PALESTINIAN HUMOR ON THE PEACE PROCESS

By Sharif Kanaana, Department of Anthropology and Sociology

This article was originally published in the Journal "Society and Heritage" - a quarterly journal of folklore and cultural research published by the Palestinian Folklore Centre

There are many theories of humor or of the Joke. Looking at these theories closely we can see that they tend to supplement rather than exclude each other. The reason for it is that these are not alternative views of the same thing, but different views of different things; they actually describe different parts or different aspects of the same creature we call "the joke" . A joke is a complex and multifaceted thing, and a "theory of the joke" may deal with one small aspect such as its motives, its function, its structure, its ,meaning, its message, its technique, its nature, its appreciation, its enjoyment, its understanding, or the conditions necessary for its creation. A "theory " may deal with the verbal, the social, the behavioral, the emotional, or the cognitive level. and we can elaborate on this for a long time.

All existing theories of the joke can, however, be subsumed under one or the other of two general theories: One is the psychoؤfunctional theory derived from the work of Freud (1905, 1928) and deals mainly with the psychological motives and functions of the joke. It postulates that the Joke is motivated by the repressed aggressive and sexual impulses, and gives pleasure because it saves libidinal energy, so to speak, giving the conscious monitor a short vacation .

The other broad formulation for a theory of humor is that of "incongruity", ultimately derived from Bergson, which sees humor as resulting from a contest between two incongruous or contradictory realities or levels, where the weaker or the controlled level seems to challenge, or to rebel against the stronger controlling level. (see Oring 1992, Douglas 1975).

Mary Donglas (1975) suggested a plausible idea which can bring harmony between these two types of theories namely, that the incongruity portrayed in a joke cannot be appreciated unless it reproduced, or symbolized socially experienced incongruity, rebellion, and contest at one or more levels of the social system, on the one hand, and reproduced or symbolized the challenge which unconscious impulses pose to the conscious control. Thus we end up with a series of levels each consisting of a pattern of relations, in each of which there are two levels, one being challenged by another, and this structure being echoed all the way from the psychic level through the cognitive, the behavioral and the social.

One more idea can be added to this complex picture . Several humor scholars have made the connection between jokes and play. Elliott Oring (1992:28) refuses the almost universally accepted hypothesis which considers aggression an inherent aspect of humor . Oring thinks that "Humor, first and foremost, appears to be a subspecies of play. Like aggression, play must be considered a primary impulse, an impulse sui generis, not reducible to more fundamental impulses [But] Aggressive impulses may, on occasion, utilize forms of intellectual play (i.e. jokes) as weapons, "I agree with Oring that humor is a subspecies of play but disagree with him on the nature of the relationship between humor and aggression. In my opinion aggression is an inherent element of play; all playؤphysical and verbal. Physical play among all animal species in the natural state is a primary impulse necessary for survival.

Physical play, I believe, is practice fighting . It is mock fighting. It is way the young train to become good fighters when they grow up. Bateson is right when he says: "The play nip denotes the bite, but it does not denote what would be denoted by the bite. "(Bateson 1972: 180). The reason is that it is a mock bite, serving mock aggression, a practice for the time when the animal will need the real bite in the service of the real aggression. Thus physical play is simulated physical fight, motivated by simulated aggressive impulses. When the species Homo Sapiens developed the complex symbolic system we call language, human beings became capable of performing physical actions symbolically, i.e. have dry runs of the physical action inside their heads, or wherever the mind is, and became capable of expressing or portraying these acts or mental experiments, verbally without having to act out physically. Thus a verbal fight is a symbolic version of a physical fight and is equally motivated by aggressive impulses. And just as physical play is mock or practice physical fighting, humor or symbolic play is mock or practice verbal or symbolic fighting, and just as physical play always takes the form of a contest, humor also always takes the form of a contest. There are apparent aggressive impulses in both physical play and humor, but in neither case are these impulses real, but in both cases they can be placed in the service of real aggressive, sexual, or any one of a wide variety of impulses. The only way to understand the real motives and the real intentions behind a joke is to be able to know and to understand the total context within which a joke is narrated.

