, the task of finding a place and time for

homework appeared to be taken on by the students individually. There is no doubt that

the majority of students received encouragement to perform the task, particularly from

mothers, who recognised that ‘with homework we learn that we have things to do and

we are restricted to do these things. It makes us feel and act that we have

responsibilities.’(3A3). Assistance when needed from parents and older siblings was

also customary. Nevertheless, the student participants were clear about their personal

routines and made their own choices, preferring to be ‘independent - by yourself’

(29J8). The latter’s chosen order was ‘eating, watching TV, then studying’, exactly the

same choice as 8A6, ‘I eat, watch TV and after that I study.’ 10A9 preferred to ‘have a

rest and take my lunch. After that, I write my homework,’ leaving his relaxation

activities until his homework was finished. 28J7 left hers until later, ‘I organise

everything to study at night. Start at 6pm.’

Choices were also made by the students about the order of tasks undertaken during

homework. 26J5 chose to ‘make the hard homework first. When I finish the hard

homework, and at the end I have questions I can’t answer, finish other homework, after

that ask another person about those questions.’ 28J7 finished her set homework ‘to

make sure I understand the lesson well’ after which she made ‘preparation for the next

lesson.’ But if she had an exam she felt ‘the most important is the exam. Then I start the

others.’ When 26J5 had an exam, she planned to ‘make play time short, make rest short,

then study hard to increase marks.’ 7A5 explained ‘I have a diary. When I have

homework I get it all ready. If I have an exam, I give the exam the whole time’. 10A9

said ‘before the exam I study maybe 2 or 3 hours.’

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Process Two – Learning social skills

The importance of developing self and gaining respect from others was understood side

by side with an understanding of the importance of according respect to others. This

included the family, teachers, the peer group and the wider group of Palestinians, as

explained by 10A9, ‘everyone has his respect’. Being part of a class in the school

community was seen by students as a way of developing social skills, a way of learning

‘to be a good person, to help each other and other students, to be polite and to take the

love from other students’ (28J7).

Social learning was described by the participants as including the ability to both listen

to and learn from others, as well as having the confidence to offer information to them.

To the university students, the process they had undergone in school was appreciated

through hindsight. 1A1 explained, ‘In class there are a lot of things to learn, not to have

just information. You learn communication, how to make your personality, how to learn

to get information from other sources. There’s a lot of things in the class.’ This was

reiterated by 4D1:

Of course, it’s very important, it’s like you will be raised in a community, you

learn the value of being in a community, learn how to listen, learn how to value

what you’re listening to, you know how to exchange your ideas and how to hear

the others, and you know how to convince and they convince you. (4D1)

In talking about her final two years of schooling in the government system, 4D1 added,

‘You get to know other people and communities. Like for my example, I was in a grade

of 45 girls, 45 girls are coming from, let’s say, thirty villages and that’s different, thirty

villages.’ (4D1)

31 J10 pointed out:

If I learn alone in my house I will not experience things with my friends in class.

I know a lot of things from other people. And maybe teacher pay attention for

some point in one student, I take this and understand it. (31 J10)

5KY1 from Gaza summed up the ability to communicate as a two way process by

saying that being a member of a class ‘helped me build up a good rapport with new

people.’

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However, in contrast to the positive factors mentioned, 5KhY1 cautioned that ‘If people

don’t stay at school they become failures and this leads them to be bad people

sometimes.’ 4D1 gave an explanation of how not attending school could lead to

becoming a non functional member of society by saying:

If you are not going to school what else will you do? You get to learn nothing,

you get to know nobody, ..... you don’t become to realise who you are, what’s

your identity. You don’t know what is going on around you. It’s something you

will be missing a lot if you don’t go to school. (4D1)

Process Three – Achieving academic success

Within the school system, exams were considered intrinsically important ‘because we

revise the subjects and we have increased our knowledge’(8A6). However, a more

powerful motivation for accruing marks through performance in tests and exams

appeared to be the consequent increase in personal educational capital. The concept

‘taking good marks’ was explained by 7A5, an 11 year old girl: ‘The important thing is

that I take good marks. If you want to specialise in a good subject, you have to have a

high mark.’ Achieving good marks was thus used as a deliberate strategy to advance the

children on the path to their future: ‘Exams are important for marks, and if I get much

marks at school I will have my hope’ (10A7). In addition, they were also used by some

of the children to prove their value as students, and therefore worthwhile to keep at

school, as made clear by another 12 year old girl whose strategy for staying at school

was ‘to keep my marks at a high level’ (26J5).

Competition in attaining marks and ranking in the class was high and appeared to

contribute to the enthusiasm with which the children worked at school from an early

age. For example the youngest participant, eight year old 34J13, enjoyed an ongoing

competition for top place in the class with a peer. Marks were referred to by a 14 year

old boy as his initial reason for studying in the early grades, he believed his motivation

at that time was ‘to collect marks and grow bigger’(29J8). Additional motivation for

obtaining high marks were the certificates and prizes awarded by the UNRWA and

Government schools in assemblies, a source of pride and happiness to the students and

their families.

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Bearing in mind that within each camp society students, teachers and families are

mostly known to each other, the importance of each individual’s place as a functional

community member becomes clearer. The part school plays in socialisation was

summed up by 11 year old 7A5, who said ‘school gives us our reputation, our social

relationship with others, how to communicate with others’ (7A5). The combination of

self esteem, academic achievement and acceptance of social responsibility added up to a

powerful source of motivation and personal reward for the application of the strategies

explicated above. The layers of self, family and community are clearly outlined in the

following statement from 4D1, ‘It’s important to feel good around your friends and

achieve good things to show to your family. For myself, I would first feel good to

myself, to make myself happy, because I always get angry if I did not get good marks.

Then I make happy for my mum and my friends. Mum was a teacher; I wanted her to

feel proud of me.’

Conclusion

This chapter has presented the findings of the study through two main themes, ‘Being a

Palestinian Refugee’ and ‘Building the Future’ and the main strategy ‘Being Educated.’

It has shown that the engagement with education of Palestinian refugees and their

families is informed by cultural perspectives arising from the body of knowledge and

experience that is ‘Being Palestinian’. Engagement with education has been understood

as a series of processes and actions which Palestinian refugees undertake as a

consequence of their perception that education is essential in order to ensure the

establishment of a viable future for their families and society, within the external

limitations imposed on them as members of the group ‘Palestinian refugees’. Young

refugee children accept without question the societal norm that has put education ‘in

their blood’ and which allows them to start dealing with their engagement with

education in a positive and joyful manner. As refugee children mature, they deal with

their engagement with education in an increasingly proactive manner, perceiving it as

part of their own personal contribution towards establishing a collective future for

themselves and their society.

In the next chapter the two main themes ‘Being a Palestinian Refugee’ and ‘Building

the Future’ will be discussed in the light of literature relating to engagement with

education and cultural factors affecting resilience and coping.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS

Introduction

In this chapter a discussion of the two main themes identified in the previous chapter,

‘Being a Palestinian Refugee’ and ‘Building the Future’, will seek to contribute to

generating theory about how Palestinian refugee families living in the UNRWA camps

of the West Bank and Gaza Strip deal with their engagement with formal education at

school level.

In discussing the first emergent theme, ‘Being a Palestinian Refugee’, the manner in

which the socio-cultural composition of the group has had a direct bearing on

engagement with education will be investigated. The three main properties of the first

theme were ‘respecting the established social order’, ‘wanting to learn’ and ‘enduring

everything’ and the discussion will focus on them in the light of literature relevant to

cultural understandings of coping with difficulty and of engagement with education.

The discussion of the second theme, ‘Building the Future’, will introduce the element of

extrinsic motivation arising from students’ circumstances as refugees living in a

situation of conflict. The importance of proactivity in channelling young people’s

attitudes towards the value of education and in increasing their capacity for resilience

will become apparent.

Theme One – ‘Being a Palestinian Refugee’

The findings indicate that camp refugees see themselves as a group apart, in other words

a society within a wider society. A strong sense of cohesion between camp refugees,

even those from different economic strata within each camp, in thought and action, and

in behaviour and expectations has been highlighted in Chapter Six through the main

theme ‘Being a Palestinian Refugee.’ In addition to the psychological sense of cohesion,

camp refugee society is ethnically and culturally homogenous. The reasons for this are

not only historical but have also evolved from externally constructed factors.

