There is no specific country today that can be called Palestine. Instead, the area known as Palestine consists of the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. The name originates from the Roman province Palaestina. Others have called the region as the Land of Israel, and is the southern area of the regions also known as Syria, Canaan and the Levant. It is acknowledged as the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity. The area has also had a long and colorful history, with a multitude of tribes and peoples populating the same area. Today the area is occupied by Israel and the regions wherein the State of Palestine was defined (Fahlbusch et al, 2005). Today, what remains as the State of Palestine consists of a few regions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. However, for this paper, the culture of Palestine will refer to the culture not only of present-day Palestine but also of the nearby areas such as Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, which are very similar to the culture of the remaining Palestine State.
The Palestinians have been at the center of world history in the last 100 years or so. This is because of the large number of United Nations resolutions that have been passed on Palestine and the accompanying Israeli-Arab conflict. The problem of Palestine and the Palestinians has hugged the world arena. From the Palestinian point of view, the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by Israel in 1967 is an illegal act, and their expulsion from their centuries of settlement in these and other areas in 1948 still evokes plenty of emotions from the Palestinians, who were driven out of these areas with the establishment of the State of Israel (Farsoun, 2004).
In Palestinian writing, most of the works today of modern Palestinian writers tell of the experience of the Palestinian who is virtually helpless in his own homeland that is controlled by the Israelis. It is said that during the First Intifada (or the revolt of the Palestinians against the Israelis in 1987), there was a flowering of Palestinian literature, with many of the articles and literary pieces speaking of the painful experiences of the Palestinians while being controlled by the Israelis. In the anthology of Wahaj-al-Fajr (the brilliance of dawn), published by the Association of Palestinian Writers in Israel (Bouskila, 2014). A group of poets also wrote of the resistance against Israeli rule, and their brand of poetry became known as resistance poetry. Among the resistance poets are Mahmoud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim and Tawfiq Zayyad (Shahin, 2005). The four main genres are used by Palestinian writers: poems, plays, short stories and novels. All of the literature have something in common: they all appeal to the emotions of the readers. The content of their writings constitute their responses to the events occurring around them, with poems being the genre that is most used. One could attribute this to the fact that Arabs have a long history of oral story-telling, and perhaps the best way that these Palestinian writers could express their feelings of repression, sorrow and despair at the loss of their sovereignty and due to their desire to fight is by telling stories in the form of poems (Bouskila, 2014).
As with literature, Palestinian music reflects the experience of the Palestinian people. Most of it reveals the relation of the Palestine nation with Israel, the desire for peace and the love of the motherland. One example of such a song is Baladi, Baladi (My Country) which is considered to be the Palestinian national anthem. The song talks about the struggle of the people, and the strong and fervent desire to return to the homeland (Motti, 1993). As for traditional Palestinian music, there are four main forms. The first is the ataba, which is a song that talks about work, and is sung during work itself. The lyrics have to rhyme at the end for the first three lines of the four-line stanza. The second type is the dal’ona, which is easier to compose in the sense that there is no need for the rhyming sounds, and is the music to accompany the popular Palestinian dance, the Dabka. The Sahjah is a song that is popular at weddings, and could be sung by a relative, and a reply is also sung by the other relatives. If a male relative leads in the singing, only the male relatives respond, and if a female relative begins to sing the sahjah, then it is the turn of the women relatives to reply also in song. The last type of traditional song is the Zaghareet, where this song is sung by women also at weddings and during other important family gatherings (Barghouti.com, 2016).
When one speaks of Palestinian cuisine, what is noticed is that the cuisine is influenced by the geography as well as the influence of those in control of the areas in the past. Today, experts have classified Palestinian cuisine as being of three major kinds. The first is that of the Galilee area. The cuisine under this class is reflected in the use of bulgur, spices and meat, influenced by the Lebanese, who were in contact with the Palestinians in this area. There is the use of bulgur, spices and wheat. There is also the popular maqluba, which is a pot of fried vegetables and meat with rice, and the mansaf, which is lamb with fermented yogurt served with rice. Both the maqluba and the mansaf are Bedouin recipes (Nasser, 2006). The second kind is the cuisine of the Gaza strip, which is influenced by Egyptian cooking and the Mediterranean Sea. Thus the main ingredient here is fish, and the fish is normally fried or grilled, with the use of spices such as cilantro, cumin, red peppers, and lemons (Al-Haddad, 2006). The last type of cuisine is influenced by the West Bank, with elements common to both Galilee and Gaza strip cooking.
Palestinian cinema is still a young form of art. It is said that it was only in the 1980s when Palestinian movies began to make a mark on the international scene. This art form is unique in the sense that technically, there is no Palestinian state to speak of. In 2002, the film “Divine Intervention” by Palestinian filmmaker Ella Suleiman received critical acclaim. It told the story of a Palestinian from Nazareth and his girlfriend who lives in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “Paradise Now” also received the Best Foreign Language Film award at the Golden Globes. The film discussed the very controversial issue of suicide bombing. Director Abu-Asad intimated that he was describing an event or a series of events, rather than justifying the action of suicide bombing. He describes suicide bombers acting out of personal conviction rather than being brainwashed fanaticists. The recent 2013 film “Omar” depicts the life of a young Palestinian man growing up in a violent neighborhood, becoming despondent at the thought of being able to not to trust anyone anymore, and almost becoming insane because of these circumstances. Just like Palestinian literature and music, the cinema of Palestine centers on the struggles of those living in the violence, suffering from the isolation that they feel as stateless beings.
In the end, one could say that the culture of Palestine today is a mix of the traditional elements of culture, and the manifestation of the struggles of the Palestinians as they cope with the realities of life while living in a state of “statelessness”, and trying to gain back what was taken from them as a people.
References
Al-Haddad, Leila. The Foods of Gaza. Retrieved from: http://archive.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=1729&ed=115&edid=115
Barghouti.com. 2016. Palestinian Popular Songs. Retrieved from: http://www.barghouti.com/folklore/songs/
Bouskila, A. 2014. Modern Palestinian Literature and Culture. NY: Routledge.
Fahlbusch, E., Lochman, J., Bormiley, G. and Barrett, D. 2005. The Encyclopedia of Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: W. Eerdmans Publishing.
Farsoun, S. 2004. Culture and Customs of the Middle East. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Motti, R. 1993. Oud and Guitar: The Musical Culture of the Arabs in Israel. Tel Aviv: Institute for Israeli Arab Studies.
Nasser, C. 2006. Revisiting our Table. Retrieved from: http://archive.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=1729&ed=115&edid=115
Shahin, M. 2005. Palestine: A Guide. Northampton, MA: Interlink Books.
