ABSTRACT

These two communities must be seen as equal to each other ... only from such a beginning can justice then proceed ... The peace process as now understood is a process with no true peace at all ... I urge fellow Palestinians, Arabs, Israelis, Europeans and Americans not to flinch from the unpalatable truth and to demand a reckoning from the unscrupulous leaders who have lied about the facts and tampered with the lives of far too many decent people. 1

In photography, proficiency of execution may also be interpreted as mask or disguise . . . we who prepare to meet the faces that we meet may be convinced that only surprise will catch a glimpse of truth ... 2

Postmodern art cannot be political, at least in the sense that its representations-its images and stories-are anything but neutral, however 'aestheticized' they may appear to be in their parodic self-reflexivity. While the postmodern has no effective theory of agency that enables a move into political action, it does work to turn its inevitable ideological grounding into a site of de-naturalizing critique. 3

... the only acceptable political logic for Palestinians is to move our struggle from the level of high-ranking negotiations to the level of the actual on-the-ground reality ... Political separation is at best a makeshift measure. Partition is a legacy of imperialism, as the unhappy cases of Pakistan and India, Ireland, Cyprus, and the Balkans amply testify, and as the disasters of the 20th century Africa attest in the most tragic way. We must now begin to think in terms of co-existence, after separation, in spite of partition. And for thiS, ... the only solution is a politics of the local people on the ground who tackle injustice and inequity on the ground, far away from the misleading summits with Clinton. 4

Identity-who we are, where we come from, what we are-is difficult to maintain in exile ... we are the 'other', an opposite, a flaw in the geometry of resettlement, an exodus. Silence and discretion veil the hurt, slow the body searches, soothe the sting of 1055.5

In an increasingly global and migratory world, Edward Said, both cultural theorist and political spokesperson, locates the 'mask' of identity. For him identity formation is itself a masquerade that continuously remakes itself. And, the crucial question for the Palestinians is the problem of working out an identity politics based on co-existence rather than exclusion.