Firstly, the initial groupings of refugees in particular camps originated from similar

areas in historical Palestine and came from the same class and background, namely the

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peasant farmers of the different regions (W. Khalidi, 1992). The percentages of refugees

currently living in camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip indicate that over the

intervening sixty two years many refugees have chosen to move out of the camps

altogether (PASSIA, 2010). However, the cultural predisposition for remaining in clan

and family groupings of origin has meant that movement of refugees between camps

has generally taken place only for marriage purposes. In addition, the physical

difficulties of movement between the West Bank camps and between the West Bank

and the Gaza Strip for political reasons have increasingly restricted potential exchanges.

Secondly, the ongoing suppression of Palestinian infrastructure and economic activity

(Quigley, 2005) has created unemployment and poverty which has inhibited upward and

outward movement of much of the camp population. Although the amount of

unemployment has fluctuated, dependant on the changing political situation over the

sixty two year period, since the 1990’s it has become an increasingly significant barrier

to movement as the overall poverty of the refugee population has steadily increased

(Oxfam, 2008; Wildeman, 2009).

Finally, the lack of movement into camps from the outside world has further reinforced

the homogenous nature of society. Immigration of non-indigenous people into Palestine

is extremely limited and has usually taken place only through marriage, for example

those marriages contracted by Palestinians studying in foreign countries. Over the last

twenty years, increasingly stringent restrictions on the movement of foreign workers

and visitors into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have similarly restricted immigration

from that quarter (Cook, 2009).

The homogenous ethnic and cultural composition of camp refugee society has a direct

bearing on student engagement with education. Newmann notes cultural diversity in a

student body as a negative factor, citing ‘the more cohesive, sustained support for

students’ investment in school work’ available in homogenous societies (Newmann,

1992, p. 3). West Bank and Gaza Strip refugee children are nurtured and sustained by an

ethnically homogenous group that has spanned centuries of existence in its indigenous

geographical area. As a result of this background, although they are displaced persons

and refugees living in a situation of ongoing conflict, they do not have to deal with

burdens faced by many refugee children living in foreign countries, such as adaptation

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to a new environment and culture and learning a new language (Hamilton & Moore,

2004).

Property One – ‘Respecting the social order’

The first property of the main theme ‘Being a Palestinian Refugee’ was ‘Respecting the

social order.’ The findings from this study show that in spite of having exchanged the

historical, agrarian basis of their socio-economic structure for an economically

depressed urban camp dwelling existence, camp refugees have perceived immense

value in preserving their traditional social structures throughout their sixty two years of

dispossession (Bowker, 2003; Sayigh, 1979). This has encouraged a social conservatism

(Dabbagh, 2000) which is based on a steadfast belief in the value of the traditional

mores, rules and practices of their original society as the most effective basis from

which to face the challenges of the world around them. According to the literature, this

social conservatism is a by product of their physical dislocation from past ways of life

and an attempt to preserve continuity in times of danger and uncertainty (Bowker, 2003;

Hilal, 2006; Johnson, 2006).

At the base of Palestinian social organisation is the family. Social organisation based on

family ties has been identified as ‘a way to preserve the continued identity of dispersed

communities’ (Hammami, 1993, p. 286) and according to Johnson ‘one such key value

in the Palestinian context of insecurity and risk is clearly kinship solidarity and its

contribution to individual, family and national survival’ (Johnson, 2006, p. 55).

Therefore, the fact that at the start of the 21st century, Palestinian society in general has

survived its sixty two year fracturing and continues to be family oriented, belief centred,

and morally and socially conservative, appears to be in part a consequence of the

deliberate implementation of protective measures by the collective group ‘Palestinians’

in the interests of their continued existence as a cohesive entity (Bowker, 2003; Said,

2003).

The basic mores of modern Palestinian refugee society are still founded on traditional

family and collective values, dating back the era in which the villagers lived as

subsistence farmers (Barakat, 2007). However, far from being static, Palestinian

refugee society has shown an ability to adapt where necessary. Such changes as have

evolved appear to have been adopted in order to strengthen and empower the group as a

whole. An example particularly relevant to this study is the prioritisation of education

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and the decision to become a literate and knowledgeable society as a defence against

further dispossession. An extension of that prioritisation has been the acceptance by

refugee society of the equal inclusion of girls in education, leading to gender parity in

UNRWA primary and early secondary schools by the 1960’s (UNRWA, 2010e).

Education has therefore placed women in a stronger position to contribute as fully

functional members to a group which has remained under constant threat.

Family in the context of this study has been shown to have three strata, the clan or

hamula, the wider or extended family and the nuclear family. As described in Chapter

3, the clans were led by their most senior male figures, on whose authority major

decisions were taken for all members of the clan. The influence of the clan permeated

down through its wider, extended families to the basic nuclear family. Although in the

modern context the influence of the clan has lost its economic relevance, the findings in

Chapter 6 consistently indicate the importance of all three strata of family to camp

refugees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In contemporary times, kinship has become a

major form of social security available to refugee families. A child is born as a member

of a nuclear family, but more importantly, belonging to a wider group. This is the basis

of the continuity and solidarity that allows him or her to grow and develop as an

individual within the protective mores of society. The strength of this tie to the group

endures throughout the child’s life and is kept relevant by the political, economic and

psychological conditions surrounding the child, in particular those resulting from

conflict, poverty and trauma.

It is therefore of particular note to this study that the focus on the individual, commonly

found in Western societies, is completely foreign to the underlying ethics of Palestinian

society (Barakat, 2007; Dabbagh, 2000; Taraki, 2006). Furthermore, according to the

findings of this study, it has not yet gained currency within camp society. Therefore the

acceptance by children of societal norms, such as the belief in the importance of

education, is facilitated by what Newmann refers to as ‘the power of socio-cultural

orientation’ and which he sees as one of ‘the most important factors affecting student

engagement’(Newmann, 1992, p. 17). Palestinian refugee society contains ‘stable

supportive communities and cultural continuity’, conforming the ‘irreducible needs’ of

children described by Brazelton and Greenspan’s framework (Freisan & Brennan, 2005,

p. 297). Furthermore, within the nuclear family, the conservative nature of society leads

to ‘limit setting, structure and expectations’, again mentioned as positive by Brazelton

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and Greenspan. Known and accepted rules and boundaries form the frame within which

‘close-knit and often supportive’ (Dabbagh, 2000, p. 11) families provide a nurturing

environment in which children can grow and mature.

The nature of interaction patterns between parents and children in the nuclear family

appears to have a direct bearing on children’s understanding of the importance of

education in general and to their initial attitude towards engagement with education.

Results from studies into adolescents’ coping mechanisms show the components of the

‘ideal’ family include effective and positive communication; parental support for

adolescents; freedom of expression of feelings and opinions; discussion of issues and

conflicts; cooperation and trust between parents and adolescents; and freedom for

parents to express concerns about likely consequences (Frydenberg, 1997, p. 109).

Although this description relates to the Western family, within the traditional structure

of the camp families the findings show that many of these conditions are present.

Despite the overall patriarchal and hierarchical nature of the nuclear refugee family,

interaction between the different generations generally consists of a two-way flow,

between parents and children. Parental support for children early in life forms the basis

of the social structure, leading unquestioningly to reciprocation as the children mature.

It is important to understand that this two way support is both emotional and practical,

responding with fluidity to need as family circumstances alter. On the emotional level,

the commonality of the challenges and trauma that Palestinian refugees of differing

generations face on a regular basis lessens the potential divide in understanding between

the generations. On the practical level, for example, parents would normally make

sacrifices to fund their children’s education, however, when parents are absent or

incapacitated, the children may in turn make sacrifices in order to assume a family

provider role in their place.

Observations made during this study confirmed that within the boundaries of accepted

gender differences and based on the observances of hierarchical traditions, cooperation

and trust between parents and children appeared to be high. The concept of group values

extended to all members of society and therefore children were not excluded from

participating in family discussions regardless of the level of importance or difficulty.

Again within the accepted norms, children were free to express their opinions. This was

evident in the interviews conducted during this study in which members of the family

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were present while the children were voicing their feelings and opinions. In fact, the

level to which the children were openly articulate was not affected either by the

presence of, or interjections by, peers or parents.

That effective and positive communication exists within the nuclear family was also

demonstrated through the mention of similar goals and objectives by members of the

three generational families in the study. There was no hesitation in acknowledging

indebtedness to the older members of the family for points of views or explanations of

behaviour, nor was there any evident desire or need to strive for different or original

points of view on behalf of the younger generations. In fact, one of the school age

participants, 10A7, referred in depth to the detrimental effects of apparent breakdowns

in communication within the family, which he perceived as a negative part of modern

life. The findings confirmed that consultation amongst the family; referencing the

family and making choices within the expectations of the family were the accepted

norm.

