The Different Origins Of the Palestinian Jesus
On self-inflicted wounds, desperation and identity
“On the same day, I went to the late martyr, Abu Jihad, and said to him, “You are now being put up on the cross [By Israel].” This was in the idiom that we used. But he didn’t believe me, and a month later, he was assassinated.”
These were the words used in a recent interview on a television network based in the Arab Gulf by Mohammed Dahlan, a Palestinian politician and former leader of Fatah in Gaza while sharing his reflections on his experiences in Palestinian politics. Dahlan's employment of distinctly Christian symbolism during the interview did not initially capture my attention, as this is a relatively common rhetorical practice among Palestinian intellectuals and politicians. However, what piqued my interest was his supplementary remark, which aimed to elucidate this symbolism for the presumably Muslim viewership. This clarification alerted me to the fact that such symbolic language is not inherently intuitive or commonplace in everyday Arabic discourse, thus necessitating an explanation for the lay audience. The language is not merely of Christian symbology but of a patently secularized post-Christian political one so internalized by the Palestinian intelligentsia. Understanding this Christian connection, ultimately epitomized in the symbol of a Palestinian Jesus, might help shed light on the many entangled intellectual origins of the Palestinian movement.
For several decades, the figure of a Palestinian Jesus has been prominently utilized in international Palestinian advocacy as a metaphor representing a Palestine that is oppressed, exiled, occupied, scarred, lacerated, and wounded. This has involved the adaptation of Christian visual motifs and iconography, infused with distinct Palestinian symbols, to portray Palestinian victimhood as opposed to Israeli ‘villainy.’ While many view this as a straightforward exercise in propaganda, attributing it solely to instrumentalism overlooks the complexity of the situation.
Indeed, instrumentalism plays a role, but it is both simplistic and unwise to consider the phenomenon purely in terms of strategic communication. The example of Mohammed Dahlan, who articulated this symbol in Arabic to a predominantly Muslim Arab audience, illustrates a deeper layer of engagement. Dahlan's need to explain the use of a Christian symbol while discussing internal matters within Fatah indicates a level of appropriation and integration that transcends simple propaganda, pointing towards a more profound internalization of these symbols within Palestinian discourse and requiring a more serious investigation.
The celebration of Jesus as a Palestinian, or a proto-Palestinian, figure is not the work of a single line of thought or a single ideology. It is rather the outcome of the coalescence of the three main ideological components of Palestinianism around the symbol of Jesus: revolutionary radicalism, Palestinian national myth-making, and Islam. We shall address each of these components separately. Of the three components, the third, despite being often singled out as the source of Jesus’s alleged Palestinianism, is ironically the latest and the weakest.