I conclude from the discussion so far that jokes always take the apparent form of aggressive contest between two parties, but in their pure uncontaminated form the aggression is not real but mock aggression.

However, jokes, because of their inherent form easily lend themselves to being placed - as they often are - in the service of other primary impulses especially hostile and sexual impulses, depending on narrator, audience, setting, occasion, or any of many other possible aspects of the context. Or to put it the other way round, one of the safest methods for expressing a wide variety of socially unacceptable impulses is to put it under the naive and pleasant disguise of humor, especially that the pleasurable effect of the technique of humor distracts one from the impulses behind it or makes him hesitant to question what is behind it . (see Freud, 1905).

To these characteristics of the joke I would like to add one more, which Linda Degh (1972: 69) phrased thus: "Although jokes tend to come in series (sick jokes, elephant jokes, shaggy dog stories) they center on real or imaginary personalities and react immediately to worldwide and local events."

For the remainder of this paper I would like to illustrate some of the theoretical points I have just mentioned, using jokes which emerged among Palestinians in reaction to the so called "Peace Process" since the end of the Gulf war, and to show how the subؤcycles centered around individuals, why these individuals in particular were selected, and how the joke subؤcycles correlated with the fluctuating moods of the Palestinians.

I had started collecting Palestinian folk narratives, including jokes, humorous stories, anecdotes, legends, rumors and so on, back in 1988, few months after the beginning of the Palestinian uprising known as the "Intifada".

The only criteria I had for the data I collected were that the material qualified as folk narrative and dealt with the occupation or with the Israeli-Arab or Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general. I had no conscious theoretical framework or any specific hypothesis. I used no formal interviews and asked no direct questions. I simply kept my eyes and ears open as I participated in conversations and political discussions with relatives, friends, colleagues, students and acquaintances. I did, of course, seek out locations where I knew such discussions were likely to take place, and people who were likely to bring up the kind of material I was interested in. Occasionally, I tried to elicit jokes or other narratives by telling some my self. I also instructed my students to use similar methods. The narratives were written down on cards as soon as possible after hearing them, together with date, name of narrator, and some other aspects of the context.

Being a native participant observer, combined with this nonؤideological and non:teleological style of collecting data, allows me always to go back and reanalyze the data in retrospect in relation to new variables, and be able to see some new patterns into it .

Looking at all the jokes I have collected since 1988, while keeping Linda Degh's words concerning the nature of jokes in mind, I can see that Palestinian humor has gone through three different joke cycles since the beginning of the Intifada, late 1987, with several smaller subؤcycles within each cycle. The three main cycles are: a cycle of Intifada jokes, a cycle of Gulf war jokes, and the most recent, a cycle of peace process jokes. I have reported on the first two cycles in two articles published in the Journal of Folklore Research (kanaana 1990, 1995). In this paper I am concerned only with the cycle of peace process jokes, its sub-cycles, their meaning end the names around which the jokes clustered into sub-cycles.

According to my field notes, the first joke I would now classify as a "Peace Process" joke was recorded on June 15, 1991 about three and half months after the end of the Gulf war. The total number of the jokes I have classified as " Peace Process" jokes, which were collected during the period 15 April 1991 and 20th February 1997, i.e. about five and half years, comes up to over 350 jokes. With the hind sight acquired by suffering more than five years of " peace", it is easy to see that the jokes in this cycle are not distributed evenly or randomly over the whole period. The appearance of the jokes can be seen to be correlated with the different significant stages in the process, and to cluster in subؤcycles around names which assumed different roles at different stages of the process. The sub-cycles correlated with different stages, and the clusters formed around names of different individuals, have different flavors, carry different meanings, are powered by different motives, and are told by different groups of people. Next I will look at the, correlation between the different groups of jokes and the different stages in the process, and the logic of the harmony between the joke clusters and the names around which the clusters were formed.

The over 350 jokes in my collection can be seen to fall in four groups each related to a stage in the development of the "peace process":

1. The First Stage: started in June 1991 about three and half months after the end of the Gulf war and extended up to the Madrid conference in Oct. of the same year.