A picture thus arises of families in which expectations of both parental and child

behaviour are understood and conformed to, including traditions and rules that are

respected and in general remain unquestioned. This gives a secure and known

framework within which the children can grow and develop. The literature in general

affirms the psychological and emotional value of socio-cultural conformity and stable,

authoritative, yet supportive and nurturing, family structures (Boyden & Mann, 2005;

Frydenberg, 1997; Newmann, Wehlage, & Lambourn, 1992; Ungar, 2005) whilst

specific research on Palestinian children found that parental love and proper discipline

increased a child’s resilience by increasing their creativity and cognitive capacity

(Dabbagh, 2000; Punamaki, 1997).

Property Two – ‘Wanting to learn’

The importance of education to Palestinian refugee society has been constantly affirmed

throughout this study. The findings indicate that the reasons for this are threefold:

historical, in that a pre-1948 desire for education already existed amongst the peasant

farming class; economic, due to the shift in socio-economic status that came with

dispossession from the land; and political, as the struggle for the Right of Return under

UNGA Resolution 194 became increasingly protracted. They also indicate that over the

four generations of refugee life the belief in the value of education has become absorbed

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into the culture and currently manifests itself as an unquestionable facet of ‘Being

Palestinian.’ It has been noted that during interviews the younger participants rated

school in a place of honour as the ‘second home’ and, furthermore, had trouble

conceiving of a society in which education was not one of the most important things.

In fact, the impact of the home environment on children’s engagement with education is

accepted in the literature as vital. According to Newmann, the importance of the home

in inculcating a belief in the value of education is paramount (Newmann et al., 1992).

Lambourn et al quote the positive factor of ‘authoritative parenting’ and describe how

parents are able to nurture the belief in education ‘by emphasising it and becoming

involved in it’ (Lambourn, Mounts, & Steinberg, 1992, p. 157). The findings presented

in Chapter Six have consistently demonstrated the effort expended by refugee parents,

even those who were illiterate, on encouraging their children’s completion of homework

and successful test and exam results. Furthermore, in refugee families which often had

up to ten or more children, successfully schooled older siblings also played a major role

in the process, both as role models and supporters, where help with homework was

needed.

In addition to the status of education within the home, community belief in the value of

education is also crucial with regard to children’s attitudes. According to Newmann, if

children perceive education as validated by society and therefore something ‘deserving

their commitment’ they are more likely to engage successfully at school (Newmann et

al., 1992, p. 19). UNRWA teachers, refugees themselves, are familiar with students and

their families within the camp communities, thus further reinforcing the ‘collective

sense of vision or purpose about education’ that comes with the teachers’ ‘engagement

with school as a social unit or community’ (Louis & Smith, 1992, p. 147).

Property Three - Enduring everything

The findings in presented in Chapter Six indicate that engagement with education has

taken place within a context necessitating a high level of endurance and tolerance of

stressors and difficulties. Overall, a correspondingly high level of resilience in dealing

with challenges was demonstrated throughout the study, with participants consistently

focussing on future possibilities and achievements rather than demonstrating passive

acceptance of problems. It will be remembered that older participants were comfortable

referring directly to their privations and sufferings whereas the younger participants

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appeared to minimalise them, claiming to view them as a ‘normal’ part of life. It is

therefore of value to investigate the underlying factors affecting the levels of coping and

resilience shown by the Palestinian refugees living in camps in the West Bank and Gaza

Strip.

The literature notes that concepts of resilience and coping are often constructed from the

point of view of European and North American culture, more specifically ‘inherent in

much of the literature is a view of childhood that is informed by the context of white,

middle class family life’ (Boyden & Mann, 2005, p. 10). In addition, Western culture

and its literature tend to be ‘predominantly centred on the individual’ (Dabbagh, 2000,

p. 12). However, the culture within which camp refugee children in this study have

been raised is group oriented and family centred, and as has been stated, is indigenous

to their historical background as Eastern Mediterranean Arab village dwellers of the

peasant class. In generating substantive theory on how camp refugees in the West Bank

and Gaza Strip deal with engagement with education in the context of the conflict and

trauma experienced by the families in their everyday lives, it is very important that this

divergence in cultural approach should be recognised. In commenting on the group

based approach it is relevant that Giacaman notes that young people in the West Bank:

comprehend and rationalise their experiences and their own vulnerability in

terms of the experiences of others who are worse off than they are. This relative

measure may be posited as one way of coping unconsciously employed by

young people to help them accept realities and manage their lives in trying

times. (Giacaman et al., 2004, p. xii)

In a study in which the perspectives of the participants are central, the fact that there are

cultural differences in the interpretation of trauma, and in ways of coping (Anderson,

Hamilton, Moore, Loewen, & Frater-Mathieson, 2002, p. 2) must be taken into account

when looking at the participants’ ability to ‘endure everything’. Resick asserts that

changes in expectations in the industrialised world over the last two centuries have

culminated in a lack of expectation that ‘sudden and catastrophic events can or will

happen’, leaving people open to high levels of stress and trauma when catastrophes do

occur (Resick, 2001, p. 29). As evident from the historical background of the camp

refugees, disastrous and sometimes catastrophic events have formed an integral part of

their lives and the lives of their ancestors over a considerable period of time, both before

and after 1948. According to Hoshmand, ‘pretrauma levels of normalcy cannot be

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assumed for groups that have experienced historical trauma, oppression and culture

loss’ (Hoshmand, 2007, p. 31) and therefore the relative value of ‘normal’ or ‘aadi as

understood by the young participants in this study should be considered when making

assessments of their capacity for coping in situations of stress and conflict.

The levels of trauma experienced by participants in the study are high. In the West Bank

during the second Intifada, Dabbagh referred to ‘the enormity of suffering endured......It

seemed every household had stories to tell about house raids, imprisonments, beatings,

torture and dispossession’ (Dabbagh, 2000, p. 11).

Psycho-social research in Gaza divided trauma for children ages six to sixteen into three

domains as follows:

The first domain covers witnessing acts of violence such as the killing of

relatives, home demolition, bombardment, and injury of others. The second

domain covers hearing experiences such as hearing of the killing or injury of

friends or relatives. The third domain covers personal traumatic events such

being shot, injured, or beaten. (A. Thabet et al., 2008, p. 6)

According to Folkman, cognition, coping and social support is a dynamic process

(Resick, 2001) In other words, there is an interaction between the way individuals

perceive traumatic events and deal with their stress level and the way their community

sees them. Coping thus has a large cultural component. As stated above, Palestinian

refugee society nurtures its children within a strong community tradition which provides

a cohesive support framework, not just during periods of heightened conflict or danger,

but at all times.

In fact, children are active participants in refugee society from an early age and the

contribution of a high degree of responsible action is expected from and accepted by

them. Observations made during the study confirm that within families sibling support

in caring for babies and younger children is undertaken by both genders. Girls usually

take part in home duties, while boys often accompany their fathers and uncles in

outdoor activities such as looking after shops, or street selling. There is also a high

degree of openness within the family, with very little exclusion of children from

discussion of major events affecting the group. This is complemented by an acceptance

of children’s right to articulate self expression, both verbally and by physical response

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to their situation, the latter which often manifests through taking part in political events

and carrying out acts of resistance, despite dangers involved.

This picture corresponds in many ways to Frydenberg’s ‘functional family climate’

which she associates with ‘functional styles of coping’ (Frydenberg, 1997, p. 101).

According to Resick, ongoing community support and acceptance of children and

young people’s coping styles during less traumatic times is important in that it helps to

develop and strengthen the methods of coping which they utilise during times of

heightened conflict and trauma (Resick, 2001, p. 118). Hoshmand asserts that the

‘psychological sense of community, neighbourhood cohesion and community

competence’ form a social capital (Hoshmand, 2007, p. 37). Specifically referring to

Palestinian children, Dabbagh refers to the importance of ‘the strength of the family;

religion and community’ (Dabbagh, 2000, p. 81) whilst Punamaki highlights the

importance to resilience of ‘children feeling loved and nonrejected at home’ (Punamaki

et al., 2001).

