Jew World Order

NETWORKED REFUGEES
Palestinian Reciprocity and Remittances in the Digital Age
by Nadya Hajj 
146pp. University of California Press. $34.95

Palestinians are undoubtedly a global community. Outside the Middle East, large communities of Palestinians are present in countries as varied as the United States, Chile, Honduras, Guatemala, and Germany. Many of them remain connected both to their native land and to those Palestinians who continue to live in Israel, the Occupied Territory, or the multiple refugee camps in the Middle East. Networks of support and information have defied the passing of decades and thousands of kilometers of distance to keep Palestinians all around the world connected. 

In her latest book, “Networked Refugees: Palestinian Reciprocity and Remittances in the Digital Age”, Nadya Hajj explores how the spread of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has facilitated Palestinian global interconnectedness while also posing new challenges. Hajj, an Associate Professor at Wellesley College and a descendant of Palestinian refugees herself, conducted extensive field research in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Furthermore, she carried out online surveys and data collection on Facebook and other social media sites. 

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Hajj powerfully conveys to the reader how new technologies make, re-make, and occasionally unmake ties between the Palestinian community living in the Nahr Al-Bared refugee camp in Lebanon and those who grew up in the camp but are currently living around the world. Nahr Al-Bared is a camp with a particularly convulsed history. It was established in 1949 and experienced major destruction in 2007 as a result of armed clashes between the militant group Fatah Al-Islam and the Lebanese Armed Forces. It is composed of several areas that received the names of the different Palestinian villages the refugees were forced to abandon. This practice ties the inhabitants of Nahr Al-Bared together with other displaced peoples of the world, such as the Sahrawis in the Algerian refugee camp of Tindouf.

The main question Hajj seeks to answer through her research is how practices of reciprocity and cooperative interactions tying Palestinian refugees with the international diaspora develop in a context marked by the importance of ICTs. What she finds out is that “digital spaces offer further opportunities for Palestinians in the diaspora to develop economic and moral connections to their Palestinian family and village.” [1] 

The examples are manifold and comprise multiple aspects of life. Through ICT platforms – mainly Facebook – funerals, births, marriages, and business openings are announced. In a story that is representative of many others and shows that ties are strong even when involving non-relatives, an old man native to the Palestinian village of Damon died in the Nahr Al-Bared refugee camp. His family shared the news in an Internet forum and Facebook pages. Diaspora Palestinians from Damon as well as others whose origins laid elsewhere but had lived in Nahr Al-Bared, were moved by the man’s death and paid for the slaughter of animals and the food for mourning meals as well as for copies of the commemorative Qur’an distributed at the funeral. 

The author’s interviews with diaspora Palestinians represent a powerful tool to comprehend the motivations behind their economic support for those living in the Lebanese camps. A Palestinian who moved to the United States and became an engineer explains: 

“I know what it is like to starve, to have not bathed in a week, to have no spare clothes, to fear how the family will survive the next day, and I would never abandon them, even if I sacrificed some of myself for them.” [2] 

Hajj explores how Palestinian migrants are not only responsible for economic remittances, but also social remittances, that is “ideas, know-how, practices, and skills – that shape their encounters with and integration into their host societies.” The members of the diaspora living in democratic countries have contributed, as a result of the exchange of ideas and information through ICTs, to further Palestinian refugees’ misgivings about the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Hamas. This effect is particularly evident among the youth, who have come to conceive of democratic and non-corrupt political avenues to bypass traditional Palestinian elites while challenging Israel’s occupation. 

Nadya Hajj’s previous book, “Protection amid Chaos: The Creation of Property Rights in Palestinian Refugee Camps”, did not provide a detailed analysis of power relations between Palestinian refugees according to an otherwise positive book review by Leila Farsakh. The same cannot be said about “Networked Refugees.” In fact, one of the most relevant insights of Hajj’s latest book is that shame is a tool that effectively allows the Palestinian refugees in the camps to retain some power over the usually more affluent diaspora Palestinians. When analyzing the Facebook pages connecting Palestinian refugees in Lebanon with the diaspora, Hajj discovered “frequent passive-aggressive digital posts that criticized members of the diaspora community when they were not sufficiently responsive to calls for sending money or supporting the camp.” [3]  

The power of shame has an effect not only on diaspora Palestinians, but also on their relatives still living in the refugee camps. An interviewee explains how a family was forced to deny its connection to a relative who had prospered abroad but had never supported his original community. Prior to his repudiation, his family had encountered many problems when doing business or arranging marriages since the family’s honor had been tainted. 

ICTs occasionally favor societal pressure in the context investigated by the author. However, Hajj has powerful reasons to ascertain – as she does – that her study generally disavows technology pessimists, such as academic researchers who see ICTs as promoting asocial and apathetic behavior. In this sense, Hajj coincides with University of Westminster Professor Miriyam Aouragh, who in 2011 published “Palestine Online: The Internet and the Construction of Identity.” Aouragh argued that for the Palestinian community, the Internet had an “ability to (re-)connect people.”

In a book that is thoroughly researched and conveniently enriched by interview snippets that strengthen Hajj’s main arguments, the concluding remarks may disconcert some readers. It departs from the general tone used by the author throughout the book and introduces a list of steps for reciprocal activism that, although reasonable enough, appear to be somehow out of place. Paradoxically, the most powerful lessons for activism that can be found in “Networked Refugees” are not the ones Hajj explicitly presents at the end of the book. Rather, they are the ones that permeate the whole of Hajj’s volume. “Networked Refugees” makes clear that a community is stronger than the sum of its individuals and that its members can be separated by thousands of kilometers and still prove resilient. The book is a deeply valuable contribution to both the field of Palestinian studies and the thriving body of research on the intersection of new technologies and political and social developments. 

Notes

[1] Hajj, Nadya. Networked Refugees: Palestinian Reciprocity and Remittances in the Digital Age (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2021), p. 38.

[2] Ibid., p. 35.

[3] Ibid., p. 62.

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