Talk about a peace process in the Middle East had started shortly after the end of the war. The United States and Israel agreed to exclude Arafat and the PLO from this process and to involve only Palestinians from the Occupied Territories. Most Palestinians were unhappy about this decision. Contacts were made mainly with Faisal Hussaini and Hanan Ashrawi, and it was these two Palestinian figures who became the target of Palestinian humor during this stage . The very first joke, I have classified as a "Peace process" joke, a very mild one, accused Faisal of trying to help the Israelis end the Intifada:

They say that Faisal Husseini declared an end to the Intifada. But the Israeli Border Police (considered by Palestinian youth to be the most vicious among Israeli forces ) were so unhappy they went on strike because they had nothing left to do.

But many more jokes were directed at Hanan Ashrawi. She was a much easier target; she was not from an ancient, aristocratic, nationalist family as Faisal was; she was young and a new comer to politics; she was a woman competing among men, and a Christian competing among a large Moslem majority.

2. The second stage: lasted for about two years, from the Madrid conference up to the time the Oslo talks, between the Israelis and Palestinians became known . The selection of the delegation to Madrid, and later to the peace talks in Washington, made it clear that the PLO controlled the Palestinian delegation. The danger of the United States and Israel creating and alternative Palestinian leadership other than the PLO disappeared. The United States and Israel were now openly, though indirectly, bargaining with the delegation of the PLO. The danger that the Palestinians were going to be split up into two competing camps, the " Outside" and the " Inside", had passed. The Palestinians were pleased with this achievement, and the great majority of them, explicitly or implicitly approved of the talks and were hopeful about the results. The performance of their delegation, they thought, especially that of the head of the delegation Dr. Haider Abdul-Shafi, was more than satisfactory. The PLO was proven effective. There were only few complaints and few criticisms. These generally came from intellectuals and from young aspiring politicians who were jealous of those appointed to the delegation, and considered themselves more qualified for the job. Almost all the humor during this stage came from these intellectuals end were directed to the Palestinian Delegation members not to the leadership of the PLO.

The jealousy and hostility directed to the delegates show clearly in the following two jokes in which they are accused of stupidity and lack of patriotism:

One time Arafat, Habash, and Hawatmeh were driving down the street in a car. A donkey stood right smack in the middle of the road and refused to bduge. Hawatmeh got out of the car, walked to the donkey and talked to him but the donkey refused to move. The Habash went and talked to him but to no avail. Finally Arafat walked to the donkey and whispered something in its ear and the donkey moved away immediately. Habash and Hawatmeh were surprised and asked Arafat what he said. "Well," answered Arafat, "I told him that if he didn't get out of the way I would appoint him a member of our delegation to Madrid."

When Arafat appointed one of the West Bank mayors to the delegation, someone one called him and said" Congratulations, you have been appointed a member of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks." The Mayor answered: "To which one of them?"

3. Third Stage: Extends from the time it become known that parallel talks to those in Washington were taking place secretly in Oslo between the Israelis and the PLO, through the signing of the Agreement in Washington on Sept. 13, 1993, and for a honeymoon period of about 5 months after that, up to the time of the massacre in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron on 25 Feb. 1994. Palestinians did not know at the time what the agreement exactly involved and the PLO people made their best to make it sound good.

Palestinians, anyhow, expected the occupation to be removed and some sort of an independent Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem as its capital, to be established . They raised Palestinian flags openly, danced in the streets, honked the horns of their cars for several days, and celebrated collectively for the first time since 1967. Palestinians were slightly bothered by the fact that Arafat had been holding secret talks with Israel at the same time they thought he was very shrewd, he got what he wanted from the Israelis, without the support of the Arab countries.

The idea of Gaza and Jericho First was kind of amusing but it was not very bad since it was only a temporary arrangement until the Israelis finished their withdrawal from the rest of the West Bank. Altogether they did not think it was a great deal but acceptable under the circumstances.