Theme Two – ‘Building the future’

The second theme outlined in Chapter Six was ‘Building the Future.’ The idea of

‘building’ the future infers that the future cannot be taken for granted, rather that it must

be constructed and worked towards, thus encapsulating a proactive stance within the

theme. The three properties of ‘Building the future’ set out the manner in which the

building enterprise could be undertaken, that is by producing widely knowledgeable,

socially responsible and vocationally qualified generations of Palestinians. Formal

schooling was the forum through which the children interviewed believed they were

undertaking the task of ‘taking life’s steps’ (7A5) towards ‘becoming a generation

educated’ (26J5).

As has been discussed above, Palestinian refugee children are culturally positioned from

early childhood to accept formal schooling as a natural, unquestionable part of their

lives, indicating that their initial motivation is intrinsic. However, the findings

demonstrated an increasing understanding of the link between education and securing a

future for the group ‘Palestinian refugees’. In other words, by midway through primary

schooling, the responses of the participants began to indicate an awareness of extrinsic

reasons for the importance of education.

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At this point it is useful to look at the position of children within Palestinian refugee

society. From an international perspective it is important to recall that camp dwelling

Palestinian refugees are the human face of the ‘inalienable right to return under UNGA

Resolution 194’ (Badil Resource Centre, 2007a). As such, refugee children are

inextricably interwoven into the ‘final status issues’, which have impacted and continue

to impact on all of the various efforts to resolve the Middle East conflict (CMEP, 1999;

UN Security Council, 2010). Children and young people under 29 form a substantial

percentage of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip

(Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2007). However, the importance of children

does not merely correspond to the size of their demographic, as in Palestinian society in

general children are valued, not only as symbols of the future, but as the actual

embodiment of the future: ‘They are, symbolically and materially, the reservoir of hope

for Palestinian society, a locus for its aspirations for freedom and independence’

(DCIPS, 2007 p.13). Within the conflict itself, it appears that this point has not been

lost on either side, thus rendering children as vulnerable as their parents and families to

military interventions, whilst correspondingly according them a direct role as players in

the struggle.

The findings reported in this study indicate that from an early age the majority of

children interviewed felt a need to help or assist their families and society. The

children’s understanding that their society exists under special conditions is absorbed

from several directions, each of which serves to corroborate the other, rendering it

unsurprising that children are able to come to such a conclusion at a young age. Firstly,

the conditions that children confront on a daily basis in both the West Bank and the

Gaza Strip are well recorded and corroborated by Palestinian, Israeli and International

Human Rights and advocacy organisations such as Al Haq, Al Badil, B’tselem, Save the

Children, and DCI/PS. Secondly, the children are members of a society in which open

discussion within the family groupings is a norm, thus positioning them to fully

understand the impact of the events they witness on members of both their nuclear and

extended families. Thirdly, refugee children attend schools run under the aegis of the

United Nations. Whilst UN regulations through UNESCO disallow any inciteful

materials in the curriculum, the children’s understanding of Human Rights and the

Rights of the Child is heightened through extra-curricular activities and high status

events, such as the 2008 visit of UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon to Aida Camp

Basic Girls School in Bethlehem. Finally, West Bank and Gaza Strip refugee camps in

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general are the frequent recipients of national and internationally funded and staffed

non-governmental organisation programmes, whose work with families and children

broadens the children’s understanding of their rights and of the issues which dominate

their lives.

It thus appears that the position of Palestinian refugee children within their society,

together with their unfolding understanding of the place of that society in the ongoing

regional conflict, provides the basis of the additional extrinsic reasons propelling the

children toward seeing education in a highly positive light. The desire to be in a position

to support one’s own family and then to be able to help one’s wider society, as

articulated by the young participants in this study, acts as a powerful inducement

towards meaningful engagement with education. The descriptions given by the

participants of their involvement with education are evidence of the ‘psychological

investment in learning’ which Newmann links to true engagement, as compared to mere

motivation (Newmann et al., 1992, p. 12). The existence of personally developed

strategies used by the participants in order to ensure the best possible chances of success

at school are further evidence of their investment in the learning process, demonstrating

‘an inner quality of concentration and effort to learn’ (Newmann et al., 1992, p. 13).

However, despite the powerful combination of intrinsic factors and extrinsic reasons

which lie behind Palestinian camp refugee students’ successful engagement with

education, it should be borne in mind that their engagement occurs in the midst of a

situation of conflict, stress and often trauma. Therefore, the link between the proactive

element in the students’ outlook and their resilience in engaging with education should

be considered. In the introduction to the Mind Matters curriculum package booklet

Enhancing Resilience, The Australian Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged

Care defines resilience, as ‘the capacity to cope with change and challenge and to

bounce back during difficult times’ (Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged

Care, 2000, p. 9). The following are amongst the factors identified as enhancing

resilience: ‘the use of optimism and positive habits of thought; the promotion of feelings

of mastery and control; positivity – feeling good about self and culture’

(Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care, 2000, p. 15).

Studies conducted in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have indicated that positive

thinking, optimism and consideration of group needs have been major factors impacting

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on resilience. Specifically related to Palestinian children during times of intensified

trauma, a study from the Birzeit Institute of Community and Public Health found that

even after the ‘devastating effects’ of the Second Intifada in the West Bank young

people continued to show ‘psychological fortitude’, that is to have and express

aspirations and dreams, no matter how bad the situation (Giacaman et al., 2004, p. 76).

In a study on resilience conducted in the Gaza Strip in 2008, the success indicators were

similarly connected to positivity and social values (A. Thabet et al., 2008). Related

more directly to proactivity, a study conducted between 1993 and 1996 in Gaza found

that post traumatic stress disorder was higher in children who responded passively to

high level of violence (Punamaki et al., 2001). Hart found that giving young people the

chance ‘to make a valuable contribution, for the benefit of themselves and their

communities’ was a positive indicator in stopping ‘despair and social breakdown’ (Hart,

2002, p. 5). In studies of high school students conducted during and after the First

Intifada in the Gaza Strip, Barber attributed their resilience to the power of cultural

norms and values, the psychological meaning that the conflict had for the child

participants and their level of ideological commitment to the underlying cause (Barber

in Dabbagh, 2000, p. 82).

Conclusion

This chapter has discussed the two main themes constituting the findings of this study,

‘Being a Palestinian Refugee’ and ‘Building the Future’. The discussion of the first

theme looked at the homogenous composition of West Bank and Gaza Strip camp

refugee society; its conservative nature, adhering to long established, traditional social

values; and the importance of all generations of the family within society, factors which

according to relevant literature are directly related to the refugees successful

engagement with education.

The importance of a proactive approach to education and to life in general underlay the

discussion of the second theme. The high degree of resilience shown by young refugees

in engaging with education under conditions of consistent adversity resulting from

occupation and conflict appears to be related to their desire to assist their families and

society with the long term goal of ensuring the continuance of their people and the

development of their nation.

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The final chapter presents a summary of the study reported in this thesis, including the

conclusions arising from the discussion of the findings. It will point out some

limitations of the study and discuss implications arising from the research findings for

theory, policy and practice.

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CHAPTER 8

CONCLUSION and IMPLICATIONS

Introduction

This chapter will firstly summarise the aims, context and findings of the study. It will

then consolidate the conclusions drawn from the discussion of findings with regard to

the engagement with education of Palestinian refugees living in camps in the West Bank

and the Gaza Strip. Finally, it will draw implications for both theory and practice from

the conclusions, and suggest areas for future research.

Education is universally acknowledged as a fundamental component of any enlightened

society. Evidence of this can be found in two of the eight United Nations Millennium

goals, designed to reduce world poverty. Millennium Goals Two and Three seek to

empower underprivileged communities through assisting them to achieve universal

primary education and to eliminate gender inequality in education, respectively (United

Nations, 2010). With direct relevance to this study, the literary scholar Edward Said

summarised one facet of the Palestinian attitude to education in his assertion that culture

is ‘a way of fighting against extinction and obliteration.’ In writing of the ‘arsenal of

cultural resistance’, he referred to ‘the power to analyse… the questioning of authority

… the search for alternatives’ (Said, 2003, p. 160). The higher order thinking skills of

analysis, evaluation and synthesis, components of Said’s arsenal, are attributes of

educated and informed people, who are therefore better positioned to build and sustain

their collective identity under circumstances of adversity. At a more prosaic level, most

Palestinians see education as ‘an investment in the future and a path to better life’

(DCI/PS, 2001, p. 77), in other words as a way of building human and economic capital.

