ABSTRACT
Introduction In a book on Jews and Palestinians in the modern Israeli multicultural state, it is important to bring to light, as well as compare and contrast, root myths of identity in comparison to historical reality. A core myth emerges for both groups in the concept of home and homeland in relationship to refugee return. For, in addition to a clash between two peoples – Jews and Palestinians – and a conflict over land, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also a clash between two images of identity. On the one hand, in creating the new Jew with an attachment to the land who could individually remake him/herself and collectively engage in self-determination and building a nation, Zionists aimed to counteract the image of the rootless cosmopolitan Jew. Though the Jewish repatriation to Palestine, and then to Israel, included a large number of refugees, the narrative of refugees was secondary to the story of national self-determination. On the other hand, we have inherited the image of the Palestinian refugee who once was eternally attached to his home and who had become alienated as well as uprooted as a result of displacement.
