ABSTRACT
Although readers of this paper may consider some of the points which will be raised later controversial, one thing, we are certain, would be non-controversial: the Middle East — especially if we accept its expanded sense to include the Muslim Republics of Central Asia- is an area of political conflicts which have a habit ofigniting from time to time with violent consequences. While language is hardly ever the cause of such conflicts, nevertheless it is always implicated in them, whether functionally as a medium of communication orsymbolically as a site of mobilisation and counter-mobilisation in games of power relations between contending parties. On the simplest level, we may point to the lexical role of language in the Middle East in constructing highly ideologised versions of reality which maygain wide currency by diffusion through the languages of international communication. 1 In this context, it does matter whether one refers to the 1967 War between the Arabs and the Israelis by that name or as the Six Day War. Likewise, the terms 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Yom Kippur War or Ramadan War are all ideologically impregnated labels, as are the terms ‘Peace for Galilee’ and ‘Grapes of Wrath’ which were used to designate Israeli incursions in Lebanon in 1982 and 1996 respectively. Moving on to geography, the terms West Bank and Gaza, the occupied territories, Arab occupied lands, Palestinian occupied lands, the territories occupied by Israel, the territories, the Israeli administered territories, lands which came under Israeli control in 1967 and Judaea and Samaria are all ideological ways of speaking. 2 The same applies to the following terms: the Israeli security zone, the occupied border zone and the ‘compromise label’ the Israeli occupied security zone when used to designate that area of southern Lebanon which Israel directly occupies or does so indirectly through proxies. In the short term, what is at stake behind these labels is the concern with persuasion by managing public opinion to the designator’s advantage. This is why it matters a great deal to the parties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict whether the proposed Israeli settlement (in 1998) on the outskirts of Arab East Jerusalem is to be known to the outside world as Har Homa, Jabal Abu Ghneim or, in a compromising mode, Har Homa on Jabal Abu Ghneim. 3 In both the short and long term, the conflict of labels in the Middle East is a deadly serious one. It concerns claims of legality and counter-legality as well as which version of history will formulate, rather than just articulate, reality. Language here does not just reflect reality, but acts on it, configuring it and shaping it to accord with a given ideology. This is why troop deployment and military action in the Middle East are invariably accompanied by lexical deployment and action. In the Middle East the gun and the dictionary march hand in hand, and this is no more apparent than in Israel in which “Hebrew continues to be driven by ideology, and is … still considered a metaphor for the security of the nation” (Shohamy, 1994).