Whichever motivation for education is perceived as the most immediate, a lack of

engagement with education, ‘a construct used to describe an inner quality of

concentration and effort to learn’ (Newmann et al., 1992, p. 13), severely limits the

effectiveness of the learning process. With that proviso in mind, the aim of this research

was to contribute to theory relating to engagement with education through the central

research question ‘How do Palestinian refugee families living in the United Nations

(UNRWA) refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip deal with their engagement

with formal education at primary and secondary level?’

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Summary of the study

Within the education process as a whole, engagement is one of the most elusive features

of student behaviour to pin down and encourage. Yet according to Newmann, writing

about American High Schools in the late 20th century, disengagement formed ‘the most

immediate and persisting issue’ relating to student disenfranchisement from schooling

(Newmann, 1992, p. 2). The issue remains current, as demonstrated in the opening

statement of the Australasian Survey of Student Engagement 2010 website, which states

that ‘student engagement is linked with high-quality learning outcomes’, again

acknowledging its importance, this time in the field of higher education (AUSSE,

2010).

Research into a population which has demonstrated successful engagement with

education was therefore considered of potential value to the theoretical field of enquiry

and this study sought to develop substantive theory related to the engagement with

education of Palestinian refugees living in UNRWA camps in the West Bank and Gaza

Strip. The appropriateness of this particular group to the research lay in the fact that

despite being at the centre of a long running conflict, the Palestinian population living in

the Occupied Territories and East Jerusalem as a whole showed a literacy rate of 93.5%

in 2006 and furthermore had satisfied two of the United Nations Millennium

Development Goals by achieving and maintaining universal basic education and gender

equality in education (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2007).

The central research question ‘How do Palestinian refugee families living in the United

Nations (UNRWA) refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip deal with their

engagement with formal education at primary and secondary level?’ was approached

through the theoretical framework of symbolic interactionism. This choice allowed

opportunities for uncovering the socio-cultural meanings which underpinned the

perspectives and actions of the refugees with regard to their dealings with education.

Field work took place during a period of four years, from 2007 to 2010. The participants

in the study were selected with the intention of securing a range of perspectives from

both geographical and generational points of view. Refugees aged from seventy five

down to eight years old, resident in ten camps across the West Bank and in the Gaza

Strip took part in semi structured interviews which formed part of the data analysed

through grounded theory methods. Data collected from the interviews during 2007 and

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2008 were supported by data from non participant observation and document analysis

which took place across the four year period.

The study was contextualised by investigating two distinct, yet equally important, areas

which have contributed to the psycho-social makeup of contemporary Palestinian camp

refugees in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and which, therefore, shed light on the

refugees’ motivations and resilience where education in general is concerned. Firstly,

the long history of education in the wider Middle East region including Palestine, dating

back to Islamic, Christian and Ottoman eras, is interwoven into the cultural heritage of

the region. Despite the fact that education was limited to the elite, urban classes over

most of the history considered in this section of the study, it formed the basis for both

religious and governmental structures and therefore was of consequence in the lives of

all populations in the region. The availability or corresponding withholding of schooling

and education set patterns of motivation which persisted down to the middle of the 20th

century, at which time the Palestinian refugees were created. Secondly, an

understanding of the historical background of Palestinian village farmers was

considered important for providing insights into the contemporary culture of their

descendants, the post 1948 refugee group included in this study. Traditions and social

structures which have been retained and adapted have formed the bedrock of the

perspectives and actions of young people and their families in the camps. Cultural

understandings and traditional responses to difficulty, stress and trauma have been

interwoven into the reactions which camp refugees show to the challenges and

vicissitudes within which they undertake their education, thus directly affecting their

levels of engagement.

The literature featured and reviewed in the study was selected to elaborate on the

perspectives of Palestinians related to their own culture, history and lives. In presenting

the Palestinian narrative of the events of the past one hundred years, a clearer

understanding was sought of the cultural beliefs and psychological orientations that

have contributed to the actions and processes undertaken by contemporary camp

dwellers, particularly those, including the participants of this study, still living in their

indigenous geographic area. Literature generated by the United Nations, the

International Red Cross and other non-governmental organisations directly involved in

the lives of Palestinian refugees was also considered helpful in this regard.

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Review of main findings

The findings from Chapter Six were discussed in Chapter Seven under two main themes

that had been generated from the analysis of the data, ‘Being Palestinian’ and ‘Building

the Future’, and the main strategy ‘Being Educated’. They indicated that education has

become an inextricable part of ‘Being Palestinian’ and ‘Building the Future’, the

ultimate goal of which is to be a socially functional, morally strong and well educated

community, in preparation for the time when a just resolution is made to their refugee

status. As discussed in Chapter Three, conflicts have been ongoing in the refugees’

indigenous land since the demise of the Ottoman Empire, in the early twentieth century

and therefore, the refugees’ perspectives and strategies regarding conflict are deeply

ingrained into their cultural being and philosophy.

‘Being Palestinian’

The West Bank and Gaza Strip refugees in this study live in UNRWA camps sited

within their indigenous geographic area of origin. They have been effectively sealed in

by the political situation, thus preserving in the main the racial and cultural

homogeneity of their original society. The majority of camp refugees are the

descendants of peasant farmers who, as refugees from clusters of pre 1948 villages,

tended to collect in specific camps. None of the camps are geographically very distant

from the villages of origin and some camps are actually within sight of the refugees’

ancestral lands, constantly reinforcing their connection to the past. Contemporary

refugee society reflects the social conservatism of its past, maintaining traditions of long

established rules with clearly delineated boundaries. These are, in the main,

unchallenged except where adaptation has been considered necessary for protective

reasons, as with the adoption of education as a strategy of nation building and cultural

preservation. In the frequent absence of stable governmental social infrastructure, the

extended family has preserved its importance as a social security net, protecting those in

extreme need as a result of the ongoing conflict and reflecting and strengthening the

group orientation of society.

‘Building the Future’

However, in spite of the deliberate decision to uphold traditional values as part of the

struggle for continued national existence, the conservatism of refugee society has not

contributed to an inward looking or backward society. Knowledge of the region and

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wider world is considered vital to survival and is accessed in several ways. Free

provision of education by the United Nations allows all refugee children to participate

in schooling until the ninth grade. In addition, the high level of literacy amongst

refugees ensures that communications technology, which is widely available and

particularly necessary in the Occupied Territories because of movement restrictions, is

constantly utilised. Finally, the fact that Palestinian refugees are the world’s largest

single group of refugees, spread worldwide, ensures a steady flow of information into

the camps from relatives overseas. Therefore, despite its conservatism, Palestinian

society is both outward and forward looking.

‘Being Educated’

As a result of the above factors, refugee children are supported in their engagement with

education through being part of a group oriented, socially conservative, ethnically and

culturally homogenous society which sees education as essential to its continued

existence. In the early years of schooling, young children demonstrate an intrinsic belief

in the importance of education, absorbed through the beliefs and values prevalent in

their home environment. Older children are additionally extrinsically motivated to

continue their engagement with education through their unfolding understanding of the

Palestinian ‘case’. They are sustained in their engagement by the steadfastness and

resilience which results from their belief in the existence of a future containing an

eventual just resolution to the case and by their desire to be a functional part of that

future. In addition, the engagement with education of Palestinian refugee children is

characterised by the personal investment many children make through their choice of

strategies, both at school and at home, calculated to result in the highest possible

success rate in formal schooling.

Resilience

As identified above, ‘Being Educated’ is seen as vital in preparing for successful self

determination once the conflict has been resolved, thereby playing a central role in

aspiring to the future. Sumud or steadfastness, cherished as a national characteristic by

Palestinians, combines elements of patience and resilience. One facet of sumud, relevant

to this study, is the ability to preserve the ideological and physical structure of ‘normal’

life by continuing to live it, whatever challenges are met with. In the face of ongoing

stress and trauma arising from military conflict and occupation, an extremely high

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resilience is demonstrated by Palestinian refugee adults and children in maintaining

their socio-cultural beliefs and values, including the belief in the value of education.

The extent of their resilience can be in part explained by cultural orientation and

expectations of ‘normal’, which differ from contemporary Western standards. However,

it is clear that the absolute belief in the justice of the Palestinian refugee ‘case’, as

supported by the United Nations and International Humanitarian Law, plays a major

part in the refugees’ ability to cope, survive and thrive under increasingly difficult

conditions.

Young participants in this study did not focus on the perpetrators of their difficulties

and challenges. They acknowledged that difficulties, stressors and trauma existed in

their lives, but there was little sense of a negative antagonist driving their actions.

