“Ideas Factory” holds a session on the Palestinian National Identity

The “Ideas Factory” held on Tuesday, 4 July 2017,  a session to discuss the formation of the national identity in the Palestinian context. The session was presented by the Palestinian writer and researcher Muiz Kraja, who gave a historical overview of the Palestinian identity, its’ self-formation, and the influence of colonization and national liberation movement.

Karaja said that the Arab Region nowadays witnesses a noticeable change concerning the definition of identity, in contrast with the European community which agreed on the basic components of defining Identity, as it was able to replace the national identity of each country with the European Identity.  

He also emphasized that defining identity cannot be constant, because there are a lot of identities which the person refers to according to the situation, as one may identify him/herself based on the economic, religious, geographic, national or familial identity. Those different identities must remain secondary and implicit in contrast to the National Identity in case of stability, but Arab Societies have not reached this status yet.

Kraja also added that the Islamic Identity have controlled the Arab region until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, as that era witnessed the emergence of national states for the first time, whereas Arab countries fell as victim of European colonialism that led to the emergence of diametrical identities as well as separate Arab countries, concentrating on the idea that self-identity is created rather than being born by instinct, and that it is always affected by various external factors such as personal interests.