Palestinian protesters now wield a spoon, in nationalist reference to the six inmates who recently escaped from an Israeli prison, before being recaptured.
Demonstration by Arab Israelis on September 10 in Umm al-Fahm, Israel, in solidarity with the six detainees who escaped four days earlier (Jack Guez, AFP)
Palestinian nationalism has adopted, over its long history, a whole series of symbols of its collective mobilization. It was first of all the olive tree, the nourishing tree for example, whose roots grow in this land whose colonization seeks to expel the inhabitants. Then came the keffiyeh, the scarf of Palestinian peasants, which became the emblem of the fedayeen when their leader, Yasser Arafat, displayed it in 1974 to the UN platform. It was then the sling of the young demonstrators of the intifada, the “Uprising” Civilian of 1987, which imposed itself as a symbol of resistance. But nothing could suggest that the very recent news would promote the modest spoon in the heart of the Palestinian mobilizations.
A ROCAMBOLESQUE ESCAPE
On September 6, six Palestinian detainees escaped over the Jewish New Year from the Gilboa high security prison in northern Israel. They had patiently dug a tunnel of about twenty meters with a spoon, leading to the outside of the prison, a tunnel whose entrance was camouflaged under the toilets of their cell. Israel launched a massive manhunt to recover the six escapees, all from the Palestinian city of Jenin in the West Bank. Five of them were from Islamic Jihad, the latest and most famous, Zakaria Zubeidi, being a popular figure in Fatah, the party of Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. Zubeidi and three of his companions were retaken on September 10, in northern Israel, the run of the last two escapees ending on September 19, with their arrest in Jenin, during a raid by the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank.
This hunt has kept Israeli and Palestinian opinions in suspense. It ends with a form of restoration of the status quo, with detainees returning to their places of incarceration, while activists denounce the treatment inflicted on them and are mobilized in solidarity with them. But, beyond the fate of Zubeidi and his comrades, it is the spoon, an instrument of such an improbable escape, which is now found exalted in Palestinian gatherings. Its simplicity and fragility become emblematic of a balance of power which, while remaining overwhelming in favor of Israel, no longer excludes a ” resistance of the poor “, carried out with the means at hand. Artists have already taken it up: the designer Mohammad Sabaaneh put the spoon at the center of his caricature of ” tunnel of freedom “; the visual artist Khaled Jarrar recently exhibited in Ramallah his ” spoon-shovel “, again a symbol of liberation. Sabaaneh and Jarrar are both from Jenin, but other designers, in Jordan or Kuwait, have also been inspired by the iconic spoon.
THE SYMBOL OF A LACK
This militant popularity of the spoon follows the contours of the new wave of Palestinian nationalism that last May resonated with Arab Israelis and residents of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. We have thus seen the spoon brandished in front of the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holy place of Islam in Jerusalem, but also by the demonstrators who dispute, in Ramallah, the passivity and the corruption of the Palestinian Authority, as well as by the young people from Gaza who expose themselves, day and night, at the border with Israel. But it is in Israel itself that the spoon is the most controversial: brandishing it in a rally, as in the photo above, is an affirmation of the Palestinian identity, and this in spite of the Israeli nationality, even though an Islamist party has agreed, for the first time in Israel’s history, to support the government of the day. Such a gesture is all the stronger since, as the correspondent of “Le Monde” in Jerusalem underlines, many Palestinians in the West Bank accuse certain Israeli Arabs of having facilitated the capture of the escapees.
This is how the modest spoon learns a lot about the ongoing recompositions of the Palestinian scene. However, it is also the symptom of a deep crisis in Palestinian representation, against a backdrop of discrediting of the various political leaderships, both in Ramallah and in Gaza. It is this emptiness at the head of the Palestinian movement that leads to the exaltation of previously anonymous figures, yesterday pacifist twins from East Jerusalem, today detainees whose past is nevertheless fraught with violence. In the same vein, the spoon is basically only the default symbol of a nationalist mobilization deprived of any short-term perspective. It certainly sums up in a striking way the determination to seize the most modest opportunities to denounce injustice on a daily basis. But, an instrument of the weak, it only serves to dig, in order to snatch a few brief moments of freedom, before returning to the place assigned by the strongest, always just as strong.
www.lemonde.fr