Instead, there was a strong sense of motivation through the desire to assist their own, the

society of which they form a part. This fundamentally positive orientation which lay

behind their perspectives and actions appeared to allow young people a psychological

freedom to be immensely constructive where education was concerned. Instead of

blaming others for their problems, they sought ways to adapt and circumvent problems

encountered in order to preserve the forward momentum in their overall plan to become

educated. Thus the emergent themes in the study contained clear elements of some of

the main features of sumud, which may be characterised as ‘preserving’ and

‘persevering’.

In sum, the findings indicate that Palestinian refugee families living in refugee camps in

the West Bank and Gaza Strip deal with their engagement with formal education at

primary and secondary level through the power of positively fuelled aspirations. As

individual parts of a caring and nurturing collective society, their belief in the value of

the end result of their engagement with education as beneficial to both themselves and

their society sustains them through hardship, conflict and trauma.

Limitations of the study

Although this study was conducted over a period of four years during which non

participant observation occurred within refugee camps, in the homes of refugees, at

camp cultural centres and in the main cities of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the size of

the actual participant sample and the number of camps covered were a small percentage

of the available whole. Nevertheless, the similar threads in perceptions and processes

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revealed during the course of field work by participants of different ages living in

different geographical locations indicate that the limitation of sample size may not have

compromised the inferences which emerged from the data.

The use of interpreters for approximately a third of the interviews was mitigated by the

fact that each interpreter was firstly a participant in his or her own right, thereby being

familiar with the overall intention of the interviews and secondly a refugee from that

particular camp. Similarities in local English usage across the camps assisted in

extracting clear nuances from the translated Arabic. For example, ‘reputation’, which

was a matter of importance to the school children interviewed, was consistently

translated as ‘fame’. Once the ‘key’ was found to the local usage, a truer understanding

of the participants’ intended meanings was available. Unfortunately however, a far

greater limitation was the researcher’s lack of ability to understand either informal

conversations in public places or the ubiquitous ephemeral graffiti which form a main

avenue of Palestinian expression, both of which would have contributed further to the

appreciation of cultural meanings.

In terms of subject matter, early on in the field work two limitations were decided on

which helped to maintain the focus on perspectives and actions relating specifically to

engagement with education. Firstly, this study did not elicit information about activism.

Therefore, despite evidence during the field work of young refugees’ involvement in

protests and demonstrations and the relevance of previous studies focussing on the

positive effects of activism on young people’s resilience and coping strategies,

questions relating to that particular avenue of supporting their communities were not

included during second round interviews or sought during purposive sampling.

Secondly, this study has not included specific discussion of Islam and its impact on the

psychology and resilience of the refugee families and children. Instead, religion has

been interpreted as a component of the total cultural heritage which has contributed to

the particular characteristics emerging through the data, such as positivity, proactivity

and constancy of beliefs and values.

Two main features of the Palestine refugee issue limit the generalizability of the

findings of this study to other refugee populations. Still unresolved after sixty two

years, the Palestinian refugee case is the longest running one of current times (Badil

Resource Centre, 2006b). Despite this longevity, the well preserved memory of the

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Nakba or the catastrophe of dispossession, has kept the urgency of the issue alive

(Chatty, 2002). The long background of struggle has clarified and focussed the issues,

based on the Palestinians’ belief in the rightness of their case and the justice of their

point of view. This clarity of focus has strengthened the refugees’ resilience and ability

to function under adverse conditions (Barber, 2008). Another unusual feature of the

Palestinian case is that the West Bank and Gaza Strip refugees still live in their

indigenous land, speaking their native language and surrounded by their traditional

culture. Much of the strength and positivity they bring to their dealings with life arises

from this and therefore refugees who have migrated to different countries and who have

to deal with the problems of acculturation would not have access to similar sources of

resilience.

Implications of Research Findings

Implications of research findings for theoretical literature

A substantial volume of theoretical literature dealing with the response of children and

young people to trauma is available. Much of this literature outlines the importance of

taking into account the effect of cultural background on resilience factors and coping

strategies (Barber, 2008; Boyden & Mann, 2005; Hart, 2002; Resick, 2001). The

variation in the effect of risk factors is also understood to be contingent on pre-trauma

conditions, the length and extent of trauma and support factors post trauma (Resick,

2001). Research on individual factors such as the psychological disposition of the child,

his or her relative position within the family and predisposition to accepting available

support mechanisms has also been carried out, both generally and with reference to

Palestinian children (Giacaman, 2004; A. Thabet et al., 2008; Waldfogel, 2004).

However, much of the available research centres on theory relating to the actual and

potential negative impacts of stress and trauma on families and children without taking

into account the children’s ‘active contributions to their well-being, coping, and very

survival’ (Boyden & Mann, 2005, p. 20).

In his studies carried out during and after the First Palestinian Intifada of 1987 – 1993,

Barber identified that young people’s ability to ‘contribute to and sacrifice for the

struggle was an essential element of their identity’ (Barber, 2008, p. 302). The

generation of young people in Barber’s studies are now the parents of children who

have grown up during the even more violent Second Intifada and the subsequent spikes

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of increased violence in the conflict. In the case of Palestinian camp refugee children,

through the theoretical concept of positively fuelled aspirations, this study has identified

the value of communally held dreams and goals to young peoples’ psychology of

coping and surviving. It appears therefore that there is a place for development of

theory specifically relating to the relationship between the maintenance of community

positivity and optimism and the psychology of children brought up under ongoing

extreme conditions of conflict.

Implications of research findings for practice

Palestinian children refer to many things as ’aadi (normal) when explaining or

justifying their actions and opinions. ‘Normal’, in the context used by the children,

conveys a sense of unremarkable, expected, and every day. However, history shows

that in reality, within the West Bank and the Gaza Strip the divergence of ‘normal’ from

that which is considered acceptable under International Humanitarian Law and by UN

Human Rights Charters has steadily grown over the last sixty two years. Nevertheless,

the Palestinian refugees’ resilience and optimism has allowed their definition of

‘normal’ to adjust in inverse ratio to the abnormality of the actual situation on the

ground. In other words, the acceptance of the abnormal as normal has been consistently

accomplished over time, with minimal disruption to societal culture and values.

However, it is possible that the continued and escalating pressure of the conflict may yet

put the concept of ‘normal’ outside the reach of Palestinian children. Such an erosion of

young people’s belief in the existence of ‘normal’, currently one of their main resilience

mechanisms, is likely to have serious psycho-social consequences, including

disengagement from education, characterised by Newmann as ‘detachment, isolation,

fragmentation, disconnectedness, estrangement or powerlessness’ (Newmann, 1992, p.

16). It is evident that all of the above quoted characteristics would be highly undesirable

in a population containing a large percentage of youth.

The problems arising from the conflict which are affecting the status of ‘normal’ are

recognisable on several levels, from physical to psychological and economic. On the

physical level, the ground area of refugee camps, determined at their inception, has

meant that natural growth has resulted in extremely cramped conditions generally,

including lack of space in UNRWA schools, leading to over large classes and double or

triple shift schools (UNRWA, 2010a; UNRWA/UNESCO, 1998, 2002, 2006). In

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addition to the increasingly cramped conditions within camps, outside the camps in both

the West Bank and Gaza Strip the natural growth in population, combined with

shrinking borders and militarily imposed building regulations, leaves little possibility

for expansion (ICRC, 2010; UNICEF, 2010). In all areas of the Occupied Territories,

the military conflict has affected the availability of school buildings, either through

closure, appropriation for use as military facilities or destruction (Oxfam, 2008;

UNRWA, 2010c, 2010e). Overcrowding is one factor leading to increasing problems in

classroom behaviour, which must directly affect students’ ability to concentrate and

engage effectively (Wildeman, 2009).

Recent studies have associated reduced performance at school with the effects of

trauma, highlighting reduced concentration, attention and participation in class activities

(El Majdalawy, Thabet, & Vostanis, 2009). Another factor affecting classroom

behaviour, which has been observed by social workers and community centres, is an

increase in violence within the school, family and community (Chatty & Lewando

Hundt, 2005; Halstead & Affouneh, 2006). Attributed to the overall increased violence

of the conflict, the upsurge of domestic and community violence (Giacaman, Rabaia, &

Nguyen-Gillham, 2010; Haynes, 2010) is adversely affecting learning environments

both at school and in the home (Save the Children, 2004). In particular boys have

become less manageable, displaying hyperactive behaviour in classrooms, with poorer

performance in their schoolwork (Ging, 2007; A Thabet, Abu Tawahina, & Vostanis,

2009).

