G. Bowman, The two deaths of Basem Rishmawi: Identity constructions and reconstructions in a Muslim-Christian Palestinian community, IDENTITIES, 8(1), 2001, pp. 47-81
This article illuminates political transformations in a West Bank Palestini
an town over the past decade by examining the ways stories of a killing whi
ch took place in 1981 produced radically different conceptions of community
during the period of intensive intifada mobilization and subsequently as t
he Palestinian National Authority established its rule in the wake of the I
sraeli-Palestinian Oslo Agreements. The paper examines how political arrang
ements between the Israeli state and the Palestinian administration forced
the local community to negotiate in tra-communal conflicts in the terms of
an archaic and divisive idiom of tribal law that in turn accelerated the di
sintegration of the nationalist solidarity that had characterized intifada-
period social life. The paper contends that shared perceptions of antagonis
tic violence are central to processes of collective identity formation, and
shows that discursive shifts can, in certain contexts, give rise to nerv f
ormations of identity antipathetic to those that preceded them.