Humor during this stage shifted completely from the delegation members to Arafat himself. The Oslo talks and the Washington Agreement were seen to be totally the responsibility of Arafat. The humor was kind, some what playful, not obscene or hostile. Palestinians needled Arafat and teased him rather than attacking him. Some of the jokes teased him about the Gaza-Jericho arrangement . Two Arabic words each with a double meaning relevant to this arrangement were utilized in the creation of the humor of this stage. The first one is the Arabic name for Jericho which some pronounce "Reeha" exactly the same pronunciation as the word for smell and can mean fragrance or stink depending on the context. The different connotations of this word produced many political jokes about the Gaza-Jericho-First Agreement .

One particular Arabic proverb was specially relevant; it says: "The smell of a husband is better than no husband at all" The other relevant Arabic word "Qirn" which means something like a "pod" but used with a much wider range of fruits and vegetables. This word literally means "horn" as in the horn of an animal. Thus in Arabic we say a " Qirn " of pepper, and a " Qirn" of banana. Now Gaza is famous for its superior hot peppers and Jericho for its greet bananas. Several of the jokes during this stage played on the different connotations of these two items and of the word "qirn".

Although this stage is short, it produced a large number of the jokes I have classified as "peace process jokes". And although some of them sound quite nasty now, they did not sound that way in the original context in which they were narrated. The main reason for that was that they were told mainly by Arafat's own supporters, and were clearly not intended to be harmful or offensive. The reasons why Arafat's supporters told such jokes were two: First Arafat and his followers were thoroughly aware that most Palestinians were not happy with the deal he made . So they assumed the position that they also were of the same opinion. They took advantage of every occasion they had, including occasions to tell jokes, to declare in the presence of the opposition groups that they also saw the weaknesses of the agreement end were not happier with it than anybody else, but it was the best possible deal they could get under the circumstances. Secondly, a closely related reason, was that by telling such jokes they preemptied criticism by other groups, at the same time that they prevented serious discussion of the situation from taking place.(see Freud 1905) .

The playfulness of the humor of this period is reflected in the following joke, which teases Arafat about his strong inclination to hug and kiss whomever he meets:

American mediators were trying to get Arafat and Rabin to meet. Arafat said he was willing to meet with Rabin assuming Rabin does not place any prohibitive conditions. The next day the mediators came back with Rabin's conditions. Arafat accepted all the conditions including not raising the issue of settlements or the issue of Jerusalem. But when they mentioned that Rabin says no kissing at the beginning of the meeting, Arafat responds: Now this condition is prohibitive!

This wave of jokes was interrupted in Feb. 1994 by the massacre committed by a Jewish settler in the Ibrahimi mosque in which close to 50 people were killed. A short cycle of massacre jokes followed, then for about 8 months I was unable to collect any humor related to the "peace process"

4. The Fourth stage: This stage extends from around Nov. 1994- at the end of eight months lull which followed the massacre - up to June 1995. By the beginning of this stage Palestinians had started to realize that what the agreement gave them was much less than they had hoped for or expected, and much less than the Palestinian leadership had led them to believe they were getting, and that what Israel was willing to implement was even less. The economy had become much worse rather than better as they were promised . Disorder and demoralization prevailed. Hostility, alienation, and bitterness increased . This is the mood reflected in the humor of this period . The jokes are generally bitter, cynical, and obscene. The humor of this period can tee divided according to its targets into three sub-types:

a. Jokes directed to Arafat either directly or through insults to his wife.(we know that the hostility is directed toward Arafat himself, not his wife, because she is not significant enough to be attacked for her own sake) .

We notice also that no jokes during this stage are directed to those responsible for all the evils and weaknesses of the "peace process".

The jokes as we have mentioned were hostile and obscene and cannot be included in this paper. The milder ones among these accuse Arafat of being dictatorial in his rule and of being unable to delegate authority to any of his followers or appointees. One of the mildest says that: the Italians donated two million pairs of shoes to the Palestinians, only one of them has laces, because there is only one Palestinian who can "tie or untie" i.e. who has any say or makes any decisions.

Another one says that when the Palestinian station was about to start broadcasting, they brought Arafat some applications and asked him to pick a news announcer. His response was: " What news announcer are you talking about? I am going to read the news"

b. The second sub-type of this stage includes jokes ridiculing the expected Palestinian state about its size and the inefficient way it is expected to be run.

