How Israel is creating deep divisions through psychic annexation

Legal consultant, researcher and educator Dr Zeina Jallad Saturday presented a paper on the topic of 'Identity annexation; Israel’s non-territorial and psychic annexation of the West Bank Samaritans in the occupied Palestinian territories' at the Annual Palestine Forum. Speaking exclusively to 'Gulf Times' on the sidelines of the forum, Dr Jallad spoke about how the Samaritans were being treated by the occupation.
“I think this is a timely question if we look at the type of strategies and technologies that the state of Israel is using in what some have defined as a creeping annexation. It is an annexation in detail, step by step until there is a full control -- whether in terms of cultural, historical or legal presence on the land," she said.
"The way I view it, Samaritans are only less than 1,000 people in both parts of the country in total. They have so many differences (from the Israelis), their presence or the lack of it in the Israeli system does not change the demography. So, if we think about why they have been granted the citizenship... it was not to help them have the mobility or freedom of movement, access to health treatment, or the everyday code of rights. I think of it as a strategy of eraser. It is erasing that narrative of diversity and emptying it from the component of the Palestinian identity," Dr Jallad continued.
"Step by step, we are losing our diversity, we are losing the Samaritans, the Jews, the Christians, may be at some point the Druze, and it will become only one colour, a one tuned kind of crisis or conflict. No, the occupation is occupying the identity of the people, their psychology, their narrative, their story of belonging, their memory.
"This is where it is a very important and tricky way to analyse what goes beyond the acquisition of the land. Annexation and the legal appropriation of the land is one face to it, but there is something more that has to do with the psychology of the people, their way of self-perception. So, from the natives of the land, they become the 'other'. Someone who lives in Nablus today as a Samaritan is becoming an Israeli, so he is becoming an invader in his own homeland. This is the transformation sought of the native to the 'other', and there resides the other angle of it, the appropriation of the language and the narrative of belonging and rootedness to the Israeli discourse and narrative."
"So, it is not only taking the land but also taking the narrative of the Palestinian people and appropriating it in the Israeli narrative, and this is where it is scary,” Dr Jallad concluded.