The economic downturn and increased poverty levels affect all parts of the refugee

community, including parents, teachers and students. At the simplest level, families

cannot afford to keep their children in school and require them to leave to contribute as

wage earners or to get married (Ma'an News Agency, 2010). Teachers who earn less

whilst battling increasingly difficult conditions, both within the school and outside,

become demoralised, which negatively affects their own engagement with the education

process (Louis & Smith, 1992). Decreasing health amongst the poorer refugees also

impacts on education, as unhealthy and undernourished children are less able to

concentrate and more likely to fail, thus affecting their overall motivation to learn

(UNICEF, 2010; UNRWA, 2010b).

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Results of the worsening situation have already been documented by the Palestinian

Central Bureau of Statistics. A recent report highlighted the falling number of young

people enrolled in school, higher dropout rates and increased poverty (PCBS in Ma'an

News Agency, 2010). Regardless of the fact that Palestinian refugee children are

historically and culturally well positioned to deal with high stress levels and to

constantly adapt to the worsening situation, a point must come at which the level of

trauma exceeds their coping capacities. The shifting baseline of ‘normal’ cannot keep

shifting without grave consequences for children and young people, both generally and

with regard to their engagement with education.

This study has theorised that Palestinian refugees deal with their engagement with

education through prioritising positively fuelled aspirations within the nurturing of a

close and supportive socio-cultural group. The success of that engagement is

demonstrated by the high adult literacy of the general population and the strong levels

of achievement demonstrated in formal education (Palestinian Central Bureau of

Statistics, 2007; World Bank Middle East and North Africa Development Group, 2006).

The importance of maintaining the currently high level of involvement with education

in the young Palestinian refugee population is critical to both the Palestinian people and

to the region in general. The existence of a large, undereducated and radicalised

youthful population would see a drop in the essential quality of Palestinian life, in

addition to being a backward step for regional security. Therefore the current favourable

cultural and social conditions which foster engagement with education should be

protected at all costs, whilst the highly negative amounts of stress and trauma resulting

from the conflict should be removed.

In terms of both policy and practice, it is recommended that action should be taken at

the earliest opportunity by all concerned parties, national and international, to alleviate

the situation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Lessening the negative social and

psychological effects of the conflict to allow a more realistic level of ‘normal’ to exist

in the children’s lives would be the barest minimum needed to preserve the current level

of engagement with education. A resolution of the conflict, including a settlement of the

future of the refugees and the removal of military conflict from the children lives

altogether, would be the optimum solution.

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Recommendations for future research

This study has identified that young Palestinian refugees are partially sustained in their

engagement with education by their understanding of the history and circumstances that

have created the environment within which they grow up. A high prioritisation on the

value of learning, together with a cultural propensity for actively seeking information

from all available quarters, ensures that their knowledge is not limited by the physical

boundaries imposed on them. However, schools have tended to be ‘a hub and lever of

conflict’ (Barber, 2008 p.297) and as far back as the British Mandate of 1922 – 1948

have been the subject of restrictions and military encroachment, whilst the learning

process has been disrupted for both teachers and students by threats, movement

restrictions, incursions, imprisonment and death. It is reasonable, therefore, to describe

the act of going to school in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as politicised and by

extension, the students who take part in the learning process with such determination as

similarly politicised (Badil Resource Centre, 2006a; DCI/PS, 2001; Rigby, 1995; Save

the Children, 2004; Shaloub-Kervorkian, 2007).

It will be remembered that the focus of this study was limited to the perceptions,

processes and strategies underlying the way in which Palestinian refugee families dealt

with their engagement with education, and that the additional effects of politicisation

and activism on the students’ ability to successfully engage were not fully investigated.

However, as the conflict continues to lengthen and broaden, now including the internal

divisions between Palestinian political parties, it may become useful to investigate the

potential effects of changes in the balance of young peoples’ psychology on their levels

of engagement with education. Currently, young people are part of the continuum

which connects their history with the driving motivation of belief in a just future for

Palestine. There is, however, a possibility that this positive motivational factor may

become diluted and weakened by both the internal Palestinian political struggle and the

external conflict with Israel.

In the course of this study, all of the young participants described their motivations as

centred on their own society and its wellbeing, rather than as responding to the actions

of a perceived antagonist. This focus indicates that while young Palestinians may

already be politicised, they are not as yet radicalised. The point at which the most

powerful symbol in children’s minds ceases to be the positive image of an attainable

homeland and is replaced by the negative image of a military oppressor may become the

132

turning point at which they lose the steadfast optimism currently inherent in their

outlook on life. Children and young people would then move from being merely

politicised towards the far less psychologically healthy and more dangerous state of

radicalisation.

Therefore, future research into potential changes in perspectives impelling young

Palestinian refugees either towards education, or away from it, would form a useful part

of any enquiry into the ongoing effects of the conflict within which they live on their

desire and ability to learn. Two areas of relevance to such research would be those not

included in this study, that is, the impact on education of the political activism that

young people are in engaged in and secondly, the part played by religion in their desire

to learn. Given the importance of successful engagement with education both generally

and to the Palestinian population in particular, such research would add to theoretical

knowledge and have implications for future policy and practice.

Conclusion

This chapter has presented a clarification of the intentions of the study and the

methodology through which it was undertaken. In summarising and discussing the

findings, theory has been suggested regarding how Palestinian refugees living in camps

in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip deal with their engagement with formal education

at primary and secondary school level. The importance to engagement with education of

positively fuelled aspirations, in other words, aspirations arising from positive rather

than negative perspectives as well as values has been highlighted. Information presented

in the chapter has also confirmed the immense value to young people of stable

communities and families regarding their development of resilience and coping

strategies, which are then able to be applied to their schooling in both ‘normal’ and

extreme circumstances.

Implications arising from the findings of the study have suggested that further research

is warranted into the balance of positively-fuelled, group inspired motivation with the

effects of continued stress and trauma arising from armed conflict. The possibility of a

psychological switch from being a value based and educated group to an educationally

disenfranchised and radicalised group has been mooted as an undesirable, yet

foreseeable, consequence of continued oppression and escalated conflict in the

Palestinian Territories. However, despite their adverse circumstances, the current reality

133

in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip shows that, for the time being, Palestinian refugees

continue to be a remarkably optimistic, positive and forward looking group, who

maintain an absolute belief in the value of education. For most Palestinian refugee

children, engagement with education is one of the happiest and most productive facets

of their young lives.

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APPENDIX A

Aide-Memoire for Interviews

Intentions

What are the intentions of Palestinian refugee families living in the West Bank and the Gaza

Strip with regard to engaging with formal education?

What reasons do they have for these intentions?

What do you think about school education?

What do you think about primary school education?

What do you think about secondary school education?

Why do you think that?

School Attendance

Is it important to go to school?

Is it important to be in a school class?

Why do you think that?

Learning in classrooms

What do you think is important about class work?

What do you think about teachers?

What kind of behaviour do you think is right for classrooms?

Why do you think that?

Completing homework

What do you think about homework?

Is it important to do homework?

Why do you think that?

Undertaking exams

What do you think about school exams?

Is it important to have school exams?

Is it important to do well in school exams?

Why do you think that?

Staying at school

Is it important to stay at school?

Why do you think that?

What do you think would happen if you did not stay at school?

Why do you think that?

Graduating from school

What do you think about graduating from primary school?

What do you think about graduating from secondary school?

Is it important to graduate?

Why do you think that?

147

Strategies

What strategies do Palestinian refugee families living in the West Bank and the Gaza

Strip use to achieve these intentions?

Why do they use these strategies?

School Attendance

How do you make sure you can get to school physically?

What steps do you take to make sure you can afford school financially?

Why do you choose those steps?

Learning in classrooms

How do you make sure you can learn in class?

How do you stay focussed on your lessons?

Do you do what your teachers ask?

Why do you choose to do those things?

Completing homework

What do you do to make sure you can complete your homework after school?

Why do you choose to do that?

Undertaking exams

How do you prepare for exams?

What things do you do to give the best chance of success in exams?

Why do you choose to do those things?

Staying at school

What things do you do to make sure you can stay at school?

Why do you choose to do those things?

Graduating from school

What steps do you take to reach graduation?

Why do you choose those steps?

What is the significance of these intentions and strategies?

What reasons do they give for this significance?

What outcomes do they expect from pursuing their intentions and strategies?

What are the reasons for these expectations?

