ABSTRACT
The discursive status of Palestinians in the West has changed in recent years. A new dynamism has infiltrated the static notions that ordinarily characterize Palestinians in Western discourse. Commentators and policy-makers from across the Western political spectrum have expressed views of Palestinians never voiced before. Clearly, the perception of Palestinians is undergoing a modest transformation whose outcome remains uncertain. This chapter is an attempt to describe the framework or landscape of this change in the racialized hegemonic discourse that posits its self-authorized subjects as “white,” based on their genetic, religious, and geographical origins, which are in turn discursively determined, and to locate the changing place of Palestinians within it. To do so, I will examine two journalistic documents, which at first glance seem marginal, but which, as I will demonstrate, contain within them the central axioms of this discourse. As this chapter was written in 1992 and published in 1993, it analyzes developments until 1991. I explore developments after 1991 in subsequent chapters.