The one joke of this sub-type most often heard, talked about the Palestinian government establishing, in Jericho a factory for Palestinian cars which have only first and second gears because if they were to shift to third gear they would already be outside the Palestinian State.

c. The third sub-type of this stage includes jokes which talk about the different intelligence and secret service systems operated by the Palestinian authority, especially by the president's own office.

The jokes talk about simple people being beaten up or tortured by the secret service men for innocently and unintentionally saying things which could be interpreted to be offensive to Arafat or to other Palestinian authority figures. The fear expressed in the jokes of this stage may actually have something to do with the decrease in the number of political jokes exchanged among Palestinians in the next stage.

5. The fifth and final stage extends from around June 1995 up to the present time. This stage is characterized by a change in the atmosphere related to joke telling among Palestinians. The atmosphere does not seem conducive to joke telling any more. Palestinians, at least in public settings, are less interested in discussing politics, and tell less political jokes when discussing politics, and those who know some political jokes are hesitant to tell them in public . However, the few new political jokes which emerged during this stage are no different from those of the previous stage, except that there is a tendency during this stages to use jokes imported from other countries and changing the names to suit the Palestinian context. A large percentage of those are borrowed from Egypt.

Here is a somewhat mild joke which has been quite popular among Palestinians for about a year now:

A Palestinian policeman wanted a few days leave. He asked his commanding officer for the leave. The officer refused but the policeman insisted. Finally the officer said: "You see that donkey on the side of the street over there, if you can make him laugh you can have your leave. The police man went to the donkey, whispered something in its ear, and the donkey exploded with laughter. Then the officer said that was not enough and the policeman must make the donkey cry, and the policeman did. Finally the officer was not satisfied and wanted the policeman to make the donkey leave and the police man did. Finally the officer said:"you can have your leave but first you have to tell me what you whispered to the donkey to make him laugh then cry then leave. The policeman explained: " First I said to him that I worked for the Palestinian administration, he started to laugh, the next time I told him that I have a wife and three children and make 800 shekels a month he started to cry, and the third time I asked him if he wanted to work with me for the Palestinian Authority he ran away."

Another characteristic of the humor of this stage is the appearance of a new, unique and strange kind of jokes which denigrate both traditional and sacred Arabic and Islamic values and ideals. The jokes make fun of things most sacred to Palestinians including the blood of the martyrs (Shuhada) and things most sacred to Moslems and Arabs in general including the prophet Mohammed or even God.

The humor in these jokes in often achieved by bringing in the same setting a sacred value, figure or object together with a western, superficial, value, figure, or object and making the Western or modern ones appear more effective or more valuable. Of this type is the following joke making fun of the belief that the blood of a martyr cannot be washed off his clothes.

Three Palestinian Freedom Fighters (Fedayeen) crossed the border from Lebanon to carry out an operation in Israel. During the operation one was killed, another was wounded and the third got away safely. On the way back the wounded one died. The other one took his blood stained shirt back and gave it to his mother. The mother washed the shirt, but since the blood was that of a "shahid" it did not come off the shirt. The mother kept the shirt with the blood stains on it. One day an old man with a big white beard dressed all in green clothes with a large green turban came to the mother and said: Are you so-and-so, and such and such happened to your son, and you washed the shirt and the blood did not come off? Everything he said was true and the mother answered yes, yes… Finally the old man said: So do you know why the blood of your son did not come off the shirt? The mother replied "No - Please holyman, tell me why". And the old man replied," Because you did not use "Snow""(a brand of detergent advertised on Jordan TV).

I have mentioned the possibility that the fear of the Palestinian Secret service men may explain the decrease in the number of political jokes. That, however, does not explain the emergence of the new type of jokes. I believe a better explanation for both phenomena, and more in harmony with the general mood of the Palestinians for the last three years, is that most Palestinians, after realizing what the peace process actually meant, have lost hope, and lost faith in everything, and have become apathetic and despondent, caring only about his own personal daily affairs and interests.