148

APPENDIX B

Information sheet for participants in English

Dear Sir/Madam

On behalf of Mrs Gillian Kerr-Sheppard, I am writing to invite you to participate in a research project that is being conducted as part of her Master’s in Education degree in the Graduate Research School at the University of Western Australia. (UWA).

The title of the research is Engagement with Primary and Secondary Education in Palestinian Refugee Camps within the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the aim of the research is to generate a theory about how Palestinian refugee families living in refugee camps within the West Bank and the Gaza Strip manage their engagement with formal education at primary and secondary level.

The insights generated by this research have great potential to offer useful guidance for Australian educators working with young people who have also dealt with situations of conflict and displacement.

In order to conduct the research two kinds of data collection are required. Firstly, the research will involve interviews with refugee families, including grandparents, parents, older siblings and school students. Secondly, document analysis will be important. This could include students’ work, teachers’ reflective diaries or parents’ report comments if available. Art, craft and performing arts works would also be of great value.

The research will involve you in interviews with Mrs Gillian. These interviews will be semi-structured, in depth interviews, which may last for up to an hour, depending upon how much information you wish to convey. You may be involved in more than one interview during the duration of the project. All interviews will be audio recorded and then transcribed by Mrs Gillian and you will be given the opportunity to review the information collected in the interview once it has been transcribed. You will be asked to choose an assumed name for use throughout the research and any information you provide will be treated as strictly confidential and will not be made available publicly. If you wish to withdraw at any time during the process, you may do so without prejudice. All data collected will be stored securely in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Western Australia following completion of the research. You will be provided with a copy of the Information Sheet and Consent Form for your personal records.

If you have any questions that you would like to raise with me about the study, I will be pleased to answer them. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated.

Yours faithfully,

Dr Simon Clarke Mrs Gillian Kerr-Sheppard

simon.clarke@ uwa.edu.au gilliankerrsheppard@yahoo.com.au

Tel: 0061 8 6488 2398 Tel: 0522338709

Fax: 0061 8 6488 1052

149

APPENDIX C

Information sheet for participants in Arabic

موافقة ولي امر المشترك

أرجو أن تشاركوا السيدة جيليان كير ش�يبارد ف�ي ھ�ذا الجان�ب م�ن بحثھ�ا م�ن الدراس�ات العلي�ا ف�ي جامع�ة أوس�تراليا .الغربية

ا<قبال على التعليم ا:بتدائي والثانوي ف�ي مخيم�ات ال6ئجئ�ين ف�ي الض�فة الغربي�ة وقط�اع "إن عنوان ھذا البحث ھو ھ��دف م��ن البح��ث ھ��و اس��تنتاج عب��رة ع��ن ھ��ذا الش��عب المص��مم عل��ى العل��م بك��ل جدي��ة رغ��م إن وض��ع إن ال" غ��زة

.ال6جئين غير مستقر في المخيمات

إن مفھوم ھذا البحث ھو إعطاء فكرة للش�عب ا<وس�ترالي ع�ن التص�ميم والجدي�ة وكيفي�ة ال�تعلم تح�ت ظ�روف معين�ة .في ظروف وتعقيدات مشابھة لھؤ:ء في فلسطين خصوصاً للمدرسين الذين يتعاطون مع ت6ميذ قد مروا

ا<ول ھو مقاب6ت م�ع الع�ائ6ت ف�ي مخيم�ات اللج�وء، م�ن ض�منھم . إن ھذا البحث يتطلب طريقتين لجمع المعلوماتالثاني ھو تحليل المعلومات التي تتض�من عم�ل الط�6ب والمعلم�ين باWض�افة إل�ى . اVباء وا<قارب وأطفال المدارس

.لي في حال توفرهتعليق ا<ھا

.ا<شغال اليدوية والفنون الجميلة أيضاً تأخذ دوراً مھماً جداً في ھذا البحث

ھذه المقاب6ت ستكون مع السيدة جيليان ومن الممكن أن تتطلب ساعة من الوق�ت عل�ى ا<كث�ر، ك�ل ھ�ذا يتوق�ف عل�ى . مقابلة مع الشخص نفسه خ6ل ھذا البحث كمية المعلومات التي تتبادلونھا كما أنه من الممكن أن يتطلب أكثر من

كل المقاب6ت ستكون مسجلة على آلة تسجيل للصوت، ث�م ي�تم تحويلھ�ا كتابي�اً عل�ى ال�ورق حي�ث تس�مح لك�م الفرص�ة .لdط6ع على محوى المقابلة

أي ش�خص م�ن قد تسألون أن تختاروا اسماً وھمياً خ6ل المقابلة، والمعلوم�ات تك�ون ف�ي س�رية تام�ة ول�ن تب�اح أم�ام.الشعب

.أما إذا أردتم اWنسحاب خ6ل المقابلة <ي سبب كان ف6 تترددوا

إن كل المعلومات والبحث سيكون مخزناً بطريقة سرية في الجامعة في أوستراليا الغربية، وي�تم تزوي�دكم بنس�خة م�ن .ا:ستمارة التي تم تعبئتھا :حقا

.أكون حاضرة لdجابة عليھا في أي وقتفي حال وجود أي استفسار حول ھذ الموضوع، س

.وتفضلوا بقبول فائق اWحترام والتقدير

Dr. Simon Clarke Mrs. Gillian Kerr-Sheppard

simon.clarke@uwa.edu.au gilliankerrsheppard@yahoo.com.au

Tel: 0061 8 6488 2398 Tel: 0522 338709

Fax: 0061 8 6488 1052

150

APPENDIX D

Consent form for participants

PARTICIPANT CONSENT FORM

Project: Masters of Education by Research

Graduate Research School

The University of Western Australia

Title: Engagement with Primary and Secondary Education in Palestinian Refugee Camps within the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

I ___________________________________________ (the participant) have read the information supplied and any questions I have asked have been answered to my satisfaction.

I agree to participate in the research, realising that I may withdraw at any time without prejudice.

I understand that all information provided will be treated as strictly confidential and I have been advised as to what data is being collected, what the purpose is, and what will be done with the data upon completion of the research.

_____________________ _________

Participant’s signature Date

The Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of Western Australia requires that all participants are informed that, if they have any complaint regarding the manner, in which a research project is conducted, it may be given to the researcher (mobile: 0522338709), or alternatively to the Secretary, Human Research Ethics Committee, Registrar's Office, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009(telephone number 00 618 6488 3703). All study participants will be provided with a copy of the Information Sheet and Consent Form for their personal records.

151

APPENDIX E

Consent form for parents and guardians

PARENT/GUARDIAN CONSENT FORM

Project: Masters of Education by Research

Graduate Research School

The University of Western Australia

Title: Engagement with Primary and Secondary Education in Palestinian Refugee Camps within the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

I ___________________________________________ (parent/guardian) of

_____________________________________________ (the participant) have read the information supplied and any questions I have asked have been answered to my satisfaction.

I agree to the participation of my son/daughter in the research, realising that he/she may withdraw at any time without prejudice.

I understand that all information provided will be treated as strictly confidential and I have been advised as to what data is being collected, what the purpose is, and what will be done with the data upon completion of the research.

_____________________ _________

Parent/guardian’s signature Date

The Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of Western Australia requires that all participants are informed that, if they have any complaint regarding the manner, in which a research project is conducted, it may be given to the researcher (mobile: 0522338709), or alternatively to the Secretary, Human Research Ethics Committee, Registrar's Office, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009(telephone number 00 618 6488 3703). All study participants will be provided with a copy of the Information Sheet and Consent Form for their personal records.

152

APPENDIX F

Consent form for Minors

MINOR’S CONSENT FORM

Project: Masters of Education by Research

Graduate Research School

The University of Western Australia

Title: Engagement with Primary and Secondary Education in Palestinian Refugee Camps within the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

NAME ______________________________

� I agree to talk about my school and my education.

� I agree that this discussion can be recorded.

� I understand I can stop the interview at any time.

� I understand about Mrs Gillian’s research project and why she is

talking to me.

� I understand that she will not use my real name and that the

information I give her is confidential.

Signature ___________________________________

The Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of Western Australia requires that all participants are informed that, if they have any complaint regarding the manner, in which a research project is conducted, it may be given to the researcher (mobile: 0522338709), or alternatively to the Secretary, Human Research Ethics Committee, Registrar's Office, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009(telephone number 00 618 6488 3703). All study participants will be provided with a copy of the Information Sheet and Consent Form for their personal records.